Maybe the numbers could have been better chosen, but the message is correct: when you raise money, you're raising the bar for what will be called success.
This is especially important now that infrastructure is close to free, it's easier now to bootstrap your company or even start it as a week-end hobby. That wasn't true in the 90s or early 2000s when you had to buy costly servers and hosting just to get started.
So it is very important to know what your goal is. You want to get a slight chance to be the next Google or Facebook? You'd better raise money. You want to build a sustainable company for you and a small number of employees? Maybe raising is not the best thing to do.
This is especially important now that infrastructure is close to free, it's easier now to bootstrap your company or even start it as a week-end hobby. That wasn't true in the 90s or early 2000s when you had to buy costly servers and hosting just to get started.
So it is very important to know what your goal is. You want to get a slight chance to be the next Google or Facebook? You'd better raise money. You want to build a sustainable company for you and a small number of employees? Maybe raising is not the best thing to do.