Editor's Note: This is the final part in a weeklong series on the venture capital industry. To read earlier stories, click on the following subjects: Silicon Valley takes on the world, Washington considers a VC tax hike, a look at the next hot investments, and a map of Sand Hill Road—venture capital's ground zero.

It’s been a bad 10 years for venture capital, bookended by the dotcom bust and the collapse of the credit markets. In between those two disasters, venture capitalists marked some successes, but nothing on the order of the 1990s.

Portfolio.com recently took stock of the industry by spending time in Menlo Park, California, on Sand Hill Road—the heart of U.S. venture capital. Here’s how five notable figures reflect upon Silicon Valley’s ascendance as a venture and technology hub, the state of their industry today, and what the future holds.

David Hornick, August Capital

In 2000, Hornick joined August Capital to invest broadly in information-technology companies, with a focus on enterprise application and infrastructure software, as well as consumer-facing software and services. Prior to joining August Capital, David was an intellectual property and corporate attorney at Venture Law Group and Perkins Coie.

Then: “Clearly putting aside what started the trend—and there are discussions about was it Hewlett-Packard or was it the existence of Stanford or whatnot—and the answer is, yes, it was all of them. It was the right environment for an early set of individuals who understood the value of being entrepreneurial. There was a set of investors who understood that while it was extraordinarily risky, there could be monumental returns by investing in these very risky ideas.”

Now: “You have to look at the venture industry as a spectrum of firms, as a wide range of investors. I do think that there are a lot of investors who are going to have a hard time raising money, and so I think there will be a contraction. I think it’s perfectly appropriate. If venture funds are investing money and returning less than they invested, then those are not investors who should continue to be able to raise money.

"We recently raised a new fund about a year ago at a time when it was very hard to raise funds, and so the good news about that is having capital when the industry is constricting is helpful to fund entrepreneurs, fund interesting businesses. I actually have found that the number of interesting companies that we’re seeing at the heart of Silicon Valley has accelerated. It hasn’t decelerated.”

Dixon Doll, DCM

Doll is co-founder of DCM, a firm with some $2 billion under management, a former president of the National Venture Capital Association, and a three-decade veteran of the industry. He sees an industry that is reaching out to invest more globally by opening offices in far-flung locations and investing in international firms—but one that must see a return to health in the market for initial public offerings of venture-backed companies.

State of the Valley: “There’s no question that Silicon Valley is still the world’s capital of innovation, of the amount of capital deployed and so on and so forth. The fact that Silicon Valley is so significant, it really means that this is the place where everything has started traditionally, and I think it’s going to be very important going forward, no question about that.

"I think it will always—for a long, long time—be the center of the U.S. venture capital industry. But the proper perspective is simply that a lot of the new things that are happening in innovation and a lot of the new capital being deployed are…spread around the world, into China and India for example.”

On the initial public offering market: “There’s at least 100 to 150 companies out there that should be able to go public right now. I think there’s a tremendous amount of activity in the Valley at this moment with boards of venture-backed companies meeting with investment bankers to have discussions about whether they should go public and how to go public.

"I think the IPO market is going to improve this year. But it’s a very gradual process, so I’m actually expecting it to get significantly better than last year, but that’s not a really very strong statement. It’s not going to get back to where it should be this year. I think time will tell whether that happens over the next couple of years.”

Keep reading to see what Michael Moritz of Sequoia Capital, Alan Salzman of Vantage Point Ventures, and Dr. Doug Kelly of Alloy Ventures have to say about the venture capital industry.