Russ Mitchell reports on the problems affecting the venture capital industry.
Think about it this way. eBay is one of the few successes to emerge from the dot-com boom. At its peak, eBay had a $16 billion market value, and its venture backer, Benchmark Capital, made more than $4 billion on its investment. So how many eBays would have to be taken public by the end of a decade for venture investors to achieve 18% returns? More than 325. That’s roughly one eBay every 10 days between now and 2010.