It started with a \u201crage tweet.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cGonna start \u2018VCs for Democracy,\u2019\u201d Leslie Feinzaig, founder and general partner at Graham & Walker, wrote on X<\/a> in late July. \u201cWho\u2019s in?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Turns out <\/strong>more than 1,300 \u201ctechies,\u201d including 750 accredited investors, were in as part of a group that came to be known as VCs for Kamala. On Wednesday, that group raised $150,000 to support Vice President Kamala Harris\u2019 path to the presidency during an hour-long Zoom call that reached up to 600 attendees. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n About $100,000 of that came from 97 donors, and another $50,000 came in the form of a match from SV Angel founder and managing partner Ron Conway, who helped kick off the call. The group had already raised about $25,000 from its original push to get VCs to sign its pledge to support Harris, bringing its total fundraising to about $176,000 so far.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The donations surged quickly during the call, which also featured prominent Democratic donor and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman. Over about half an hour, enough donations poured in to unlock the $50,000 threshold for Conway\u2019s match.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n It\u2019s the latest in a trend of political organizing on Zoom<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n It\u2019s the latest in a trend of political organizing on Zoom<\/a>, including one massive call shortly after Harris joined the race that hosted tens of thousands of Black women<\/a>. And later, there was the tongue-in-cheek \u201cWhite Dudes for Harris<\/a>.\u201d Feinzaig noted the VC call would be a \u201csmaller call than that one, even though there\u2019s a high overlap between those two groups.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The call took both a positive and somewhat defiant tone. Several VCs made side-glancing comments toward Andreessen Horowitz \u2014 whether or not by name \u2014 whose founders recently announced their support<\/a> for former President Donald Trump. The group on Wednesday\u2019s call seemed vexed that the views of a few prominent members of their sector had come to be perceived as representative of the venture capital community\u2019s political leanings.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n When Feinzaig sent her \u201crage tweet,\u201d she said she\u2019d been \u201cfeeling frustrated, like many of you, about the growing sentiment that venture capital and all of my colleagues were going MAGA, and I just felt like they didn\u2019t speak for me, and I felt like I wanted my voice to be heard. And more critically, I felt like those loudest voices were not speaking to the hundreds of founders that I talk to on a monthly basis.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In July, Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz posted a blog called \u201cThe Little Tech Agenda<\/a>,\u201d where they identified \u201cbad government policies are now the #1 threat to Little Tech,\u201d which they basically think of as startups. \u201cWe support or oppose politicians regardless of party and regardless of their positions on other issues,\u201d they wrote. Just a couple weeks later, it became clear they would support Trump in the election<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThe firm that put this framework out there would have us believe that folks who are backing Kamala Harris are anti-capitalists,\u201d Stephen DeBerry, founder and managing partner of Bronze Investments, said on the call. \u201cThat doesn\u2019t make any sense. We\u2019re not opposed to profits. We\u2019re not opposed to high growth. That\u2019s what drives us that\u2019s why we\u2019re here. We\u2019re not opposed to billionaires \u2014 there are several of them on this call. What we are opposed to is building a regulatory regime that guts our government and pulls out safeties, so that the system can\u2019t withstand itself and it collapses. And therefore, the wealth in the system is aggregated to only a few and we become an oligopoly society like Russia.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Mac Conwell, managing partner of RareBreed Ventures, questioned the point of \u201cdifferentiating tech.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cWe\u2019re all supposed to be working together and they\u2019re literally trying to say, we don\u2019t want to work with y\u2019all, we want to work over here,\u201d Conwell said. \u201cAnd we don\u2019t want any rules. We want growth for growth\u2019s sake with no guardrails, regulations be damned. And as a VC, yes, regulations suck. Right? They get in the way, they make things harder. But they also make sure that this system doesn\u2019t collapse.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Roy Bahat, a venture capitalist who leads Bloomberg Beta, shared a startup-style pitch deck with the group in support of Harris\u2019 campaign. One slide showed a matrix of the the competition. On the Y-axis was \u201cStable\u201d and \u201cUnstable.\u201d On the X-axis, \u201cPast\u201d and \u201cFuture.\u201d In the \u201cUnstable\u201d and \u201cPast\u201d quadrant, Bahat put an image of former President Donald Trump in a Make America Great Again hat. In the \u201cStable\u201d and \u201cFuture\u201d quadrant? A coconut emoji.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThe competition is funded by Andreessen Horowitz and some other funds, but we all know more capital isn\u2019t necessarily the thing that makes the difference,\u201d Bahat said. \u201cIt\u2019s that plus a plan for execution.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Feinzaig said she\u2019s not a registered Democrat or Republican, and as a naturalized citizen, her \u201cpersonal politics don\u2019t actually match to American politics in any clean way.\u201d But when she looks at an investment, she asks, \u201cwhat does the world look like if this company is massively successful?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cNo matter where you sit on the political spectrum, ask yourself, what does the world look like if these candidates are massively successful?\u201d Feinzaig said. \u201cAnd I think that there\u2019s one vision of that that is exciting. And then there\u2019s one vision about that is that is actually quite terrifying.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n