Interestingly, just as in every other commodity market, the greatest defense for venture capitalists turns out to be brand: firms like Benchmark, Sequoia, or Andreessen Horowitz can buy into firms at superior prices because it
matters to the startup to have them on their cap table.5 Moreover, Andreessen Horowitz in
particular has been very open about their goal to offer startups far more than money, including dedicated recruiting teams, marketing teams, and
probably most usefully an active business development team.
While Dark Skies isn't a bad film in any
particular sense, this is just one of those cases when a movie
probably just shouldn't have been made around the subject
matter.
As a general rule I tend to assume that if a
particular fact is so obvious that even a layman like myself is aware of it then those who have a professional interest in such
matters are
probably aware of it and have taken it into account.