At this morning’s Churchill Club breakfast in Silicon Valley, two private equity pros, a venture capitalist and an angel investor were asked to peer into the future.

In addition to the usual observations — the VC industry will shrink by half next year, capital is still tight, exits are still tough, portfolios are full of troubled companies — they had some fresh takes.

Panel members were Rich Garnick of the ConJoin Group, Rich Lawson of Huntsman Gay Global Capital, Rajiv Batra from Mayfield and Rich Brenner from the Brenner Group (he’s the angel).

- Financial engineering is now tied to operational reality, because the “covenant-light” deals of the past aren’t working — 75 private-equity-backed companies went bankrupt last year. “It’s amazing to me that managers and owners tend to delude themselves for a long period of time,” said Garnick, who helps companies restructure debt. “It’s only when they start breaking covenants that they have to acknowledge what’s going on.”

- Nobody assumes when they invest in a company anymore that they know where the next funding roun