So You Want to Be a Venture Capitalist - New York Times

So You Want to Be a Venture Capitalist - New York Times: "Mr. Kapor had enormous success investing for himself in barely-formed start-ups like RealNetworks and UUNet Technologies, both of which provided him with staggering payouts.
Yet he did not prove to be a star the years he worked as a professional venture capitalist.
'The fact that it's someone else's money you're investing, and that you're investing as part of a partnership, that was more different than I thought it would be,' said Mr. Kapor, who went to work in 1999 for Accel Partners, another top venture house in Silicon Valley. 'I later found out that everybody who makes the transition like I did says that.'
Mr. Kapor failed to choose a single company that made him, his partners and their investors any money. He confesses he was 0-for-5 in the investments he made during his three years at Accel. 'Most of us learned the hard way that venture investing is best left to the professionals,' said Marc Andreessen, the co-founder of Netscape Communications. "