It has been fascinating as a non-American to watch the world’s most influential democracy decide its next President, Donald Trump, particularly through the Scott Adams blog on his persuasion techniques and why he would win despite the polling.
One of his messages, as his campaign supporters pictured as results came in last night showed, has been to “make America great again”.
When it comes to venture capital, the US has been great throughout the past 80 or so years, as noted by Alan Patricof, industry doyen at Greycroft Ventures, and Venky Ganesan, chairman of the US trade body National Venture Capital Association (NVCA), at the SHIFT conference in New York City late last month.
That the NVCA has no need to put US at the front probably says enough about how the country is intimately associated – pun intended – with venture capital. But with China racking up six deals of at least $1bn in size this year so far and America’s share of the global venture ecosystem falling to about 50%, according to Ganesan at SHIFT, then is there more Trump could do?
Naturally, most venture investors, who are based in states on the east and west coasts that voted for Trump’s rival, Hillary Clinton, might have concerns that rather than helping them, the new President once inaugurated in January could make things harder for them and their portfolio companies.
Trump’s rhetoric during the election campaign was for potentially taxing VCs’ performance fees (carry) as income rather than capital gains, looking again at how is allowed in and can stay in the country and for reexamining trade deals to see if they were in America’s interest.
The latter two might chill the flow of talent into the US to fuel the startups venture investors fund and potentially cause challenges to how cloud-based or other companies export or sell around the world. It is hard to be too certain as Trump has given himself room for flexibility on almost all areas.
But uncertainty brings challenges for most venture investors so I’m interested in your thoughts and there will be wider discussion at our Global Corporate Venturing and InnovationSummit on 24-25 January in California:
Will corporate and other venture investors do more or less in the US in 2017? Or more or less in rest of world?