It's people who lose, which is most, complaining about structural issues when actually they just suck at investing. It's a competitive game, they lost.
I mean, multiple things can be true at once, no? They could have made bad choices or had bad luck. Simultaneously, the system could be rigged for and against certain categories of participants. From what I've heard, there's a lot of both of these going around; startups are highly volatile, but also a lot of the people in the space not only don't play fair, but actively deride playing fair.
You are hearing the voices of failed investors. There are successful angel investors. There are guys in the NBA finals getting paid $50m a year. There are movie stars.
In extremely competitive pursuits with insanely good outcomes, you are going to find an enormous number of people trying to make it and fail.
If hollywood was really truly rigged, how does Brad Pitt make it?
Some things are rigged - most competitive "winner takes all" or close to it are just insanely difficult. Startup investing is probably the least rigged thing in the world, it's just crazy difficult.