> You can have lots of plausible theories about what venture capitalists as a class can do to get good returns, until you take the 1980s into account. Then you

> You can have lots of plausible theories about what venture capitalists as a class can do to get good returns, until you take the 1980s into account. Then you can only have one: the only thing VCs can control that will improve their outcomes is having enough guts to bet on markets that don’t yet exist. Everything else is noise. I'm curious as to why the author believes VCs need to improve their outcomes. Venture capital is a compensation scheme disguised as an asset class. As long as there is enough dumb money willing to permit VCs to lock in a decade's worth of fee-based compensation with each fund they raise, VCs have no incentive to go rogue and "bet on markets that don't yet exist." In fact, they have every incentive not to.