One of my favorite quotes is from Steve Jobs. I believe he said, "those overnight successes sure take a long time." As I, and others, have noted, the VC investment model is based on a ten year cycle of fund raising, investing and exiting. This model works well for a lot of companies, but one size does not fit all. A quick look at my client base, suggests a couple of issues with the time dimension of the VC model. (There are, of course, other dimensions to be considered such as the amount of money needing to find a home etc.)

Many of  my clients that have succeeded with the VC model seem to me to have been tightly focused technology companies. These companies cross all industries: software, telecom, mobile advertising, medical devices and others. The companies I am thinking of all have in common a tight focus on a particular pain point. In each case, the company had a good exit (with significant returns to the investors), and in each case the exits were sales to large established big industry players, Microsoft, AOL, Zimmer Holdings and the like. None became a substantial stand alone company.

Having said all that, some of my best clients have been around a lot longer than 10 years and, in some cases, are just now looking like they might bear fruit. The companies I am thinking about have broader larger visions than the "typical" venture backed company. They are aiming at being large sustainable long lasting independent companies. For many years these companies could not get venture investment. Now, after having worked at it for a decade or more (in both cases), they have gotten venture investment. This investment will probably "put them over the top." In each case it is really mid to late stage venture investing. An early stage investor would not have had the life span needed to stay the course. Who knows what havoc their need to exit would have wreaked on these companies.

Looking for overnight successes limits the type of company in which you can invest to companies that are not the ones that are likely to be around in 10 or 20 years. Of course this is not always true, and there are the big exceptions such as Google etc. But the venture model certainly favors the tightly conceived company with a short time to exit.