On his blog, Lee Hower (one of LinkedIn founders) has an interesting post titled “Making good decisions still means you are sometimes wrong” in which he talks about the tough choices VCs have when deciding which startup to back. There are so many deals coming their way, they can’t possibly bet on every single one of them and identifying good opportunities, especially early stage, is really difficult.
I especially liked his link to Bessemer’s “anti-portfolio” web page where they show companies they declined to invest in and have great comments on why. Just goes to show that you shouldn’t feel bad after that meeting where the VC tells you the startup you have been working on and investing your life savings is not interesting to them. Maybe they are missing on the next eBay, Google, or PayPal. Just maybe. ;-)
