Venture capital plays an important role in financing new businesses, emerging technologies, and entrepreneurship in the United States. Investment can help companies develop products, hire workers, conduct research, and bring new ideas to market.

However, the pursuit of rapid growth and high investment returns can also create incentives that conflict with the long-term interests of workers, consumers, entrepreneurs, and communities.

Rather than eliminating venture capital, the United States should ensure that investment practices operate within a transparent, competitive, and accountable financial system.

This petition calls for policymakers and regulators to examine reforms that encourage productive investment while reducing opportunities for exploitation, conflicts of interest, market manipulation, and irresponsible financial practices.

We call for:

1. Greater financial transparency. Require appropriate disclosure of significant conflicts of interest, ownership relationships, fees, and other financial arrangements when necessary to protect investors, companies, or the public.
2. Stronger enforcement of existing laws. Ensure that venture-capital firms and portfolio companies remain subject to applicable antitrust, securities, consumer-protection, employment, and fraud laws.
3. Protection for founders and employees. Encourage clear contractual standards and accessible information so entrepreneurs and workers can better understand how investment agreements may affect ownership, control, compensation, and employment.
4. Greater scrutiny of anticompetitive conduct. Regulators should examine acquisitions, consolidation strategies, and investment arrangements that may substantially reduce competition or unfairly disadvantage smaller businesses.
5. Support for alternative sources of capital. Expand opportunities for entrepreneurs to access community investment, small-business lending, crowdfunding, grants, employee ownership, and other financing models so venture capital is not the only viable path for promising businesses.
6. Better research and public reporting. Federal agencies and independent researchers should continue studying how private investment affects competition, entrepreneurship, employment, innovation, regional economies, and wealth distribution.

The objective should not be to punish successful investors or prevent entrepreneurs from obtaining private financing. Investment that creates sustainable businesses, useful technology, good jobs, and economic opportunity can provide substantial public benefits.

At the same time, access to enormous amounts of private capital should not place investors or the companies they finance beyond meaningful accountability.

The United States should encourage innovation while ensuring that financial markets remain competitive, transparent, and responsive to the broader public interest.

We call on policymakers and financial regulators to pursue practical reforms that promote responsible investment, protect market participants, and expand access to capital for American entrepreneurs and communities.