Carried Interest – How it is Treated Matters!

IMHO whether it is Trump or corrupt Hillary, if either candidate as president succeeds to get Congress to overturn the current treatment of carried interest, it will DEFINITELY impact Silicon Valley, tech, hiring, and overall US competitiveness. I had worked successfully in Silicon Valley for 2 decades before I even understood how carrier interest works. But the tax treatment of carried interest matters!

The US is still heads and shoulders above the rest of the world in tech and innovation.

Penalizing those in the ecosystem that take the big risks associated with such success would definitely be counterproductive

Whatever you tax heavily will be discouraged. Chief Justice John Marshall got it right when he famously wrote "the power to tax involves the power to destroy"

Here is the article from Anand Sanwal at CBInsights.com below:

I'm outta here

The topic of carried interest has come up in this year's US presidential election. For those unfamiliar, this description from a recent Bloomberg article (see The Blurb for link to full article) describes the debate.

The venture community is torn on the topic, with some VCs saying the current tax treatment should be changed while others argue that it's correct. But most don't say that the treatment of carried interest would impact their choice of vocation.

Keith Rabois (@rabois) of Khosla Ventures (a great follow on Twitter btw) isn't having it. He has said pretty emphatically that he's out of the VC game if carried interest goes away.

For the other VCs on the newsletter, are you getting out of VC if carried interest goes away?

Yes, I'm out
No. I like the current rule but wouldn't stop
No. And I think carried interest rules should change

Netsoft is a Technology Search firm, co-founded in 1992 by Randal J. Prout and Eric A. Thoreson and serving Silicon Valley from our office in Sunnyvale, California.

Note our track record and the resulting success of our client companies!

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We are a boutique search firm specialized in attracting top talent for positions throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. While we serve Silicon Valley networking and software startup company needs throughout the U.S., we also locate top performers for companies worldwide searching for California-based talent.

The B Word – What Does It Take to Raise a Financing Round at a Billion Dollar Valuation?

"77% of the Billion-dollar Start-ups are Based in California and Primarily in Silicon Valley."

February 7, 2014 (CB Insights) -- On average, unicorns-in-training, take five rounds of financing and over $200M in aggregate financing before hitting the billion dollar valuation threshhold. Among VCs, Sequoia Capital leads the way having invested in 10 companies in the billion-dollar startup club globally.

Raising financing at a billion-dollar plus valuation has gotten a lot more common. With corporations, hedge funds and mutual funds increasingly investing in private tech companies along with VCs, the hunt for unicorns is on in a big way.  As a friendly reminder, most VCs are not very good at identifying unicorns, but that’s a story for another day.

In this analysis, we wanted to look at billion dollar financing valuations and what it takes to get there.

Read more here...

Netsoft is a Technology Search firm, co-founded in 1992 by Randal J. Prout and Eric A. Thoreson and serving Silicon Valley from our office in Sunnyvale, California.

Note our track record and the resulting success of our client companies!

Providing Retained Executive Search and Contingency Search

We are a boutique search firm specialized in attracting top talent for positions throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. While we serve Silicon Valley networking and software startup company needs throughout the U.S., we also locate top performers for companies worldwide searching for California-based talent.