I’ve made this structural argument for over three years on this blog and in public speeches.  Again, I urge readers to make their voices heard on this topic.  On November 24, 2008 I wrote A Case Study in the Unintended Consequences of Financial Regulation:  The Death of the U.S. Small Cap IPO? and invited anyone with constructive, practical ideas on how to revitalize IPO’s in the United States to contact me so that I could pass along their ideas to my colleagues at the National Venture Capital Association. In this post, I made a strong argument that structural market issues were the root cause of the death of the small capitalization IPO:

The lack of IPO’s in the U.S. has broad, negative implications for continued risk taking by U.S. venture capitalists. If we have no public market liquidity for emerging growth companies, there will be no next generation of American technology giants. The demise of the technology IPO has also contributed to the structural breakdown in the broader cycle of research and development that underlies the American innovation crisis…

This post followed my exposition of the argument that America would face an overall crisis in innovation, drawing on work by Judy Estrin and others, in September 2008: The Innovation Crisis Is Coming- Let’s Do Something About it Now!

Sadly, the veracity of these arguments is being proven over and over again, as the venture capital industry continues to shrink and the fallacy of an American jobless recovery becomes apparent.  Pointing to the success of several handfuls of social media companies as an index for the general health of innovation in the U.S. in 2011 is not statistically meaningful and irrelevant to the thousands of startups that are finding it impossible to reach the much greater critical mass necessary to access the public equity capital markets today.  To be clear, publicly traded household names that would not be able to go public today based on current IPO requirements include Dell, Intel, EMC, Yahoo!, Intuit, EA Sports, and many others.

In an article published on October 6, 2011 in Traders Magazine.Com, conference remarks by several leading international stock exchange professionals show that they are coming around to understanding the downside to small companies of a trading market infrastructure that treats unknown emerging public companies the same way as multi-billion dollar liquid securities:

“Though trading costs have gone down, that isn’t necessarily a good thing, according to Steve Wunsch, head of corporate initiatives at the ISE Stock Exchange. He said low trading costs have made it difficult for anyone to make money trading smaller names, thus drying up markets for smaller companies.”

…

Joseph Hall, a partner with the law firm of Davis Polk & Wardell, said the government could have caused part of the problem by repealing the Glass-Steagall Act’s separation of investment banks and commercial banks. That allowed a lot of small brokers to be bought up by big banks, reducing niche trading, he said.

Grant Thornton’s [David] Weild placed more of the blame on Reg NMS, which he said homogenized the markets to the detriment of new issuers. He said a one-size-fits-all market structure does not support smaller, newer companies.

The good news, Weild said, is that Washington seems to be paying attention. …

In my view, the bad news is that it’s taken three years since the global financial crisis erupted for us to get an increasing number of influential people to pay attention.  Meanwhile, millions of jobs have been lost, and innovation in America continues to suffer.

Venture Capital started in China in 1985, when the first government-sponsored venture capital firm was established. The industry built slowly until a few years into the new century. In 2006, China’s total venture capital investment reached $1.78 B, becoming number two globally, next to the US; the US venture capital investment was $25.6B that year, accounting for 67.9% of the world total ($37.7b).  While China was far behind, accounting for about 4.7% of the total, nevertheless, China became number two and has kept that status ever since.

Venture Capital is a popular buzzword in China. Renmin University was among the first universities to create a venture capital major in the School of Finance and teach venture capital for undergraduates.  In recent years, many universities have followed, teaching venture capital as an elective course. In October 2010, our new textbook will become available.

Mannie and I share a strong interest in research in the field of venture capital and private equity. Mannie was working for Professor Josh Lerner at Harvard Business School before she returned to China to teach these subjects. The backbone for my contribution to our effort is the best practices work “for practitioners by practitioners” that I have developed in the area of venture capital through the multiple articles and three white papers that I’ve written.

Mannie was invited by a publisher in Beijing to write a textbook for undergraduate students in China; she in turn invited me to join her as the book’s co-author. Writing the book was a very intensive task, and both of us have worked on it for many months, with Mannie and her team translating my work and both of us discussing the context of the content for the Chinese audience.

Venture Capital: Theory and Practice, is in Chinese and is categorized as one of  “China’s National College Major Investment Textbook Series for the ‘Twelfth Five-Year Plan.’” The book has three parts and a total of 12 chapters. The Theory includes chapters on the venture capital concept, entrepreneurship, and a simple history; The Practice covers fundraising, business plan construction and analysis, investment due diligence, post investment monitoring and exit; and The Future emphasizes early stage investment, especially angel investment, as well as Cleantech VCs and socially responsible investment.  In the last chapter, Venture Capital in China, we explore the amazing development of China’s unique venture capital industry.

