[beat]

I think the professional institutional investors who run pensions and what not are fundamentally different from some Grandma investing her life savings in a "hot stock". Venture capital is just another diversification checkmark for such big funds.

A VC once told me that he thinks most venture funds don't really stand a chance of making money at all. The reason they have money to invest is because there's such a surplus of cash from institutional investors who need the "venture capital" checkbox. The lower-end VCs don't get the best deals and have to settle for leftovers, so their chances of getting lucky in a get-lucky business are that much lower.

At any rate, no honestly run pension fund is actually putting its capital at significant risk by tossing a few tenths of a percent at a collection of VC funds.