Venture and Politics

I came across PEHUB today which is a pretty cool site focused on private equity. It seems like this had some kind of bigger launch at the beginning of September since tons of people are already pointing to it via their blogs. Well, whoops, missed that launch! Anyway it's a good read and I'm curious to see where they go with it.

One of the first things which caught my eye was the story on VenturePAC....pretty much the venture lobby group in D.C. which is part of the NVCA.

They linked to a site where you could see how VenturePAC's money was being spent. Then they went on to link to a list of the VC's who'd contributed to VenturePAC. This started me thinking. Does the EVCA do this in Europe? If so, whom are they contributing to? What value does it bring? I mean in the US you hear about John Doerr constantly mixing it up with politicians and Sequoia even has politicians holding shin-digs at their offices. I haven't heard much about any politicians hanging out at the offices of VC's in Munich or London. Are we missing an opportunity? Are we just different when it comes to lobbies and politics and the breadth of our networks and hence their reach? Hmmm.......

Something I'll chew on some more and let you know what I come up with!!!