I think the biggest problem here is time. VC firms are generally not manpower heavy, and sorting through unfiltered business plans is very time consuming, if not painful. That's why they prefer the referral chain method.<p>A GP I spoke with recently (on Sand Hill Road, potentially even one of the firms Cringely sent his plan to) put it like this: If you aren't smart enough or dedicated enough to work all possible network connections to get referred to our firm, you probably aren't smart enough or dedicated enough for us to fund you.<p>This comes down to the idea that most VC's (not all), invest in people\teams, not ideas.<p>A submission from Cringely followed by an article on his blog definitely qualifies as a filtered referral, so any results from his 'test' wont be very representative. At least he realizes this.
I'm looking forward to seeing how this experiment works.<p>I find the whole funding conundrum so sad as to be funny -- one of those things you just have to laugh about to keep from crying.<p>So let's see, 9 out of 10 ventures fold. The cost for entry keeps going down. Lots of tire-kickers will submit a business plan no matter how unworkable the business or how ill-matched the VC.<p>The response? Better web sites! And secretly even more of a reliance on networks and following the herd. Better still, up the amount of money they want to invest keeps going in the opposite direction of the amount that startups need.<p>But damn, those websites are looking <i>awesome</i>.