For the last two decades, at least, the power of hackers/makers relative to MBAs/smooth talkers has consistently increased, and that trend shows no sign of slowing down.
I, for one, have a hard time believing that every startup M&A transaction adds shareholder value to the acquirer. A more likely narrative, and one the author of the article calls into question, is that the entrepreneur has friends/other back-channels at the acquirer and uses these personal connection to engineer the "acquisition" of their company, at the expense of shareholders.
I think the article is more referring to Hackers/Makers that are also smooth talkers. Obviously an MBA/Business guy with no technical experience/knowledge is not going to be able to pull off any sort of political entrepreneurship in VC-istan.
I'd cry if two of those services went away but I'd be lying if I didn't acknowledge they are cogs in the machine this article was describing.
TechCrunch is the elephant in the room. Basically any startup that is successful at getting frequent TC coverage could be accused of playing the politics game. However whether they are using TC to reinforce their safety net or using it grow their company (or both) is open to interpretation.
WTF are you talking about? Getting into techcrunch is as simple as writing a check to a PR firm.