PE investors buy mature companies and extract profits via cost cutting, mergers/acquisitions, re-organizations. A PE firm may buy a paper manufacturing company if they thought they could increase profits by cutting unnecessary costs.
angels/VCs fund growing companies and extract profits as the company value grows and is to sold to a company or the public market. A VC would never fund a paper manufacturing company unless this were a wholly new way of making paper and had potential to transform the entire industry.
Are you sure the article didn't just flip the relevance bit for you when you read "investors are looking for good companies with low risk, not great companies with high risk"?
The stuff in there about how earnouts are structured seems germane. I have friends who have sold tech startups where earnout structure was a material issue.
Even if this article isn't directly relevant to startups, I think it's useful to startup founders to see the type of games investors can play. Some people don't have the YC team making sure they don't get screwed.
angels/VCs fund growing companies and extract profits as the company value grows and is to sold to a company or the public market. A VC would never fund a paper manufacturing company unless this were a wholly new way of making paper and had potential to transform the entire industry.