Spotlight on Rising Stars in VC: Carmen Palafox

by & filed under NVCA Blog, VentureForward.

Carmen Palafox

Note from NVCA: As part of NVCA’s VentureForward initiative, this ‘Spotlight on Rising Stars in VC’ blog series showcases individuals in the venture industry from different backgrounds and across the workforce to share experiences, spotlight their journeys and successes, and educate the next generation of people considering a career in venture capital.

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

Spotlight on Rising Stars in VC: Payal Agrawal Divakaran

by & filed under NVCA Blog, VentureForward.

Payal Agrawal Divakaran

Note from NVCA: As part of NVCA’s VentureForward initiative, this ‘Spotlight on Rising Stars in VC’ blog series showcases individuals in the venture industry from different backgrounds and across the workforce to share experiences, spotlight their journeys and successes, and educate the next generation of people considering a career in venture capital.

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

Spotlight on Rising Stars in VC: Amy Gu

by & filed under NVCA Blog, VentureForward.

Amy Gu

Note from NVCA: As part of NVCA’s VentureForward initiative, this ‘Spotlight on Rising Stars in VC’ blog series showcases individuals in the venture industry from different backgrounds and across the workforce to share experiences, spotlight their journeys and successes, and educate the next generation of people considering a career in venture capital.

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

Spotlight on Rising Stars in VC: Nikhil Basu Trivedi

by & filed under NVCA Blog, VentureForward.

Nikhil Basu Trivedi

Note from NVCA: As part of NVCA’s VentureForward initiative, this ‘Spotlight on Rising Stars in VC’ blog series showcases individuals in the venture industry from different backgrounds and across the workforce to share experiences, spotlight their journeys and successes, and educate the next generation of people considering a career in venture capital.

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

VentureForward Blog Series: Investing in Veterans

by & filed under NVCA Blog, VentureForward.

Brandon Shelton & Brendon DiBella

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.

With this edition, we are shining a spotlight on a veteran entrepreneur and a VC firm that focuses on investing in veterans. Brandon Shelton of Task Force X Capital (TFX) and Brendon DiBella of StreetShares share their thoughts in the interview below: (more…)

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

by & filed under Capital Formation & Regulation, NVCA Blog.

Jeff Farrah

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

by & filed under Events, NVCA Blog, Public Policy.

Devin Miller

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

by & filed under Diversity, NVCA Blog, VentureForward.

Christy Chin

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?

by & filed under Capital Formation & Regulation, NVCA Blog.

Heather Gates

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

by & filed under Capital Formation & Regulation, NVCA Blog, Public Policy.

Justin Field

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…)