It depends whether you are more concerned with how often they pass on someone who then goes on to be successful or how often they pick someone who then fails.

It depends whether you are more concerned with how often they pass on someone who then goes on to be successful or how often they pick someone who then fails. I suspect for most investors passing on someone who goes on to be wildly successful hurts a lot more than investing in multiple failed ventures. Given that, having a longer more thorough process may not be beneficial. At best a long process can reduce the number of failures by refusing to invest in them but it will never increase the number of successes which is limited by the number of people who ask you funding. I'm kind of surprised that no well funded VC funds have come up with the idea of just handing out 5-10k to every single not obviously doomed startup they come across in exchange for a few percent of each company. They could call it shotgun investing.