[subscription required]WSJ.com - Venture Capitalists Revive Tech-Sector Duds: "Venture capitalists backed 8,101 new companies between the start of 1998 and the first half of this year, according to VentureOne, a Dow Jones & Co. publication that tracks the industry. (Dow Jones also publishes The Wall Street Journal.) Excluding companies that were acquired or went public, 1,924 were shut down by venture capitalists or went out of business, costing investors at least $36.4 billion, according to VentureOne.
Of the 4,672 that still are alive, about half initially were funded at the top of the market in 1999 and 2000. Many now are being recapitalized or relaunched with a new business model as 'restarts' as venture capitalists pick through those with the most promising technology -- and least risk -- to see if they can turn a profit. They often can get a larger stake in a company on the cheap."

One of my VC friends points out that VCs typically don't like to reinvest in failed startups, on the assumption that there are enough new ideas out there that it's not worthwhile to go after the old ones twice. If it failed, assume the idea was bad and move on.

But I never agreed with that. Companies fail for lots of reasons besides "bad or unworkable idea". The Bubble failures especially--how many of those companies went under purely because they were associated with the general bad feelings about "dot com bombs"?