This is cold comfort for an investor. Dave McClure would say thanks but no thanks to a Redfin investment, because he is a seed investor who wants to stake only a little money and get a lot back in a very short time-frame. I like his approach, but I don’t think it’s the only approach. When he argues that his type of investing is the best type of investing, and that the alternative will go the way of the dinosaurs, I just want some data, or even a single example.

His article has no examples, even though we can easily think of counter-examples. Ask any casual technology observer to name a great investment and he might say Twitter or AdMob, both VC-funded deals. Maybe this is the wrong question to ask, since people inevitably focus only on the latest valuation, and not on the time and capital it took to get that valuation in the first place. The best way to phrase this question may be: what are the top 20 deals since 2005, as measured by internal rate of return? It seems silly to argue over what strategy makes the most money, when money can always be measured.