This textbook combines the strength of my Silicon Valley experiences as a venture capitalist and Mannie’s research as a professor, and it will help strengthen Chinese college-education programs in this particular field.  The book draws on and acknowledges important contributions from the members of the Working Group on Director Accountability and other experts in the field of venture capital.  I’ve donated all of my royalties from the book to the Society of Kauffman Fellows, which reported on the publication of this book in their July report.

Susan Mangiero, CEO of Investment Governance’s Fiduciary X, asked me the following:

Question: I’ve read that some GPs are suing LPs for not making capital calls. The LPs claim that they are cash constrained and/or the VC fund has not performed. Why throw more money their way? Do you see a trend here of broken contracts?

Answer: First, it would appear that the reports of numerous LP  defaults exceed the reality. Based upon discussions with industry  participants, most institutional LPs have, in fact, met their  obligations to make capital calls. Second,  the decision of a GP to sue an LP over a default is most often the absolute  last resort. The GPs are not in business to institute litigation — this a  distraction for the GP and added publicity that neither GPs nor LPs desire.  When the LP Agreement is executed, all of the parties enter into a contract  with the expectation that both LPs and GPs will honor their respective  commitments. The GPs have committed their time, and have built an organization  to implement an investment strategy and program for the fund. They should be  entitled to rely on the contractual obligations of those sophisticated  investors who agreed to support this program over the long  term.

Susan Mangiero, CEO of Investment Governance’s Fiduciary X, asked me the following:

Question: You had some thoughts about contract terms. Do you think the trend is shifting in favor of institutional LPs to receive better terms?

Answer: Certainly as the sources of capital have become more  selective and scarce, the GPs have had to become more aware of LP concerns over terms. While  the GPs in top tier funds will still be able to maintain favorable terms (and  LPs will always want to get into their funds), even these GPs have made some  concessions to maintain a supportive investor base. For example, recent press  reports have indicated that at least two prominent funds had lowered their  ”premium” carry structures, and made the payment of a 30% carry rate subject  to the return of a multiple of the investors’ capital. For those other funds  that are not oversubscribed, there will undoubtedly be some pressure on  terms. Though there has been a lot of talk about the terms suggested in the  recent guidelines published by the ILPA, these guidelines have not fully  caught hold (and some proposed terms –like joint and several liability  on clawbacks — may be seen as too extreme). Still, in the current fundraising  environment, there will certainly be some movement to provide an  alignment of interests between LPs and GPs, while trying to maintain the  appropriate incentives for the GPs.

Susan Mangiero, CEO of Investment Governance’s Fiduciary X, asked me the following:

Question: Please differentiate between the governance of a VC fund versus the governance of companies in a VC fund’s portfolio? Is one more important than the other?

Answer: This is a very important question, and it starts with recognizing that VC funds, as partnerships, are governed very differently from portfolio companies, which are corporations.  The VC fund may have one managing partner that sets the tone and controls the entire firm, or it may have a collegial distribution of governance among several senior partners.  The best way to understand how a VC fund is governed begins with an analysis of the fund’s investment committee, its deal due diligence process, and the specific allocation of the fund’s investment capital among the individual partners.  An important question to ask is, do the partners evaluate themselves and each other on an annual basis or at all? You might be surprised to learn that many VC funds lack an internal feedback loop, that the partners may not communicate openly among each other, and that the partners themselves may lack a formal measure of accountability among each other, even though the economics are divided formally in the management company agreement.

Turning to portfolio companies, the board of directors is responsible for the governance of the company, and here we have a very interesting dynamic which often leads to board dysfunction—the VC directors have inherent conflicts of interest as representatives of their funds and as fiduciaries who must act in the best interests of all of the shareholders.  In addition there is a major tension and conflict between the management team and the VC directors—the management wants more share ownership, and the common equity is at the bottom of the seniority stack behind the various series of preferred equity rounds.  The VCs want capital efficiency, which means they want management to do more with less.  Compounding the complexity is the fact that most VC-backed companies replace their CEOs twice between the founding and the liquidity event.  So you can imagine that the VC boardroom governance equation is very complex and rife with opportunities for problems.

Susan Mangiero, CEO of Investment Governance’s Fiduciary X, asked me the following:

Question: Are there ways to mitigate the team risk when in fact VC funds often back a particular team or particular CEO?

Answer: When we back serial entrepreneurs, it is critical to assess where they are today in their lifetime achievement and performance potential curve.  By that, I am reminded of the fundamental risk in looking at track records—“past performance is not indicative of future returns.”  It amazes me how many investors chase performance and don’t pay attention to the current team composition at the VC manager, to the current dynamics of the partnership.  Ideally you want to back a proven winner who is still hungry enough to deserve a seat at the table.  Venture capital is totally a hits- driven business, but there are very few hitters, either VCs or entrepreneurs– who are able to hit multiple home runs.  When you look at VC’s, you want to find VC’s who are magnets for great entrepreneurs, whether they are first timers or veterans, and rely on the VCs’ pattern recognition ability to make that judgment call in picking a winner.  One way to mitigate risk is to assess how deep the team is in the VC organization—remember that you are making a 10 year bet on a team, and few teams stay together through an entire cycle.

