Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Smartphones didn't come from a VC-backed startup. This isn't entirely correct: both Palm and Apple (the creators of the smart phone) were originally venture-backed.
Apple did NOT create the smartphone. When the iPhone released in 2007 it was a feature phone- no app store and famously missing featured like copy and paste. Besides Palm who you have mentioned there was Symbian and Windows Mobile which each had third party after market apps available.
You seem to be equating "smartphone" with "has third party apps", but that isn't the defining characteristic of "smartphone" based on any common usage.
Besides, when the iOS App Store was launched ~1 year later, the original iPhone was able to use it.