TechCrunch ran a piece today on the ratio funds raised to invests with vs. economic value created by venture capital firms (measured by what VC companies have gotten back on exiting their investments).

They were looking at a recent presentation at Harvard Business School by Adeo Ressi the founder of the VC-rating site theFunded. Ressi's conclusion is that the VC model is broken. Ressi says that "the money going into VC funds is now more than the money coming out of VC funds." The first slide of his Harvard presentation puts it more bluntly: the canary is dead. Since I live in an area where coal mining takes place, I understand that figure of speech.

Ressi's 18-slide presentation is embedded at TechCrunch.


Photo courtesy of iStockphoto, Vinicius Ramalho Tupinamba