Silicon Valley venture capital investors aren't even shy about funneling hot investments to their friends. There's an established vehicle, the sidecar, a fund that gets to ride along on a transaction, even in tight deals in which the firm's main stake is scaled down. The justification is well-honed: "The people they include in their funds are often movers and shakers that help the fund back," explains a patient Valley veteran to this clueless outsider. Except, that's pretty much the same justification that Frank Quattrone, the notorious Silicon Valley investment banker, used to justify allocations of hot IPO stock to Valley bigwigs, the Friends of Frank, back in the 1990s. Every possible profit siphoned off by an investor's personal contacts comes at the expense of the university endowments and other institutions that invest in venture capital funds. Quattrone's legal travails showed that routine Silicon Valley practice, complacently accepted by the insiders who benefit, can come off to others as borderline corrupt. The beneficiaries of sidecar largesse, or hedge funds that worm their way into hot deals may turn out to be random friends of key investors, or even relatives. The new web boom is providing Valley venture capitalists with quite a ride; they should be careful who they take along.