Maybe that gives them time to develop an idea into homerun for the VC firm, whereas bootstrap entrepreneurs have to hit singles and doubles at first to survive.
Any anecdotal evidence of this? Most home runs that I know about are from scrappy, resourceful founders that discovered something simple through experimentation that scaled into a huge company.
Doesn't the article give the anecdotal evidence? Data domain and Zimbra are some big number acquisitions.
Also, consider the number of companies that VC's are pitched via non-EIR's vs pitched by EIR's, and I would say the numbers are favorable if not equal that an EIR is as good as a scrappy and resourceful founder.