Venture debt is very different to convertible notes. Venture debt usually involves warrants and preferred shares, they'll take IP as collateral, and are only offered from a few banks and other financial institutions. They often have defined interest payments as well.
We had a $X million dollar venture note from SVB at a previous company that needed to raise cash, it was helpful to keep the company afloat but definitely came with some pretty onerous terms (as to be expected). It was much different to the convertible notes that started the company.
Part of the issue is that the author goes through no effort to actually explain WTF they are talking about, while making it sound like these startups are raising capital with no equity on the line.
