For Student Encampments

tl;dr How to demand divestment from unethical VC

Simply include this wording in your divestment demands:

University agrees to adhere to the Institute of Ethical Venture Capital’s “Criteria for Ethical Venture Capital Investment”, located at https://ethics.vc/criteria, complying with all sections.

Or, if you wish to be more specific, you may list out the specific sections you demand compliance with. This can be used to tailor demands for your university’s ethos and stated values:

“Against Manufacturing Consent for Crimes Against Humanity”
“Against Apartheid and Occupation”
“Against war crime and war criminals”
“Against Genocide and it’s Economy”
“Against Weapon Development and Warfare”
“Against Complicity in Crimes Against Humanity”

The issue with Venture Capital

Introduction to Venture Capital

Venture Capital (VC) firms are the major source of funding in the tech sector.

VC invests in high-growth startups. A fund of $200m may invest $1m-2m in 50 startups over a 3 year period, expecting 3-5 of these companies to become a “unicorn” — worth $1B — within a 10 year period, in order to return profits to their investors.

The VC investment model encourages founders to build at pace, providing them with capital deemed too risky for other types of investors. This desire to grow at speed has come at a great cost, with "innovative" business models and investor attitudes that value immediate profit above all else, be it societal value, human rights, or the planet.

Almost every tech company in America raised venture capital. Household names like Google, Facebook, Amazon, SnapChat, Instagram, Spotify, Airbnb, Doordash, Uber, Lyft, Reddit, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, etc, all raised capital from a small group of powerful VC firms, mostly based on a single street in Menlo Park, CA.

Venture Capital and Palestine

VCs have been consistently anti-Palestine since long before Oct 7, including supporting Israel and the Israeli economy, deep connections to the IDF, creating weapons, defense and cybersecurity companies (“battle tested” on Palestinians), manufacturing consent for the genocide in Gaza, and promoting propaganda and false narratives, especially about students and their protests.

VC Firms such as Bessemer and First Round played instrumental roles in cancelling tech leaders speaking out against genocide. Partners Adam Fisher, Amit Karp, and Josh Koppleman colluded with hundreds of other tech leaders to attempt to destroy Paddy Cosgrave for speaking up for human rights, when he said “War crimes are war crimes even when committed by allies”.

Individual VCs such as Matt Ocko, Sam Lessin, and Shaun Maguire have taken significant part in spreading anti-Palestinian propaganda, often operating in lockstep with the Israeli talking points of the day. Many VCs specifically targeted students with their rhetoric, including stoking the unfounded accusations of antisemitism that caused the violent attacks on students by police, state troopers, and angry mobs.

VCs played a significant role in manufacturing consent for the war on Palestinians in Gaza. Venture Capitalists rushed to sign a support letter for Israel on October 9th, citing “Israel’s right to defend itself”, with no mention of the lives of Palestinian civilians, nor the devastating impact of the invasion which they have since whitewashed.

VCs also play a significant part in the suppression of Palestinians through Israel’s tech sector. Israel’s “Startup Nation” is funded by Silicon Valley, and many VCs have offices in Israel. These firms are often building surveillance technologies that are “battle tested” on Palestinians, and that find their way into militarized police forces in the US, which violently oppress students in turn.

Employees of these Israeli startups are also the very soldiers fighting in Gaza, indiscriminatly killing men, women and children, dropping bombs on apartment buildings of civilians, and destroying near every hospital and university in Gaza.

Despite the financial negligence of investing in a war zone, many VCs have continued to invest in Israel long after it was financially prudent. In December, long after the genocide was documented, a Tech Mission to Israel sought to support the struggling economy that was hurt by its own war, including many from Venture Capital.

There is a deep pipeline that takes Israeli soldiers, especially from the notorious “Unit 8200”, makers of the horrific Lavender AI, into tech startups in Israel and the US, as well as into VC. These VCs, as well as a massive group of pro-Israeli sympathizers, have also been part of creating a “time of fear and culture of silence” in tech.

University endowments and Venture Capital

University endowments are frequent investors in VC firms, with some investing as much as 60% of their endowment in “Private Equity” — funds which invest in private companies — a category that includes Venture Capital.

Divestment calls have typically focused on direct investments, such as stocks or bonds, or known assets such as mutual funds. Venture Capital offers indirect investment, with financial statements listing opaque references such as “Sequoia Growth Holdings IV”, grouping investments in many different companies together. These can be difficult to research without significant effort to connect firms and funds to the actions of their leaders and portfolio companies.

VC firms raise new funds every 18-36 months. As such, divesting from unethical VC can be as simple as committing to not invest into new funds from unethical VC firms. Endowments can also commit to refuse “capital calls” — future investments that are already agreed upon — for existing investment commitments. They can also choose to sell their existing ownership in unethical VC for full divestment.

University endowments are some of the largest investors in many VC funds, and so divestment from VC can have an outsized impact. Their divestment from “bad actor” VCs will be an important part of protecting Palestinians from abusive new weapons companies, and students from surveillance and suppression. It will also remove direct suppression of Palestinian and Arab voices in Silicon Valley, and put a dent in future fascist ambitions that the tech industry is funding.

Divestment from unethical Venture Capital

The Institute for Ethical Venture Capital (ethics.vc) researches best practices in ethical Venture Capital, focusing on the unique opportunities for world-changing innovation to be pointed towards ethical investment.

Founded in 2024 by Paul Biggar — founder of Tech for Palestine, and startups CircleCI and Darklang — to help student encampments enforce the values of their universities in Venture Capital, including opposing apartheid, the manufacturing of consent, war crimes, the economy of genocide, and weapons development, while ensuring that VC investments uphold human rights and dignity.

We are currently collecting research about VC leaders, firms, and portfolio companies to allow divestment and stop future investment in unethical Venture Capital.

To enable divestment, we have developed the following language which may be included in student and stakeholder divestment demands:

[Entity] agrees to adhere to the Institute of Ethical Venture Capital’s “Criteria for Ethical Venture Capital Investment”, located at https://ethics.vc/criteria, complying with the sections:
- “Against Manufacturing Consent for Crimes Against Humanity”
- “Against Apartheid and Occupation”
- “Against war crime and war criminals”
- “Against Genocide and it’s Economy”
- “Against Weapon Development and Warfare”
- “Against Complicity in Crimes Against Humanity”

[Entity] agrees to adhere to the Institute of Ethical Venture Capital’s “Criteria for Ethical Venture Capital Investment”, located at https://ethics.vc/criteria, complying with all listed criteria.

Contact us

Students, faculty and administrators should feel free to reach out to learn more.