Somewhere right around the time you're reading this, odds are a headline will be crowing, "Google's $20 Billion IPO Ignites New Internet Boom." Here we go again? From a certain point of view-say, that of young college grads and hopeful entrepreneurs bubbling over with bright ideas-let's hope so.

But if we didn't already know it, what Google's epic launch surely shows is that venture capitalists are the consummate alchemists of the information age. Algorithms bubbling up from a university computer department don't on their own transform into a household verb-much less into a company spewing profits. Increasing the (slim) odds of this happening is where VCs come in-and few do it as well as Michael Moritz.