The future of regulation for startups and big businesses rests on the 2024 election, as former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris have vastly different agendas. Tusk Venture Partners co-founder and managing partner Jordan Nof joins Asking for a Trend to discuss the current state of the venture industry and how the election will weigh on it.

Nof points to lack of liquidity as a major theme, explaining, "the lack of exits, whether that's IPOs or M&A transactions, has really kind of locked up the entire the entire ecosystem." He notes that the recent decline in IPOs can be traced back to high interest rates and the perception that there's little demand for new listings in the market. He believes that once interest rates come down, there will be better "investor sentiment and appetite in the market."

As the presidential election nears, Nof says that a new administration will likely bring a new leader to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) "and potentially a different posture that the FTC takes with antitrust specifically." He notes that many investors are worried that Big Tech "just does not want to transact right now," and that fear "really takes a lot of the wind out of the sails in terms of how you can underwrite a deal to an exit." He also explains that investors and early-stage fund managers prefer Trump-era policies compared to Biden's current policies and are most likely to vote with their pocketbooks in this election.

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This post was written by Melanie Riehl