Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Two billionaires want Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan out, Blake Lively is launching a haircare company, and hundreds of VCs pledge to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris. Have a relaxing weekend!
- VCs for the VP. What started as a tongue-in-cheek post on X has transformed into a Silicon Valley political movement called VCs For Kamala, with more than 600 venture capitalists pledging to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election.
The effort was spearheaded by Leslie Feinzaig, the founder and chief executive officer of the Graham & Walker venture fund. Amid outsized voices like Elon Musk, David Sacks, and Marc Andreessen endorsing Donald Trump in the upcoming presidential election, Feinzaig said she wanted to make clear that those men don’t speak for the entire industry.
On July 23, Feinzaig tweeted, "Gonna start 'VCs for democracy.' Who’s in?" That kernel of an idea soon turned into the real thing. Over the next week or so, she and a group of volunteers—mostly women and women of color, she says—drafted a mission statement and created a logo on Canva. They used their networks to get the likes of Mark Cuban and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman onboard.
Once they secured those big names—as well as dozens of others—Feinzaig officially launched VCs For Kamala on Wednesday. She is a political independent, saying she wants to see a balanced budget and a government that can keep up with tech and innovation. But she supports the current vice president primarily because of what she feels are the existential issues at play in this election: the rights of women and institutional stability chief among them. The other VCs have pledged their support and money, and are also soliciting donations for the Harris campaign.
“We are pro-business, pro-American dream, pro-entrepreneurship, and pro-technological progress,” the VCs for Kamala website reads. “We also believe in democracy as the backbone of our nation. We believe that strong, trustworthy institutions are a feature, not a bug, and that our industry—and every other industry—would collapse without them. That is what’s at stake in this election.”
On the phone from a previously planned trip to Costa Rica, Feinzaig—a Fortune contributor—says she is overwhelmed by the support the campaign has received, "in the best way possible." As of Friday morning, she and the other volunteers have verified over 600 different investors and executives who have signed the pledge. They represent hundreds of billions of dollars in assets under management.
"I started feeling frustrated with the louder voices, and the mud slinging and the narrative that tech and VC are moving directions," she says, referring to the perception that everyone in Silicon Valley is swapping their liberal views for more conservative ones. "I actually don't think that is at all what is happening. If you look at the tech industry, people hold a lot of different views. It’s far more diverse than a headline would make you think."
The faces behind the movement 🙌🏽#vcsforkamala Led by @LeslieFeinzaig + 🔥group of volunteers 💪@rednieves @divyagovil @KateGardiner @imchristiepitts @azoff @katebrodock @naseemsayani @TessaFlippin @tiananaomitukes @Erikals7 @MyDailyPosts Sydney Thomas,Tracy Gray,La Keisha,Mandy pic.twitter.com/ruSrHjDurh
— vcsforkamala (@vcsforkamala) July 31, 2024
To Feinzaig, the conversation about Silicon Valley trending rightward is "a tale of two cities." There are the likes of Musk and Andreessen, who hold a lot of the money and power, and then there are founders just trying to get their companies off the ground, "living in a different reality." This movement, she says, is for the latter.
Feinzaig hasn’t slept much in the past few days. And though support from the tech community has reinvigorated her, she remains "terrified" of the potential career ramifications for speaking up. But her goal is to focus on the next 100 days, she tells me. Over and over, she is hearing from supporters all over the political spectrum that they support Harris because "this election, it’s country over party." That makes all of her efforts worth it.
"I want our industry to thrive," she says. "And in this election in particular, there are bigger issues at play."
Alicia Adamczyk
alicia.adamczyk@fortune.com
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