rone | it's monday, so something is pissing me off

Strike one: it's TechCrunch.
Strike two: it's an "online financial advisor."
Strike three:

3 percent of the universe of venture capital firms – generate 95 percent of the industry’s returns... Those premier venture firms succeed because they have proprietary knowledge of the characteristics of winning companies.

BULL-FUCKING-SHIT. These "premier" venture firms succeed because they sit on a ton of capital through early lucky strikes, which lets them absorb failures while at the same time being far more attractive to new startups because, hey, they're "premier". It would be far more revealing to show what each "premier" VC's success rate is, but that's probably "proprietary" information, too. It's nothing more than a just-so story about why a "premier" VC is "premier". If they actually knew what the characteristics of winning companies were, they wouldn't be funding them; they would be founding them.