I may not have known what the terms meant, but I took that to mean 10 year returns on funds. So, I thought it was only referring to funds started in 1998, 1999,

I may not have known what the terms meant, but I took that to mean 10 year returns on funds. So, I thought it was only referring to funds started in 1998, 1999, and 2000. Still definitely not a overwhelming amount of data. I forgot to mention the other years in my comment. However, the general idea of the comment still holds- they took an exact bit of data, like 10 year returns for the worst years of funds to determine that VCs aren't valuable. As has already been commented, if you looked at the 15 or 20 year returns you will be amazed in the other direction.