You Can't Separate Government from Venture Capital
peHUB is hosting a cleantech event in Boston later this month, with a focus on helping investors and executives navigate Washington D.C.’s regulatory and financial landscape. We’ve got a great panel but, truth be told, one of the first cleantech VCs I reached out to turned me down flat. His brief email reply was as follows: "Thanks, but no, not my thing, getting money from governments. Others are more expert and better at holding their noses." I didn’t think too much of his response at the time, except that it further confirmed libertarian sentiments that he’s expressed elsewhere. But then I (finally) got around to finishing Josh Lerner’s new book Boulevard of Broken Dreams, which focuses on the historical relationship between government, entrepreneurship and venture capital. One takeaway was that the VC – and others who think like him – are ignorant of the role that government has played in the VC industry’s formation and sustenance.
