This is a really nice article. Venture capital industry reminds me of primitive medicine - people used to do things because it intuitively felt right, but had no rigorous means of telling good ideas from bad ideas (and hence, made mistakes about half the time). Statistics revolutionized medicine, and some day will revolutionize early stage investment.<p>It seems like even the most fundamental questions aren't answered yet - how do VCs do compared to how they would have done if they picked the companies that pitch to them at random? How do they do compared to each other (if you manage to control for the fact that top-tier VCs get to pick the best deals later in the game my guess is there will be no difference)? How do they do over long term compared to investing into treasuries or other safe instruments (it's comparing apples to oranges, but there <i>is</i> valuable information there)?<p>Considering that even these simple questions aren't answered, any rigorous study of the VC industry is like a breath of fresh air. At least we know now that checklists work.