Susan Mangiero, CEO of Investment Governance’s Fiduciary X, asked me the following:

Question: Given recent instances of VC-backed company fraud and questions about the management team, how can institutional investors protect themselves from key person risk?

Answer: You are asking a fundamental question here about trust, which relates to your prior question.  I could restate your question by saying, how do I know that I’ve backed someone as a GP who is trustworthy?  The answer is, you have to do your homework on that person, which means that you have to make a full range of reference calls to people who are not on the person’s reference list.  This takes resources and time.  If you are not equipped with the resources to do the work, then you need to rely on someone else’s process—but again that has to be an independent third party whose due diligence credentials are also trustworthy.

Let me turn the table on you a little bit because I sit in your shoes all the time– as a venture capitalist who bets on entrepreneurs, my greatest challenge is to sit across the table from a very enthusiastic person and judge their credibility—will they actually do what they say they are going to do?  Will they work 24/7 to get the job done?  How will they behave when unforeseen challenges occur—which they always do?  Institutional investors have to do the same thing because they are betting on people, and they need to establish a considerable measure of trust if they are going to sign on to a 10 year commitment to invest in illiquid assets.  This is the toughest part of our jobs—as I look back over my the 14 years I have spent in venture capital as part of my 29 year finance career, the biggest mistakes I have made have always been related to key person risk, as opposed to picking the “wrong” technology.

• Best Security SME
• Most Promising Security Start-up
• Most Promising Security Idea

Top contenders from previous Global Security Challenge competitions have subsequently raised over $55 million in new capital.  The current open competition is for the “Most Promising Security Idea”:

The GSC committee recognizes that there are many potentially disruptive innovations that have yet to reach commercialization. Through the Most Promising Security Idea category, the GSC encourages innovators to continue to pursue their ideas and efforts. The award is designed to support and promote researchers, infant companies (with no revenue), and any other inventors who just have an idea for a security solution.

The winners of this category will receive:

• $10,000 cash grant, sponsored by Accenture.
• Mentorship from Mark Shaheen, managing director of Civitas Group.
• Unparalleled networking opportunity with government officials and industry leaders.
• Invaluable publicity.
• Examples of our areas of interest are (but are not limited to): biometrics, detection sensors, cyber security, video surveillance, RFID, personnel protection, encryption software, data-mining, biotechnologies, and explosive trace detection. Who can Apply?: Eligible entrants must be a company, or one or more individuals, whose idea did not generate revenue in 2008.Deadline for Submissions: September 1, 2009 at 11.59 GMT.

For more information on the GSC CLICK HERE.  I am proud to be involved with this competition as it represents the type of innovation challenge that drives entrepreneurs to develop breakthrough ideas into real companies.

Below I quote from reports by the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post:

From the WSJ’s Siobhan Gordon on Melissa Hathaway, reported on August 4, 2009:

The White House’s acting cybersecurity czar announced her resignation Monday, in a setback to the Obama administration’s    efforts to better protect the computer networks critical to national security and the global economy. The resignation of Melissa Hathaway, Barack Obama’s choice to monitor the nation’s online security, is a blow for the administration, which had made the position a priority. The resignation highlights the difficulty the White House has had following through on its cybersecurity effort.  In February, the White House tapped Ms. Hathaway, a senior intelligence official who had launched President George W. Bush’s cybersecurity initiative, to lead a 60-day cybersecurity policy review. Ms. Hathaway completed her review in April, but the White House spent another 60 days debating the wording of her report and how to structure the White House cyber post.  National Economic Adviser Larry Summers argued forcefully that his team should have a say in the work of the new cyber official.  The result was a cybersecurity official who would report both to the National Security Council and the National Economic Council. Supporters said that arrangement would cement cybersecurity as a critical security and economic issue; detractors said it would require the new official to please too many masters and would accomplish little.  “It’s almost like the system has become paralyzed,” said Tom Kellermann, a former World Bank cybersecurity official who served on a commission whose work influenced the White House’s cyber planning.

From the Washington Post’s Ellen Nakashima, reported on August 8, 2009:

Mischel Kwon, the director of the Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team, submitted her resignation letter this week. … Kwon, who is the fourth US-CERT director in five years, was frustrated by bureaucratic obstacles and a lack of authority to fulfill her mission, according to colleagues who spoke on the condition of anonymity.  In March, another Homeland Security cybersecurity official, Rod Beckstrom, resigned, citing a lack of support inside the agency and what he described as a power grab by the National Security Agency.  The resignations, although unrelated, point to a larger inability of the federal government to hire, retain and effectively utilize qualified personnel, experts said.

