National Venture Capital Association

When I go back to when I started in the industry 2006, 20 years ago, 2006, there were about 500 firms, active firms.

per like PitchBook and NVCA data ballpark.

So that's a 8X-ish increase in the number of firms between now and then, right? Not only has that gone up, the number of firms, the amount of capital going into venture-backed companies has gone up.

You know, we're looking at, I think NVCA says as of third quarter, we're at 500 billion plus, which is a mind-numbing number to think about.

the number of startups has gone up.

And it's now, I believe, at like 40,000 companies or whatever, venture-backed startups, which is an 8 to 10x increase from 15, 20 years ago.

Absolutely.

The thing is, there's a set of documents that were created by the National Venture Capital Association to try to standardize this as much as possible.

And so what you're seeing is those documents put into a workflow for the most part.

So it's not anything that's out of left field.

For listeners who may not be familiar with Incubate, let's start there.

What gaps made an organization like Incubate necessary, and how does it distinguish itself from groups such as Bio, Pharma, and the National Venture Capital Association?

It's a great question.

And thanks again for having this conversation.

And that's where you're looking to grow as well.

Yeah, we are looking to grow in different jurisdictions where we have clients as well as add more of these jurisdiction specific nuances, you know, so we can benchmark to like NVCA in the US.

A lot of our funds are in the UK, but fortunately or unfortunately, their portfolio companies have become Delaware C Corps and they're raising in the US.

So we help with those reviews and we can tell you how they benchmark with the NVCA rules there.

So we are trying to be very nuanced, focused in the space.

Amazing.

You do.

Um, so the, the venture capital industry, the NVCA, the National Venture Capital Association itself lobbies on behalf of not just the venture community, but its most important thing to lobby on behalf of are its companies, its portfolio companies.

So we go-

That's two minutes for holding, but you're holding two times the chicken with BOGO box meals from KFC.

Catch me up.

technically ran the numbers from PitchBook and the National Venture Capital Association published yesterday.

For anyone who doesn't live in spreadsheets like I do, that's basically the industry's official scoreboard for who raised what every quarter nationwide.

Translation accepted.

That is the market side of the equation.

The National Venture Capital Association already has terms for AI-related risk, and enterprise customers like large hospital networks are starting to demand AI management standards, such as the ISO 42001 standard.

So ultimately, the legal ecosystem is going to be shaped by this dynamic tension between the government demanding transparency, the insurance companies pricing the risk, and the customers demanding compliance with external standards.

Which makes these definitions so incredibly important.

But first of all, Seattle bucked the national trend in terms of overall startup funding.

It was a record quarter, according to PitchBook and NVCA, the National Venture Capital Association, $3.5 billion raised in Q3, more than triple from a year ago, and the most in any quarter going back at least a decade.

And the fascinating thing underneath the trend was that most of it went to a few companies that are building physical things, including $1.6 billion to three space companies, Stoke, StarCloud, and Hubble Network.

Now, at the same time, across the country, you didn't have these huge funding rounds for OpenAI and Anthropic propping up the numbers anymore.

Yeah.

I mean, through TechNYC and my role on the National Venture Capital Association board, I've learned a lot, uh, in a short amount of time about political leaders.

Yeah.

And I have a lot of empathy, honestly.