1) Patents are assets. They are important for valuation. Investors care about them and they are important in acquisitions or pre-IPO audits. You don't have to have patents, but not having any will reduce your valuation.
If a tech company is successful, it will have patents. If they do not have enough, they will sprint to get more patents before exiting. Though, if a company waits until they get close to exiting before seeking patent protection, much of their interesting/valuable IP may barred from protection.
2) While expensive, patents are not that expensive considering the other costs of operating a startup. Passing on patents in the beginning means you will lose the right to protect your early inventions. Often this results in the loss of IP protection for your most important innovations -- the secret sauce that the company is based on. Trying to catch-up later is harder and more expensive because you have to patent around the edges of your secret-sauce because it is too late to patent the secret-sauce itself.
3) Plenty of so-called software patents are issued in the UK, EU, and Asia. You can search the EPO patent database for patents assigned to Google, et al. to find plenty.
4) PCTs are placeholders that defer (for 18-30 months) having to decide if you want to file in a covered country. They are cheap so we often recommend them to clients that intend to sell into UK/EU/JP. If you file in the US first and then use the same US application for the PCT there should be no legal fees for filing a PCT, just filing and administrative fees.
Note, non-US countries do not have a 1-year public disclosure grace-period. So if your inventions are disclosed to the public before filing your US patent application, forget about PCT applications.
5) Patent Attorneys. They are like any profession. At least half are average or worse. I think finding a good patent attorney is the hardest part of the patent journey.
A good patent attorney will have relevant industry experience and they will focus on specific/limited areas of technology.
Patent attorneys that are good at software or computer-based inventions will tend to work exclusively with those types of inventions. This is because there is a high demand and patents for software/computer inventions command high fees. Gadget patents typically have lower fees that really are not worth the time for a computer/software oriented patent attorney to handle.
Also, even big law firms with name-brands can have terrible patent attorneys. So the best way to find one is word of mouth from other CEOs/CTOs or your VCs.
6) Startups filing for patents in the US should be doing Track 1 (Prioritized Patent Examination). It guarantees that your that your patent will be examined within 12 months. It only costs $2070 more than normal filing fees for companies with less than 500 employees.
If your US patent attorney has not recommended Track 1 filing, you probably need a different patent attorney. Track 1 is a 'new' option, but it has been around for several years now. There is no reason not be filing Track 1 if you are a startup. If your attorneys argue against it, consider seeking new attorneys.
In three years you could have several issued patents instead of still waiting for your first response from the USPTO.
7) A good patent attorney only needs 1-2 hours of inventor time to draft a patent. If your patent attorneys are meeting multiple times with the inventors, especially to work on claims, you should look into finding better patent attorneys.
8) All good patent attorneys charge high fees, some bad/mediocre patent attorneys charge high fees. However, all low fee work is done by bad patent attorneys (or they are sub-contracting out to bad patent attorneys).
There is too much demand for good patent attorneys for them to charge low fees. Unfortunately, plenty of bad patent attorneys charge high fees too, especially if they are at bigger firms.