On October 8, 2023, California’s Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law Senate Bill 54 requiring “venture capital companies” with business ties to California to file annual reports detailing (1) specified demographic data for the founding teams of all portfolio companies invested in during the prior year and (2) the aggregate amounts of investments made by the venture capital company during the prior year and investments in specified categories of portfolio companies.
Demographic data must be obtained through voluntary surveys sent to each founding team member of a portfolio company that receives funding from the venture capital company. The data, in anonymized form, will be publicly available – and searchable and downloadable – on the California Civil Rights Department’s website. The VC Diversity Law is stunning both in its scope and its plain objective to impose State-level requirements that go beyond Federal requirements. And this at a time when the Securities and Exchange Commission has exponentially increased those Federal requirements.
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