[Note: Beckstrom has recently become the CEO of ICANN]

While these resignations do send a message, we must be equally concerned about positions that get less daily press but are equally critical because they deal with the details of policy implementation.   In my view, the fact that we are now seeing departures from people who are in critical execution positions raises a red flag, particularly because it appears that organizational dysfunction and lack of coordinated leadership are at the root of these departures.  From government’s perspective, the cybersecurity problem is difficult to address effectively because it is widespread, new, and amorphous relative to other types of criminal activity (for example, a bank robbery by an armed gunman).  It also crosses many disciplines and therefore touches multiple competing government bureaucracies.

Our nation’s policy leaders need support from empowered lieutenants to execute on policy. As a nation, we cannot afford to take our collective eye off the ball as we address the challenges faced by the U.S. economy, the U.S. capital markets, and America’s cybersecurity.  President Obama’s ambitious agenda will stand or fall on the ability of people to implement the Vision.  While critics are quick to seize upon the Administration’s mis-steps, whether you support the Administration or not, we should all be very concerned when we see highly respected domain experts voting with their feet.

The vast scope of the cybersecurity challenge and the urgency with which we must address it present us with opportunities to contribute at many levels. Let’s not stand down but rather rise up to meet this challenge head on, even if we must do so incrementally.

At the end of the panel I asked each of the panelists, Bob Ackerman of Allegis Capital, Professor Randy Katz of Berkeley, and Dave Robbins of BigFix, to answer the following question:

“In closing, I would like each of our panelists to comment on the most
important change that they would like to see implemented in order to
promote the protection of our nation’s critical infrastructure.”

Bob Ackerman’s answer follows:

“The solution to the critical needs of our country  – whether it is in reinventing our economy or the innovation that is essential to protecting our nation’s critical infrastructure – will depend on the creativity and drive of entrepreneurs. At precisely the same time that political leaders are calling for expanded innovation to meet our national needs, there appears to be an almost all out assault on entrepreneurship in America – by deed if not by word.  Capital and talent are the two most valued and at the same time portable assets in the global economy.  For more than three decades, the United States was the destination for the best and brightest minds from around the world.  In the US, brilliant entrepreneurial risk takers found the resources they required to implement their dreams and an environment that rewarded those that took the risks associated with innovation – and succeeded.  Today, we are making it increasingly difficult for the best and brightest to come the US and stay to contribute to our economy. For those that are here, we are increasing the regulatory hurdles associated with building successful businesses while increasing the taxes associated investments make in long term innovation.  Stock options – once the great wealth builder for employees in start-up companies – have had much of their value striped by regulatory changes.  When combined with the current political overtones that suggest people who have achieved wealth must have somehow “cheated”  – we have created an environment where the risk/reward associated with high risk entrepreneurial innovation is seriously out of balance.  At precisely the same time where we are more dependent than ever on an innovation-driven economy and our competitors have borrowed our historical playbook – we are effectively erecting barriers to innovation in America.”

How should we respond?  We need to attract and retain the talent and capital necessary to fuel the engine of innovation.  We need to attract capital and encourage focused, systematic innovation through modifications in our tax code.  Lower tax rates for long term innovation is an excellent place to start.  We need to rethink our approach to regulation with a more constructive understanding of the levels of risk associated with (and appropriate regulation) companies as they grow and prosper.  A successful start-up company and a multi-billion dollar global player should not be subjected to the same level of regulatory oversight – in most cases. Further, our immigration policies need to focus on encouraging the world’s best and brightest to come to the United States, benefit from our educational system and remain here to contribute to our economy.  Today, our policy in this area can almost be described as “Here’s your PhD. – now go home!”.  Rest assured – the capital will follow the talent.

In parallel with the above, we need to take concrete steps to encourage companies to grow in the U.S.  This is a combination of the steps I have previously mentioned while making it easier for young companies to go public – tapping the capital they need to continue growing and adding high paying jobs to our economy.  Regulatory reform can address some of these issues but the venture industry also needs to take responsibility for re-invigorating the investment banking environment upon which a vibrant IPO market is dependent. This is an area where experience will matter.  For example, venture professionals who have lived successfully through these challenges in the past – have an invaluable historical perspective that can contribute to this revitalization.  Unfortunately, many have left or are leaving the industry.  Why – it’s become harder and harder to be successful while the rewards are being diminished.  They either retire – or they follow the entrepreneurs who are voting with their feet and talent and moving to greener pastures – in other countries.