Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Insights and Opinions: An Open Letter To Congress
For our Insights and Opinions section this morning, we're republishing an open letter to Congress composed by venture capitalist Marc Averitt, of Okapi Venture Capital:
I am writing to you today as a concerned citizen with a truly global perspective who also happens to be a co-founder and managing director of a small (~$30M) venture capital fund that invests in promising seed and early-stage technology and life science companies in Southern California. I want to relay to you my deep concern regarding S.1276 (a.k.a. the “Private Fund Transparency Act”) and any other such legislative proposals that will, unnecessarily, impose new regulatory burdens on the venture capital industry whole-scale. I truly believe these proposals will negatively impact the venture capital industry’s ability to fund and nurture the innovative start-up companies that have been and continue to be critical to U.S. economic growth as well as our country’s ability to effectively compete in the global market. To put the importance of venture capital in perspective, the venture capital industry has created over tens of millions of jobs for the U.S. economy just during my lifetime and venture capital backed companies now make up a significant percentage of our GDP. (continued)
Read the rest of Marc's post.