Do you know what "startup" means? A restaurant business isn't a startup. A consultancy isn't a startup. The whole point is to do something that does scale.

VCs won't invest in something that doesn't scale, and therefore angels and incubators/accelerators won't either, if they have any sense.

The software scales just fine, the initial user acquisition doesn't. That's literally the premise of the PG essay I quoted.

But thanks for the pedantic dictionary check on what a VC will fund. Super helpful contribution to a conversation about whether an idea is actually useful to human beings. Not all of us are building just to beg for angel money.