LOS ANGELES — Being a venture capitalist carries a lot of prestige in Silicon Valley. Those who choose which startups to fund see themselves as fostering the next big waves of technology.
So when some of the industry’s biggest names endorsed former President Donald Trump and the onetime VC he picked for a running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, people took notice.
Then hundreds of other VCs — some high profile, others lesser-known — threw their weight behind Vice President Kamala Harris, drawing battle lines over which presidential candidate will be better for tech innovation and the conditions startups need to thrive. For years, many of Silicon Valley’s political discussions took place behind closed doors. Now, those casual debates have gone public — on podcasts, social media and online manifestos.
Venture capitalist and Harris backer Stephen DeBerry says some of his best friends support Mr. Trump. Though centered in a part of Northern California known for liberal politics, the investors who help finance the tech industry have long been a more politically divided bunch.
“We ski together. Our families are together. We’re super tight,” said Mr. DeBerry, who runs the Bronze Venture Fund. “This is not about not being able to talk to each other. I love these guys — they’re almost all guys. They’re dear friends. We just have a difference of perspective on policy issues.”
It remains to be seen if the more than 700 venture capitalists who’ve voiced support for a movement called “VCs for Kamala” will match the pledges of Trump’s well-heeled supporters such as Elon Musk and Peter Thiel. But the effort marks “the first time I’ve seen a galvanized group of folks from our industry coming together and coalescing around our shared values,” Mr. DeBerry said.
“There are a lot of practical reasons for VCs to support Trump,” including policies that could drive corporate profits and stock market values and favor wealthy benefactors, said David Cowan, an investor at Bessemer Venture Partners. But Cowan said he is supporting Ms. Harris as a VC with a “long-term investment horizon” because a “Trump world reeling from rampant income inequality, raging wars and global warming is not an attractive environment” for funding healthy businesses.
Several prominent VCs have voiced their support for Mr. Trump on Mr. Musk’s social platform X. Public records show some of them have donated to a new, pro-Trump super PAC called America PAC, whose donors include powerful tech industry conservatives with ties to SpaceX and Paypal and who run in Mr. Musk’s social circle. Also driving support is Mr. Trump’s embrace of cryptocurrency and promise to end an enforcement crackdown on the industry.
Although some Biden policies have alienated parts of the investment sector concerned about tax policy, antitrust scrutiny or overregulation, Ms. Harris’ bid for the presidency has reenergized interest from VCs who until recently sat on the sidelines.
“We buy risk, right? And we’re trying to buy the right type of risk,” Leslie Feinzaig, founder of “VCs for Kamala” said in an interview. “It’s really hard for these companies that are trying to build products and scale to do so in an unpredictable institutional environment.”
The schism in tech has left some firms split in their allegiances. Although venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, founders of the firm that is their namesake, endorsed Mr. Trump, one of their firm’s general partners, John O’Farrell, pledged his support for Ms. Harris. Mr. O’Farrell declined further comment.
Doug Leone, the former managing partner of Sequoia Capital, endorsed Mr. Trump in June, expressing concern on X “about the general direction of our country, the state of our broken immigration system, the ballooning deficit, and the foreign policy missteps, among other issues.” But Mr. Leone’s longtime business partner at Sequoia, Michael Moritz, wrote in the Financial Times that tech leaders supporting Trump “are making a big mistake.”
Shaun Maguire, a partner at Sequoia, posted on X that he donated $300,000 to Trump’s campaign after supporting Hilary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election. Federal Election Commission records show that Mr. Maguire donated $500,000 to America PAC in June; Mr. Leone donated $1 million.
“The area where I disagree with Republicans the most is on women’s rights. And I’m sure I’ll disagree with some of Trump’s policies in the future,” Mr. Maguire wrote. “But in general I think he was surprisingly prescient.”
Much of the VC discourse about elections is in response to a July podcast and manifesto in which Mr. Andreessen and Mr. Horowitz backed Mr. Trump and outlined their vision of a “Little Tech Agenda” that they said contrasted with the policies sought by Big Tech.
They accused the U.S. government of increasing hostility toward startups and the VCs who fund them, citing Mr. Biden’s proposed higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations and regulations they said could hobble emerging industries involving blockchain and artificial intelligence.
Mr. Vance, who spent time in San Francisco working at Mr. Thiel’s investment firm, voiced a similar perspective about “little tech” more than a month before he was chosen as Mr. Trump’s running mate.
“The donors who were really involved in Silicon Valley in a pro-Trump way, they’re not big tech, right? They’re little tech. They’re starting innovative companies. They don’t want the government to destroy their ability to innovate,” Mr. Vance said on Fox News in June.
Days earlier, Mr. Vance had joined Mr. Trump at a San Francisco fundraiser at the home of venture capitalist and former PayPal executive David Sacks, a longtime conservative. Mr. Vance said Mr. Trump spoke to about 100 attendees including “some of the leading innovators in AI.”
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