NVCA Blog Archives

Foreign Investment Bill and its Impact on the VC and Startup Ecosystem

July 25th, 2018 by Jeff Farrah & filed under Capital Formation & Regulation, NVCA Blog.

If you’re a VC with a foreign LP or have foreign co-investors, then you should know the law is about to change.

Later this week, Congress is expected to pass legislation that will impact foreign investment into the venture and startup ecosystem in new ways. President Trump is expected to sign the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act (FIRRMA), as he chose to back the bill rather than move forward with China-specific restrictions. NVCA is pleased to see key changes in the final bill, but it still stands to affect VC funds with foreign limited partners and/or co-investors. We will continue to engage on your behalf and encourage you to be in touch with questions or comments. (more…)

VC Industry Makes an Impact on Washington at VCs-to-DC

May 24th, 2018 by Devin Miller & filed under Events, NVCA Blog, Public Policy.

At a time when the startup ecosystem is intersecting more and more with policies coming out of Washington, it seems like an ideal time to bring venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, and policymakers together to discuss the future of policy impacting America’s innovation industry.

Last week, NVCA did just that at VCs-to-DC. Our event brought together the entrepreneurial ecosystem and policy decision makers in Washington, D.C. to take part in conversations on policy issues to strengthen the U.S. startup ecosystem. (more…)

VentureForward Blog Series: Funding Exceptional Social Enterprises Starts with Challenging your Pipeline

May 4th, 2018 by Christy Chin & filed under Diversity, NVCA Blog, VentureForward.

Note from NVCA: As part of NVCA’s VentureForward initiative, we launched this blog series in November 2017 for industry leaders to share their perspectives on why diversity and inclusion (D&I) are important for the future of VC, their firm’s activities and approach to D&I, and guidance for how we—as an industry—can drive meaningful change.

Stay up to date on the latest VentureForward news, resources, and releases here. Contact ventureforward@nvca.org to learn more and get involved.

Christy Chin, Managing Partner at the Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation, continues the series with her post below (which originally appeared on the HBS Impact Insights blog): (more…)

Emerging Growth Companies Want to Go Public, The Question is When?

April 30th, 2018 by Heather Gates & filed under Capital Formation & Regulation, NVCA Blog.

Note from NVCA: We always encourage our members and industry partners to share their perspectives on industry issues. Heather Gates of Deloitte shares her views on the current IPO environment for venture-backed companies. NVCA remains engaged on capital market reforms to support small cap companies. We recently released a report with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on policy reforms to encourage more public companies.

Recently, I had the pleasure of participating in the Stanford/NVCA Venture Capital Symposium along with Scott Kupor, Greg Rodgers, Jeff Thomas, Nizar Tahurni and Justin Field. Our panel, The Death of the IPO, focused on the trends in the volume of IPOs and the challenges and opportunities facing aspiring publicly traded companies.

Interestingly, within just the past week or so, we’ve seen a recent uptick in enterprise tech IPOs and companies in the media and fintech space going public or announcing plans. (more…)

A Proposal to Encourage More Public Companies – NVCA’s Perspective

April 27th, 2018 by Justin Field & filed under Capital Formation & Regulation, NVCA Blog, Public Policy.

I hope that you were able to read the press release NVCA sent out yesterday announcing the release of a proposal to encourage more U.S. public companies. This effort builds off the success of the JOBS Act and is intended to make it more attractive to become and remain a public company. We were pleased to partner with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Biotechnology Innovation Organization, Nasdaq, Equity Dealers of America and several other organizations to put this package together, and we look forward to working with this coalition to get these ideas passed.

Capital markets reform and reviving the Initial Public Offering (IPO) is one of our top priorities at NVCA. We believe the blueprint we just released can reverse the trend of the dwindling number of public companies in the U.S. We also hope this report can spark a further conversation on these issues among our membership as we continue this important work. (more…)

VentureForward Blog Series: Making Diversity Core to Community

March 26th, 2018 by Rob Hayes & filed under Diversity, NVCA Blog, VentureForward.

Note from NVCA: As part of NVCA’s VentureForward initiative, we launched this blog series in November 2017 for industry leaders to share their perspectives on why diversity and inclusion (D&I) are important for the future of VC, their firm’s activities and approach to D&I, and guidance for how we—as an industry—can drive meaningful change.

Stay up to date on the latest VentureForward news, resources, and releases here. Contact ventureforward@nvca.org to learn more and get involved.

Rob Hayes, Partner at First Round Capital, continues the series with his post below: (more…)

VentureForward Blog Series: No One Said Diversifying Venture Capital Would Be Easy – But Here Are Some Hacks

March 21st, 2018 by Christine Herron & Trina Van Pelt & filed under Diversity, NVCA Blog, VentureForward.

Note from NVCA: As part of NVCA’s VentureForward initiative, we launched this blog series in November 2017 for industry leaders to share their perspectives on why diversity and inclusion (D&I) are important for the future of VC, their firm’s activities and approach to D&I, and guidance for how we—as an industry—can drive meaningful change.

Stay up to date on the latest VentureForward news, resources, and releases here. Contact ventureforward@nvca.org to learn more and get involved.

Christine Herron, Investment Director at Intel Capital, and Trina Van Pelt, Vice President at Intel Capital, continue the series with their post below: (more…)

New Resources for Addressing Sexual Harassment in the VC Industry

February 23rd, 2018 by Bobby Franklin & filed under Diversity, NVCA Blog, VentureForward.

Since last summer, the venture industry has come together to address sexual harassment in our ecosystem. The serious and sensitive nature of this topic led NVCA on a path of listening and learning; facilitating discussions and convening working groups; and developing much-needed resources for our industry. Our thorough and determined process led to yesterday’s release of three key NVCA resources for addressing sexual harassment: Sample H.R. Policies for Addressing Harassment & Discrimination; Sample H.R. Best Practices for Addressing Harassment and Discrimination; and Sample Code of Conduct policy. Our goal is for venture firms to review these documents and operationalize them into existing/new policies within their firm and share them with their portfolio companies. (more…)

VentureForward Blog Series: Investing in Inclusion

February 16th, 2018 by Jessica Strong & Terri Glueck & filed under Diversity, NVCA Blog, VentureForward.

Note from NVCA: As part of NVCA’s VentureForward initiative, we launched this blog series in November 2017 for industry leaders to share their perspectives on why diversity and inclusion (D&I) are important for the future of VC, their firm’s activities and approach to D&I, and guidance for how we—as an industry—can drive meaningful change.

Stay up to date on the latest VentureForward news, resources, and releases here. Contact ventureforward@nvca.org to learn more and get involved.

To date, the series has focused on the perspectives of VCs. With this edition, we changed it up by shining a spotlight on an entrepreneur developing products/services that foster inclusion in the workplace and a VC firm that focuses on D&I and funding entrepreneurs disrupting this space. Jessica Strong of Flexable and Terri Glueck of Innovation Works (IW) share their thoughts in the interview below: (more…)

VentureForward Blog Series: Diversity Breeds Diversity

January 24th, 2018 by Andy Schwab & filed under Diversity, NVCA Blog, VentureForward.

Note from NVCA: As part of NVCA’s VentureForward initiative, we launched this blog series in November 2017 for industry leaders to share their perspectives on why diversity and inclusion (D&I) are important for the future of VC, their firm’s activities and approach to D&I, and guidance for how we—as an industry—can drive meaningful change.

Stay up to date on the latest VentureForward news, resources, and releases here. Contact ventureforward@nvca.org to learn more and get involved.

Andy Schwab, Co-Founder & Managing Partner of 5AM Ventures, continues the series with his post below:

(more…)