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Venture capital

Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in terms of number of employees, annual revenue, scale of operations, etc. Venture capital firms or funds invest in these early-stage companies in exchange for equity, or an ownership stake. Venture capitalists take on the risk of financing start-ups in the hopes that some of the companies they support will become successful. Because startups face high uncertainty, VC investments have high rates of failure. Start-ups are usually based on an innovative technology or business model and they are often from high technology industries, such as information technology (IT), clean technology or biotechnology.

Pre-seed and seed rounds are the initial stages of funding for a startup company, typically occurring early in its development. During a seed round, entrepreneurs seek investment from angel investors, venture capital firms, or other sources to finance the initial operations and development of their business idea. Seed funding is often used to validate the concept, build a prototype, or conduct market research. This initial capital injection is crucial for startups to kickstart their journey and attract further investment in subsequent funding rounds.

Typical venture capital investments occur after an initial "seed funding" round. The first round of institutional venture capital to fund growth is called the Series A round. Venture capitalists provide this financing in the interest of generating a return through an eventual "exit" event, such as the company selling shares to the public for the first time in an initial public offering (IPO), or disposal of shares happening via a merger, via a sale to another entity such as a financial buyer in the private equity secondary market or via a sale to a trading company such as a competitor.

In addition to angel investing, equity crowdfunding and other seed funding options, venture capital is attractive for new companies with limited operating history that are too small to raise capital in the public markets and have not reached the point where they are able to secure a bank loan or complete a debt offering. In exchange for the high risk that venture capitalists assume by investing in smaller and early-stage companies, venture capitalists usually get significant control over company decisions, in addition to a significant portion of the companies' ownership (and consequently value). Companies such as Stripe, Airtable, and Brex are highly valued startups, commonly known as Unicorns (when a company has reached a market valuation of over $1 billion). Venture capitalists also often provide strategic advice to the company's executives on its business model and marketing strategies.

Venture capital is also a way in which the private and public sectors can construct an institution that systematically creates business networks for the new firms and industries so that they can progress and develop. This institution helps identify promising new firms and provide them with finance, technical expertise, mentoring, talent acquisition, strategic partnership, marketing "know-how", and business models. Once integrated into the business network, these firms are more likely to succeed, as they become "nodes" in the search networks for designing and building products in their domain. However, venture capitalists' decisions are often biased, exhibiting for instance overconfidence and illusion of control, much like entrepreneurial decisions in general.

Origins of modern venture capital
Before World War II (1939–1945) venture capital was primarily the domain of wealthy individuals and families. J.P. Morgan, the Wallenbergs, the Vanderbilts, the Whitneys, the Rockefellers, and the Warburgs were notable investors in private companies. In 1938, Laurance S. Rockefeller helped finance the creation of both Eastern Air Lines and Douglas Aircraft, and the Rockefeller family had vast holdings in a variety of companies. Eric M. Warburg founded E.M. Warburg & Co. in 1938, which would ultimately become Warburg Pincus, with investments in both leveraged buyouts and venture capital. The Wallenberg family started Investor AB in 1916 in Sweden and were early investors in several Swedish companies such as ABB, Atlas Copco, and Ericsson in the first half of the 20th century.

Only after 1945 did "true" venture capital investment firms begin to emerge, notably with the founding of American Research and Development Corporation (ARDC) and J.H. Whitney & Company in 1946.

Georges Doriot, the "father of venture capitalism", along with Ralph Flanders and Karl Compton (former president of MIT) founded ARDC in 1946 to encourage private-sector investment in businesses run by soldiers returning from World War II. ARDC became the first institutional private-equity investment firm to raise capital from sources other than wealthy families. Unlike most present-day venture capital firms, ARDC was a publicly traded company. ARDC's most successful investment was its 1957 funding of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), which would later be valued at more than $355 million after its initial public offering in 1968. This represented a return of over 1200 times its investment and an annualized rate of return of 101% to ARDC.

Former employees of ARDC went on to establish several prominent venture capital firms including Greylock Partners, founded in 1965 by Charlie Waite and Bill Elfers; Morgan, Holland Ventures, the predecessor of Flagship Ventures, founded in 1982 by James Morgan; Fidelity Ventures, now Volition Capital, founded in 1969 by Henry Hoagland; and Charles River Ventures, founded in 1970 by Richard Burnes. ARDC continued investing until 1971, when Doriot retired. In 1972 Doriot merged ARDC with Textron after having invested in over 150 companies.

John Hay Whitney (1904–1982) and his partner Benno Schmidt (1913–1999) founded J.H. Whitney & Company in 1946. Whitney had been investing since the 1930s, founding Pioneer Pictures in 1933 and acquiring a 15% interest in Technicolor Corporation with his cousin Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney. Florida Foods Corporation proved Whitney's most famous investment. The company developed an innovative method for delivering nutrition to American soldiers, later known as Minute Maid orange juice and was sold to The Coca-Cola Company in 1960. J.H. Whitney & Company continued to make investments in leveraged buyout transactions and raised $750 million for its sixth institutional private-equity fund in 2005.

