Archive for category: Public Policy

Category: Public Policy

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Devin Miller

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

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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. Read more

Justin Field

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

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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.  Read more

Bobby Franklin

NVCA Highlights from 2017 and What’s Ahead in 2018

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With 2017 in the rearview, we can now take a deep breath and try to make sense of what was a very turbulent year. President Trump’s first year in office turned out to be even more unconventional than his campaign for president. Protests the day after his inauguration, making news with the stroke of a tweet, and major legislative failures followed by major legislative victories, President Trump’s (almost) first year in office has been filled with fireworks on a weekly—and often daily—basis. As someone who has lived and worked in Washington for nearly three decades, this has been both exciting and exhausting to witness. Read more

Jeff Farrah

NVCA Gets Its Day in Court on Immigration Case

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NVCA has worked hard in 2017 to make the United States a friendlier place to immigrant entrepreneurs.  The venture industry knows first-hand the many incredible contributions of foreign-born entrepreneurs, like how more than half of U.S. “unicorns” were started by immigrants, or that one-third of U.S. venture-backed companies that went public between 2006 and 2012 had at least one immigrant founder.

Our immigration advocacy takes on multiple forms.  We continue to be the leading advocate on Capitol Hill for creation of a Startup Visa and have welcomed efforts by Senator Flake (R-AZ), as well as Senators Moran (R-KS) and Warner (D-VA), to do just that.  Separately, we also lead the fight for the International Entrepreneur Rule, which would allow foreign-born founders to remain in the U.S. for up to five years to grow a startup.  In July, the Trump Administration announced it would delay and move to end the rule.  This unfortunate development followed months of intense advocacy by NVCA and our allies to maintain the rule so that foreign-born founders could start and scale their enterprises here in the U.S. Read more

Bobby Franklin

We’re Suing the Government over Immigration. Here’s Why.

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American entrepreneurship and immigration are deeply intertwined, and our community is thankful for the many contributions that immigrant entrepreneurs have brought to our country. The stats are astounding: immigrants have started more than half of America’s “unicorns;” one-third of U.S. venture-backed companies that went public between 2006 and 2012 had at least one immigrant founder; and more than 40 percent of Fortune 500 companies have at least one founder who either immigrated to the U.S., or was the child of immigrants. Read more

Devin Miller

Why Immigrant Entrepreneurs are Crucial for America’s Future

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On Monday, the Department of Homeland Security was scheduled to begin receiving applications from foreign-born startup founders under the International Entrepreneur Rule. Unfortunately, the Trump Administration delayed the rule with an eye on eventually rescinding it, shutting down a commonsense policy tool that would have kept job-creators in the U.S. to build their companies here and hire American workers.

As a quick refresher, the International Entrepreneur Rule was put in place during the final days of the Obama Administration and would have created a regulatory structure similar to a Startup Visa, which NVCA has supported for over a decade. While the Startup Visa has been caught up in the broader immigration reform efforts that have stalled in Congress, the International Entrepreneur Rule had the potential to accomplish many of the same outcomes. Read more

Justin Field

A Tax Reform Agenda for the Entrepreneurial Ecosystem

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Tax policy is one of the most powerful economic levers that policymakers have at their disposal. So it is concerning to see that instead of modernizing the tax code to recognize and support entrepreneurship, tax policy discussions in Washington have been more likely to focus on increasing taxes on the entrepreneurial ecosystem. For example, there have been calls to increase taxes on carried interest capital gains and repeal the Qualified Small Business Stock (QSBS) rules to pay for unrelated priorities.

At NVCA, we think this is the exact wrong way to view tax reform. Instead, tax reform should be an opportunity to support the creation and growth of more U.S. companies. We have submitted a policy paper to the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance detailing a tax reform agenda that would encourage new company formation. In this submission, we explain why startups are so critical to the country’s economic competitiveness, why startups are a unique business model, and call for a specific section in tax reform that should be devoted to proposals that would encourage new company formation. We then detail four tax reform proposals that would help startups without creating a new credit or deduction. These ideas include: Read more

Jeff Farrah

An Unforced Error for Job Creation

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Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: an entrepreneur comes to the United States from her home country with dreams of growing an idea into a blockbuster company. The entrepreneur starts the company here because of our culture of innovation and risk-taking, coupled with robust financing options and the world’s best universities. Working shoulder-to-shoulder with a venture capitalist, the entrepreneur succeeds and creates an exceptional company that employs thousands of Americans, improves lives, and delivers technological or medical advancement.

Given the many benefits new companies bring the U.S., you would think our government would be clamoring to attract the world’s best entrepreneurs like policymakers have in Canada, France, and the U.K. Sadly, that’s not the case. Earlier today the Trump Administration announced it would do the exact opposite and delay International Entrepreneur Rule with an eye toward rescinding the rule in the next several months. That’s a missed opportunity and one that competitor countries are cheering today. Read more

Ben Veghte

NVCA Brings VC and DC Together at Annual Meeting

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It has been one week since the venture capital community convened in Washington, D.C. at the 2017 NVCA Annual Meeting and everyone is still buzzing from the event and our new format.

We rewrote the script for this year’s event to focus exclusively on policy and direct engagement with policymakers to advance a pro-innovation agenda that supports new company creation. Crucial to that mission was moving the Annual Meeting to our nation’s capital. Read more

Charlotte Savercool

Timely Reauthorization of PDUFA & MDUFA Is Critical to VC-backed Life Science Breakthroughs

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Thirty years ago, the median time for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval of a new drug was 33 months. As one can imagine, major backlog at the agency caused significant delay to the approval and entry of potentially life-saving drugs in the market. To address this problem, Congress passed the Prescription Drug User Fee Act in 1992 to authorize the FDA to collect fees when new drug applications were submitted. Those user fees, paid for by the biopharmaceutical industry, supplemented Congressional funding for the agency to review new drug applications in a more timely and efficient manner. Ten years later, Congress passed the Medical Device User Fee and Modernization Act (MDUFA) after the FDA’s medical device program experienced a substantial loss in resources, seeking to accomplish a shared goal (between industry and the FDA) of improving the review process for new medical devices. Read more

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