This is a convincing argument by NEA's Grossi, but for the life of me, I don't see how this gets returned 2-3x. What am I missing? There are only so many venture returns to go around, and A16Z has $2.7B, Bessemer has $1.6B, Greylock is north of $1B, Sequoia and Accel the same.

Billion dollar valuations are happening more than has ever happened before. 

http://pandawhale.com/post/132/billion-dollar-valuations-are-happening-more

It's a bet they can find the next eBay, Google, or Facebook.

Does Benchmark or Kleiner Perkins have a mega fund?

Benchmark is always around $400m, give or take. KP is usually the same but added "digital growth" recently, as did Greylock and Accel.

This is part ofthe problem with using "fund size" at all. KPCB has raised $2.3B over the same time period (2008-2011) that NEA raised $2.5B but they're considered a "small fund". Sequoia over that period (if you include Sequoia India which is sometimes listed as part of it and sometimes separately) is $2.9B. Bessemer raised $4.2B but that's since the window happens to catch more than one of their large funds.

Tom, great point.

Here's an idea for them; do an order of magnitude more than the start fund and offer a top incubator / accelrator program's startups $1.5m in an uncapped note.

"Aggregated Venture Capital"

An interesting experiment, no? And perhaps just as probable to return the fund as their current investment thesis.

David, I'm not sure it's a good experiment.

Start Fund has PG working full-time to qualify the startups invested in.

Where would they find the people to do the same for such an experiment?

500 startups, TechStars, AngelPad.

Those aren't good bets. None of them have had a home run like Dropbox or Airbnb.

Which is why the time to partner is now; before they do have a homerun. Or 500 singles.