The British believed in their Empire. They believed that it was right to put Squash courts and Polo fields in far flung countries. They believed that Britishness was the most natural state of man. The French, Russians and eventually the Germans felt the same way about themselves, only more so and less sucessfully. These empires were Goliaths and their people were proud of them.
The US was the first major colony to successfully break free from the Brits. The most formidable military force ever deployed sailed into the East River and bore down on a bunch of un-uniformed barefoot rabble representing our (at that time) pathetic revolution. Yet somehow we won. That picture was chopped up and burned into the DNA of every American. We re-live it when Bruce Willis crawls through air-ducts and elevator shafts to outwit German terrorists. And again when he leads his band of blue collar drillers to blow up a merciless asteriod. And his goals are simple too. Bruce just wants to get home in time for dinner whereas James Bond is "keeping the British end up." Americans are wary of higher causes which makes them distrust things bigger than themselves.
It's everywhere in this country, Big is bad and small is good. We hate Wallmart, Microsoft, Nike and Exxon. Nevermind that Target, Adobe, Reebok and Shell are doing the exact same thing as their bigger counterparts. They're not big so we can't hate them. The only thing that will "kill" Google (IBM / MS style) will be bigness. We will turn against them once they become Goliath.
Our people (formerly your people) banded together way back then and forged our ideals in violent reaction against bigness. And so it's been ever since. We were the 12th biggest army just before WWII and few thought we would outlast the Soviets. But once the Soviet Empire fell we became Goliath and we have hated ourselves ever since. The Brits and Russians in their prime would have no problem with Iraq. The Russians would roll in and kill everyone and the Brits would pit the Sunnis against the Shias and colonize what's left. We have gone in half cocked and we don't truely believe that it's our place to tell other people how to live. It is cruely ironic that we may have to sail back across the pond and ask our British cousins how we can best play the part of Goliath.
This is all a long way of saying that revering startups is just natural to us. It's what we've always done and for better or worse, it's all we know. I'm actually not sure why they were ever called startups. Upstarts is way more fitting...