May 25, 2011 - top 10 VC firms based on InvestorRank: "Chris Farmer, a VC at General Catalyst Partners, has come up with a method which he calls InvestorRank. Just as Google’s PageRank orders search results based on how many links each page gets from other sites, InvestorRank looks at the connections between VC firms. Whenever two VC firms co-invest in the same deal, that creates a bond between them. If one VC firm follows another one in a later round, that boosts the rank of the earlier investor. The more that a VC firm invests in syndicates with other highly ranked firms or even before they do, the higher its InvestorRank. There is some research which suggests that mapping out the network of investors is a better way to predict performance. InvestorRank is not based on previous returns. Rather, it is based on how connected and trusted a VC firm is."