At least according to PG, VCs like you more with a failure than with nothing. One of his essays also refers to a claim that older founders are more likely to be successful and to run their companies sustainably -- fewer eighty hour work weeks, etc. I dunno for sure, but I guess the person you're replying to probably doesn't know what he's talking about, because I haven't seen anyone claim before that there's a serious age barrier in startups, especially to the degree that that would be a primary concern if you failed in your mid to late twenties.
I really know nothing about whether VCs have a tendency to age-discriminate. But ageism is rampant in VC-istan startup culture. It's not so severe that older people can't get hired, but they tend to get less respect if they haven't held executive roles by age 40.
I tend to think of this age discrimination as something where both classes are victims. Older programmers start losing opportunities, but younger programmers are attractive precisely because they're easier to take advantage of. Both young and old lose in this.
I really don't get why you would call it "VC-istan" then, because that makes it sounds like you're trying to disparage VCs. Also, it makes a whole host of your arguments in your original post irrelevant, because what we're talking about is founder-suicide, not employee suicide. Last, it's kind of offensive that you use the "-istan" suffix pejoratively as you are.
I don't know enough VCs to know if VCs themselves are discriminatory, but I've definitely seen a lot of age discrimination in VC-funded companies, and it usually starts to effect people around the mid-30s if they don't have a couple executive-level roles under their belt.
It's not explicit ageism so much as brutal and unrealistic age-grading that doesn't allow for career mistakes. If you're 40 and an executive, no one looks askance at you, but if you're 40 and still a full-time programmer, you're judged to be a loser unless you can prove that you're a top-1% engineer (which is miserable because most of the people you have to prove yourself to are not even top 20 percenters.)
My shortest job ever (3.5 months) was a company where I was brought into a management role and my responsibility was to generate paper that would be used to get rid of some "old" (late 20s to 40s) engineers. I was to be the 28-year-old douche who fired the old-timers, because the 25-year-old douche they hired 3 months earlier (now a full-blown manager, last I heard) to do it didn't want to get his name dirty.
Being asked to perjure myself and disparage people whose work I knew nothing about (but whom I liked personally) ended that job quickly.
If not, I think my opinion of SV just went down yet another notch...