For venture capital, 2011 was a year of recovery. Investors in venture funds (called Limited Partners) wryly pointed out in 2010 that venture capital had not produced returns in the past decade. 2011 may have corrected that, but investors still continue to shy away from VC. But let's start with the good news first.

A Year of IPOs and returns: For most VCs, the big payday is when a company gets acquired or goes public. Of course, going public has its own cachet, not to mention returns. On an average, IPOs generate at least 5X the rate of return as compared to an acquisition. Some worthy tech IPOs of note in 2011 were LinkedIn, Groupon and Zynga. Others included ZipCar (Short term car rentals), RenRen (China's Facebook), Yandex (Russia's search engine) Fusion I-O, (Hardware) to name a few. Venture funds that had at least two IPOs include Accel, Andresseen-Horowitz, Benchmark, Greylock, Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia, Technology Crossover Ventures and New Enterprise Associates. Others of note include Foundry Group and Union Square Ventures (Zynga) and Battery (Angie's List). Indeed, the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) US VC Index showed one year returns of 26.3% as of Q2 2011. This number will continue to beat other indexes, including S & P 500 in 2012, but will that help VCs?

To read the full, original article click on this link: Mahendra Ramsinghani: A 2011 Venture Capital Year In Review