By John Thornhill
It is easy to be rude about the venture capital industry. So here goes. The criticism runs that the VC sector is full of too many over-funded, ill-disciplined chancers who pass off hype for reality, groupthink for insight and luck for good judgment. What’s more, a staggering 95 per cent of VC firms fail to make a decent enough return to justify the risks their investors run. Yet it is hard to detect a blush as they extract extravagant management fees for mislaying their backers’ money. Well might Jim Clark, one of Netscape’s founders, describe venture capitalists as “velociraptors”, intelligent but rapacious dinosaurs.