It's easy to get in, but can you get out; Investment opportunities abound but what about exits?

We've been busy at founder's co-op looking at deals but like many investors we didn't make any new investments in Q4, 2008. We've got a couple deals in the pipeline that we're excited about and may get done in the next month or so. If we do the deals, I'll be sure to let you all know. One of the things, that's on my mind -- like many of the investors out there -- is exits in the future. Expectations amongst entrepreneurs have come down and thus, deals are increasingly investor friendly. That's good.
But the question of what happens after an investment is made and a company grows are more uncertain today than ever before.  Another way of putting it is that getting into deals is all too easy but getting money out on the back end is hard. It's impossible to have an answer to this -- and one either has faith that there will be a back end in 3 to 5 years or not.  We're keeping the faith --and hopefully, making some bets in the near term but the m&a market of the future is on our minds.