Everyone's a Venture Capital Lobbyist

Vinod Khosla is among the dozens of venture capitalists who signed a letter to Congress opposing legislation that they believe could hurt startups.

Image: TechCrunch

Last month, we wondered which venture capitalists were involved in a lobbying effort against Internet-piracy legislation that the industry believed could hurt social-media startups.

The real question, however, appears to be: "Who didn't lobby?"

A recently released letter (I found it through a Twitter link by Union Square Ventures) shows that a whopping 53 venture capital firms signed a letter to Congress, opposing the Protect IP Act.

Here are just a few of the investors involved in lobbying against the legislation: Marc Andreessen (Andreessen Horowitz), Ron Conway (SV Angel), Reid Hoffman (Greylock Partners), Fred Wilson (Union Square Ventures), and Vinod Khosla (Khosla Ventures).

If anything, the unusual lobbying by an industry that's absolutely not known for its political sway has only grown more heated recently. A slew of big-name tech companies—Yahoo, Zynga, Google, and Twitter among them—also recently signed a letter to Congress arguing against the legislation. (You can access it through this blog post.)

From the companies' letter:

"We support the bills' stated goals—providing additional enforcement tools to combat foreign 'rogue' websites that are dedicated to copyright infringement or counterfeiting. Unfortunately, the bills as drafted would expose law-abiding U.S. Internet and technology companies to new uncertain liabilities, private rights of action, and technology mandates that would require monitoring of websites."

In a recent blog post, Union Square Ventures criticized Congress for choosing to hear just one opposing side of the legislation versus five testimonies in support of it. It's unclear when the issue will be resolved, but it's already made history.

After all, when was the last time the VC industry spent this much time dealing with Washington?