[TheLarch]

This is inevitable as venture capital assumes a larger portion of the economy. However, I have never seen such a focus on reputation as I have in the startup/venture capital world.

A good portion of what you might call 'blue chip' VC's value reputation highly. I may have the details wrong here, but between stints at Twitter Jack Dorsey tried his hand at another startup, failed, and felt so bad about it he repaid his VC's out of personal funds. Ron Conway made an offer on the spot to fund his next venture, whatever it might be.

My perception is that YCombinator is like that as well, and that word will get around quickly if you act like a jerk.

Joel Spolsky of Fog Creek talks at some length about avoiding jerks even if they are productive programmers.

Investment has always, always attracted jerks, so there is nothing surprising here. It's unfortunate that the article does not mention the rare rejection of apparatchik-ism and the self-serving and jerks in general that does happen in VC.