The only validation that matters for the success of your startup is validation from your customers. And the list of things customers want is endless. Reporters, investors, bloggers, commenters on HN are second order at best, and most of the time don't really matter. There's no fixed pie you're competing for in startups.

There's VC-istan and then there's the ideal of the customer-focused, lifestyle-business. I think you're conflating the two, which is not unreasonable because almost everyone does.

VC-istan is a system in which most people can't really play. You don't just decide to be a Founder and get sit-down pitches with Peter Thiel. You can't even get a real reason for a rejection (much less a decent chance at a timely acceptance) until you know people. It's an introduction-based guild system. That's probably inevitable and not the primary evil. The primary evil is that most of these VC-istan companies use "be a real founder some day" as a carrot they dangle in front of clueless 22-year-olds, who fail to realize that as subordinate engineers, they're getting absolutely no progress toward what they were promised.

VC-istan is a postmodern corporation, but it's effectively one company. The VCs talk to each other in all kinds of inappropriate ways, and they decide as a group whether you're hot (or not). If you're hot, you get the resources to hire 10 engineers. Or 25. If you're either lucky or a really good judge and hire good ones, you have a shot at something big.

"Founder" is just a mid-level PM position in VC-istan. If you're playing the VC-istan career game, you end up caring more about investors and press than customers. Why? Because you're a selfish careerist (you have to be) and your investors will continue to have influence over your success or failure at your next venture. Your customers won't.

VC-istan, for businesses, is get-big-or-die. You're competing for scarce resources, whether they be "eyeballs" or investor attention, because if you aren't growing at 100% per year, you're "walking dead", which means yesterday's dogshit. The postmodern corporation of VC-istan treats companies themselves as disposable (which isn't right or wrong, just a different approach).

What you're describing, where customers are king, is a different world: slow-growing businesses that are often decried as "lifestyle businesses", but actually comprise the silent majority of new economic activity. These firms might define success as growth at 20% per year instead of 150%. These businesses don't turn into billion-dollar concerns quickly, and they're hard to sell, but if you don't mind being there for 10+ years, they're probably a better option. You're not going to have to sell your soul to remain "in" with the VCs and cool kids, and you can set up shop in a low-COL location like Madison or Portland.

The difficulty in starting lifestyle businesses is that you have to put personal savings on the line, and our generation (as a whole) neither has that nor is likely to get there-- ever. You put a lot more on the line when you start one of those than you do when you take a check from a VC.

Additionally, the danger, and it's what gives VCs power, is that your lifestyle business ends up having to compete with a VC-funded machine-gunner.