This may be subjective, but it feels like there is a lot of cargo culting going on in the VC industry. To a certain extent this makes sense as predicting the fu

This may be subjective, but it feels like there is a lot of cargo culting going on in the VC industry. To a certain extent this makes sense as predicting the future is hard. There will always be a large gap between observed metrics and the end results, because companies are being launched into an unpredictable landscape and the conditions necessary for success change all the time. As a result these uncertain conditions create a strong incentive to pick up "best practices" even if they don't make sense at the time. However, at the same time, the cargo culting creates inefficiencies and a lot of group pressure which forces companies to conform to the metrics du jour to raise funds. From a vantage point outside of the industry, these metrics feel almost memetic in nature. It seems that a lot of these hoops exist because other people have used these set of hoops before, therefore they must be valid in some shape or form. It's a recursive sort of logic whereby the rationale behind an investment metric is reinforced by the social signals around it. Plus, I'm sure that it doesn't help that most VCs don't actually have a quant styled background and most VCs don't model their investments in any shape or form. (while the modeling may not be accurate - it is still a useful tool for thinking through investments) Of course all of this is actually an opportunity for the enterprising VC. A smart VC firm could theoretically create a better, more quantitative process and pick up unconventional companies for cheaper and get better returns as a result. edit: Just in case it wasn't clear, I'm not accusing the OP of cargo culting - it's rather the opposite. It's more of a meta-observation / addendum to his observations.