Marc Andreessen explains why venture capital is an “extreme feast or famine business”

The venture capital business is 100%. A game of outliers it's extreme exceptions. So the conventional statistics are on the order of 4,000 venture fundable companies a year that want to raise venture capital, about 200 of those will get funded by what's considered a top tier VC. About 15 of those will someday get to $100 million in revenue. And those 15 from that year will generate something on the order of 97% of all the returns for the entire category of venture capital in that year. And so venture capital is such an extreme feast for famine business. You're either in one of the 15 or you're not, or you're in one of the 200 or you're not. And so the big thing that you're just looking for, no matter which sort of particular kind of criteria we talk about, they all have the characteristic of you're looking for the extreme outlier.