Although Chris's supporting info is accurate enough, he draws a conclusion than I find to be not appropriate for many startups.

However, let me set the tone by defining at a high level what I find to be the core of SEO today (from my limited experience):

* Being indexable - Make it easy for Google to read and store your website. Building your site using web standards is easiest way to do this.

* Be relevant to what people are searching for - If someone is searching for "some phrase" and your site doesn't have those words, Google has no way to connect you to the phrase. The more content you have around the topic, the more likely your site will be considered relevant to what people are searching for.

* Build authority of your website - Quality & quantity of links are one of the primary ways Google figures out how to rank the content the are going to suggest to their visitors. Other factors play a role, such as site age, but a lot of high quality links trumps everything else.

Now that we have a foundation to start the conversation, let's dig in.

1) Startups today will have a "tougher" time with garnering traffic from SEO but that's true of almost anything at any point in time. People always complain about the good old days but what they are really saying is that the game is different now. If people from 1999 timetraveled, they'd be jealous of our overall low cost for startup and even how many people are online. Yes, times are different. Deal with it.

SEO is harder today because there are entrenched players who see the value of SEO and are willing to make the investments. With that said, a solid 70-80% of the players who are leading the SEO rankings were likely not there a couple years ago (just from anecdotal observation over time.) This means that a year from now, you could be at the top of a really competitive term that will drive your sales, if you invest the time, energy and resources it takes.

2) The fact that search rankings is more competitive now is actually a good thing. Getting ranking won't be a walk in the park but it'll be just as tough for someone else once you're leading the pack. It's a worth while competitive advantage that will be valuable when you are ready to sell and it'll help you make SALES which will bring in REVENUE. Profitable revenue will give you the fuel to live another day and eventually figure out how to really be successful. Profits trump everything, IMO!

3) Long tail search is growing and will likely become bigger than the high volume terms as people become more able to request more specific terms. This presents a lot of opportunity to the creative marketer who can guesstimate the search phrases their prospects will use and it presents low competitive overall.

4) SEO takes resources to do but it actually is best done when in combination with other things. This means the margin resources needed is fairly low. For example, if you're going to make something remarkable and attempt to get lots of PR, keeping SEO in mind will help you get a lot more out of your effort and the cost difference will likely be a tiny percentage of your overall time and money investment.

5) And lastly, SEO is good for the soul. One of the best SEO advice I got was "Why does your business/site deserve to be #1 on Google? Why should they refer people to you?" If you think about SEO from that perspective, you'll do right by your visitors and you'll improve your entire business.

For all the above reasons, I can see where Chris is coming from but I strongly disagree.