Early Work: http://paulgraham.com/early.html
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Close to zero is not the same as "the absence of Silicon Valley firms". You could change your footnote to "few Silicon Valley firms" and keep your point. But a refusal to fix one of the more easily falsifiable claims is, to use your words, lame.
Sure it is. In that sentence, "absence" doesn't imply none. If I'd said the most striking thing about their cap table was the presence of SV firms, it wouldn't imply 100% were; if I say the most striking thing is the absence of SV firms, it doesn't imply 0% are