The article seems to advocate for exactly what you’re warning about:
Why not go straight to securitizing senior tranches of your recurring revenue, and moving it off your balance sheet?
... (one paragraph later) ...
On the other side, imagine how much investor interest you could get in a diverse basket of recurring revenue from, say, 10 different startups that’ve all raised from Tier 1 VCs. People talk about how great it would be to invest in a unicorn basket; this would probably be even better.
Except for the part about everyone colluding to get good risk ratings. If that collusion did happen, then yes, these would be the equivalent to MBS'. That can happen regardless of what is being securitized.
It still wouldn't get to the level of the housing crisis until those securities were packaged into much larger CDOs and refinanced based on the fraudulent risk ratings.
Why not go straight to securitizing senior tranches of your recurring revenue, and moving it off your balance sheet?
... (one paragraph later) ...
On the other side, imagine how much investor interest you could get in a diverse basket of recurring revenue from, say, 10 different startups that’ve all raised from Tier 1 VCs. People talk about how great it would be to invest in a unicorn basket; this would probably be even better.