It’s cheap to startup a web company. Making it profitable still takes inspiration and perspiration, but the cost has dropped enormously, and Paul Graham argues that that may not bode well for VC as an industry.

One additional factor that may be pushing VC to the fringes for most web startups not mentioned in Paul’s article is the growing easy access to angel funding that now exists.

When startups came back into fashion, around 2005, investors were starting to write checks again. And while founders may not have needed VC money the way they used to, they were willing to take it if offered—partly because there was a tradition of startups taking VC money, and partly because startups, like dogs, tend to eat when given the opportunity.