Sounds like he's sick of the deluge of marketing dollars into these events, not necessarily the startup game.
Problem is, it's unavoidable. These guys have to get their name out there as quickly and loudly as possible. It's unfortunate, but until everyone in your target market has heard of you, you can't stop screaming "Look at me!"
To me it is one thing to be noticed ('get their name out there') for remarkable products/services, that took either time, effort, genius or a combination.
It is a complete separate thing when you either haven't produced anything, or have produced, but it is far from remarkable, and you are being noticed by running around screaming.
It is the latter that gets tiresome and old. Not to mention the former is so much more honerable.
But pragmatically this is how small companies make a lot of money now. Run around screaming, "pivot" your non-business until it's the lowest common denominator buzzword compliant non-product and get an exit.
It's like the Hollywood sitcom model. It's basically focus group driven and hit based. Your agent and connections are more important than acting ability. The market created around start-ups cares way way more about "connectors" than introverted technical talent. And you can't blame them, web development tools have gotten very good and there are all kinds of new niches to fill on the web. You run the numbers and they are worth more.
In many other career paths there are various different cultural norms that push back against this kind of pandering, with varying degrees of success.
If you think that the engineer personality type is well suited to push back against extroverted suits promising popularity, wealth and calling them "rockstar programmers" because "you geeks are cool now" in order to keep working on big problems or doing something honorable then you have more faith than I.
So I hope that we find a way to correct the perverse incentives in place but the rest of the world would also love to hear a solution to this problem.
That reminds me how (it was said) that Cray Research never spent anything on advertising. They just produced the fastest supercomputers of their time, and the rest took care of itself.
Problem is, it's unavoidable. These guys have to get their name out there as quickly and loudly as possible. It's unfortunate, but until everyone in your target market has heard of you, you can't stop screaming "Look at me!"