I wonder if this dominance of the home runs is a self fulfilling prophecy though. VCs want to back the home runs and thus they kind of force their entire portfo

I wonder if this dominance of the home runs is a self fulfilling prophecy though. VCs want to back the home runs and thus they kind of force their entire portfolio into the procrustean bed of hyper growth strategies. Some of the busts might only bust because they falsely follow the common hyper growth patterns. I don't think it would be a horrible idea for some of the bigger funds to set up a separate "race to profitability" fund where the explicit goal of the companies is to be profitable as soon as possible. You could even hold on to the winners from this fund long term instead of selling your equity share and aiming for the magic exit and infuse the generated profits into the fund. Could be a great learning exercise and also a decent instrument to have for the normal fund. I can very well see a "hard talk" where VCs tell one of their normal portfolio companies...look we think your basically a bust and will transfer you to the other fund where you have N time to become profitable on a smaller scale. Thankfully we have some experts there who can trim the hyper growth engine off your company and help you focus on smaller level profitability.