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Tech companies and their venture capital backers, angered by a bipartisan push for Internet anti-piracy legislation known as SOPA, are key beneficiaries of the JOBS Act — a fact not lost on Democratic leaders. Rapid-fire public stock offerings and free-wheeling funding are the lifeblood of the Silicon Valley landscape, and the JOBS Act promises to make it easier for financiers and their clients in the technology industry to raise money for their companies’ operations.
“What happened coming out of the SOPA fight is, people in Washington and Congress really sat up and took notice and said, ‘There is actually work to be done here. This is not just kids in T-shirts running around Palo Alto on skateboards. This really is a community looking to create the next wave of businesses that will jumpstart the American economy,’” says Michael McGeary, a strategist with the venture capital firm Hattery, based in San Francisco. “And Congress is very opportunistic this way. They saw there was this community that was very engaged … And we would like to say thank you to them.”
The JOBS Act, say McGreary and other venture capitalists who work regularly with Silicon Valley, goes a long way toward sweetening the bitterness brewed by the SOPA scuffle.
But in deciding to back the JOBS Act, Democrats were forced to choose between two allies — labor and the tech industry. Democrats stuck with Silicon Valley, secure in the belief that union loyalty isn’t going anywhere. It’s yet another political battle pitting nominal allies against one another because large sums of money are at stake.
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