I think the problem here is the word 'earn' is doing a lot of heavily lifting.

Let's take Y combinator. He is in the money lending business - where he sells the idea of becoming a billionaire ( which is possible in software as it so easily scales relative to other types of businesses ) to young people so they work crazily hard. Most of them fail ( which he doesn't focus on ), but just like a bookie who profits from gambling - he always wins as he controls the rules ( odds/investment percentages - ie lending rates ) of the game.

So he has set up a system that extracts value from others.

Nothing wrong with startups - not only to the founders get to keep more of their value, they can also set company culture and values etc.

However you could argue, particular in software where capital isn't really needed, that taking money from a VC is very expensive - and also somewhat abrogates that founder control.

Sometimes you need investment, and good VC's can really add value ( both to the investor and investee ) - but his ideal investment is going to be to companies that don't really need it - where he can reap a huge reward for little effort.