During the panel I definitely saw a little bit of tension brewing between the two ideologies regarding startup funding. In the Y-Combinator/Micro venture funding camp was Chris Anderson (his keynote dealt with the marginal cost of Internet as a distribution channel heading towards zero) and Chris Sacco (who has funded more than a few Y-Combinator startups) and in the Large sum traditional venture capital spending camp was Rick Segal (a VC partner) and Jeff Taylor (the founder of the first .com to do a Super Bowl ad).

I really wanted to see that conversation played out.

It truly is hard to see which type of funding works best - but I have a feeling that y-combinator type funding works best when you can take advantage of a couple young coders who are psyched their idea even got into Y-Combinator. Although I have seen some cool startups come out of Y-Combinator, I feel that many of them are arbitrage plays, and few have goals of creating a sustainable business - where Venture Capital size funding is required.