the venture capitalists who, for the past year, have been putting the screws to entrepreneurs are getting some blowback for their own profligate ways. limited partners (investors) in VC funds are starting to ask for refunds, thank you very much.

they're tired of watching the value of their investments dwindle while the general partners of the funds (the guys we think of as VCs) continue to earn mutli-millions in management fees. this problem is only amplified by the recent tendency of venture capitalists to raise billion-dollar-plus funds (what i like to call "gigafunds"). there are now 35 some-odd venture funds with more than $1 billion each in committed capital -- that's between $700 million and $1 billion in management fees alone. pretty grating stuff when you consider how many people got turfed when these same VCs told their portfolio companies to tighten their belts.

investors are also looking to exact some revenge for having to sit back while VCs jacked up their "carry" (the general partners' cut -- a percentage of the returns from a fund) during the boom years.

the Red Herring [is that thing still around?] has a good (if long-ish) article on this new trend in VC-hating. i particularly enjoyed this quote from an anonymous veteran technology investor:

"People in my circle feel like they've been ripped off by the VCs. We don't want to honor any more capital calls. We have lost way too much money and would just like to tell the VCs to fuck off. I mean, VCs are starting to play hardball with guys who are out of work and can no longer afford their mortgage. Is that good business? Is that good teamwork? That's just plain greed."

in the end, though, the guys doing the hard, creative work -- the entrepreneurs -- are the ones ultimately getting screwed. it doesn't take a genius to figure out that less available capital combined with tighter pursestrings and demands for better performance means that VC investment's going to come with punitive terms: miserable valuations, draconian anti-dilution measures, liquidity preference, crawl-up-your-ass corporate oversight. (via Techdirt)

...news is slow, and i have some actual work to do, so what time i've devoted to the care and feeding of blogaritaville has been spent on setting up AmphetaDesk just so. after all, there's no GO without the GI, right?

the General Services Administration, the purchasing agent for the US federal government, has suspended Enron and Andersen from doing business with the feds for a year.

the rest of American issues a collective "duh". (via Reuters)