Source: www.howstuffworks.com
Jeff has a nice anecdote:

"12 European high tech stars. Here's the basic problem with the European technology industry... my friend Frans is a VC based in Geneva and he told me an interesting anecdote about how one of his partners had shown him a list of the top 50 tech companies in Europe. Frans said "I didn't know if I should feel good about looking at this list of 50 companies and realizing that we had seen almost every deal... or to feel shitty about the fact that here was this list of the top 50 companies and we had seen almost every deal." via Stefan Smalla
http://www.manager-magazin.de