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June 1, 2008

Be it Resolved: Venture Capital is an Attractive Nuisance

Venture capital, as an institutional asset class, is pretty much dead. Sure, you can get returns from some smaller and more aggressive funds, but any supposed institutional financial asset class that a) can provably thrive only with teensy amounts of cash, and b) whose entire annual returns are bound up in fewer funds than there were graduates in my small-town high school class (18, if you must know), isn't really much of a financial asset class at all.

Matter of fact, given the tireless penchant of government and LPs for the field, it increasingly reminds me an attractive nuisance, to use the term of legal art. Hey, maybe like with neighborhood pools, or collapsing buildings, we need a metaphorical fence to protect childish would-be venture LPs from jumping in and hurting themselves.

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