VC Failure Rates

For some reason if a VC dumps $10m each into 100 companies and none of them is very successful, it's part of the business. YC puts $15-20k into 20 companies and one has a (major) liquidity event and that's a failure? wtf?

The whole thesis of VC funds is to invest in many companies and have a few home runs drive returns. VC-backed companies failing is just the cost of doing business in a random extremistan world. For programmers it's as you say - either nothing, or at best "nothing to write home about". Unless you win the lottery.

Yes because the billions of VC money wasted every year where only 1 out of 10 companies will be successful is better?

define success. most VC funds lose money every year.

Probably a reason why VC funded companies have a higher probability of failing...

Simple fact is that VCs at large had worse returns than S&P 500 in the past 10 years: http://pando.com/2013/07/30/ouch-ten-year-venture-returns-st...

If you got in and made some of that money you wouldn't be complaining. Its the nature of VC. A lot of failures and a few big winners.

VC don't care. It's expected that some investment will fail one way or the other. VC's investment approach is to invest in 10 startups and hoping one will hit it big.

You are thinking from the perspective of an individual investor. For VCs, this kind of return is abysmal since it won't cover the 7/10 companies that went completely bust. In order to VCs to take high risks on early stage companies, they need the winners to return 100x so the fund even makes financial sense. It's one of the main reasons why VCs constantly push startups for hyper growth.This is certainly better than losing the investment completely but I can't imagine the i

The entire point of VC is a high failure rate and lots of failures with a few breakaway successes.