Early venture capital and the beginning of Silicon Valley
One of the first steps toward a professionally managed venture capital industry was the passage of the Small Business Investment Act of 1958. The 1958 Act officially allowed the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) to license private "Small Business Investment Companies" (SBICs) to help the financing and management of the small entrepreneurial businesses in the United States. The Small Business Investment Act of 1958 provided tax breaks that helped contribute to the rise of private-equity firms.

During the 1950s, putting a venture capital deal together may have required the help of two or three other organizations to complete the transaction. It was a business that was growing very rapidly, and as the business grew, the transactions grew exponentially. Arthur Rock, one of the pioneers of Silicon Valley during his venturing the Fairchild Semiconductor is often credited with the introduction of the term "venture capitalist" that has since become widely accepted.

During the 1960s and 1970s, venture capital firms focused their investment activity primarily on starting and expanding companies. More often than not, these companies were exploiting breakthroughs in electronic, medical, or data-processing technology. As a result, venture capital came to be almost synonymous with financing of technology ventures. An early West Coast venture capital company was Draper and Johnson Investment Company, formed in 1962 by William Henry Draper III and Franklin P. Johnson, Jr. In 1965, Sutter Hill Ventures acquired the portfolio of Draper and Johnson as a founding action. Bill Draper and Paul Wythes were the founders, and Pitch Johnson formed Asset Management Company at that time.

It was also in the 1960s that the common form of private-equity fund, still in use today, emerged. Private-equity firms organized limited partnerships to hold investments in which the investment professionals served as general partner and the investors, who were passive limited partners, put up the capital. The compensation structure, still in use today, also emerged with limited partners paying an annual management fee of 1.0–2.5% and a carried interest typically representing up to 20% of the profits of the partnership.

The growth of the venture capital industry was fueled by the emergence of the independent investment firms on Sand Hill Road, beginning with Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital in 1972. Located in Menlo Park, California, Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia and later venture capital firms would have access to the many semiconductor companies based in the Santa Clara Valley as well as early computer firms using their devices and programming and service companies. Kleiner Perkins was the first venture capital firm to open an office on Sand Hill Road in 1972.

Throughout the 1970s, a group of private-equity firms, focused primarily on venture capital investments, would be founded that would become the model for later leveraged buyout and venture capital investment firms. In 1973, with the number of new venture capital firms increasing, leading venture capitalists formed the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA). The NVCA was to serve as the industry trade group for the venture capital industry. Venture capital firms suffered a temporary downturn in 1974, when the stock market crashed and investors were naturally wary of this new kind of investment fund.

It was not until 1978 that venture capital experienced its first major fundraising year, as the industry raised approximately $750 million. With the passage of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) in 1974, corporate pension funds were prohibited from holding certain risky investments including many investments in privately held companies. In 1978, the US Labor Department relaxed certain restrictions of the ERISA, under the "prudent man rule", thus allowing corporate pension funds to invest in the asset class and providing a major source of capital available to venture capitalists.

1980s and VC involvement in large American companies
The public successes of the venture capital industry in the 1970s and early 1980s (e.g., Digital Equipment Corporation, Apple Inc., Genentech) gave rise to a major proliferation of venture capital investment firms. From just a few dozen firms at the start of the decade, there were over 650 firms by the end of the 1980s, each searching for the next major "home run". The number of firms multiplied, and the capital managed by these firms increased from $3 billion to $31 billion over the course of the decade.

The growth of the industry was hampered by sharply declining returns, and certain venture firms began posting losses for the first time. In addition to the increased competition among firms, several other factors affected returns. The market for initial public offerings cooled in the mid-1980s before collapsing after the stock market crash in 1987, and foreign corporations, particularly from Japan and Korea, flooded early-stage companies with capital.

In response to the changing conditions, corporations that had sponsored in-house venture investment arms, including General Electric and Paine Webber either sold off or closed these venture capital units. Additionally, venture capital units within Chemical Bank and Continental Illinois National Bank, among others, began shifting their focus from funding early stage companies toward investments in more mature companies. Even industry founders J.H. Whitney & Company and Warburg Pincus began to transition toward leveraged buyouts and growth capital investments.

Venture capital boom and the Internet Bubble
By the end of the 1980s, venture capital returns were relatively low, particularly in comparison with their emerging leveraged buyout cousins, due in part to the competition for hot startups, excess supply of IPOs and the inexperience of many venture capital fund managers. Growth in the venture capital industry remained limited throughout the 1980s and the first half of the 1990s, increasing from $3 billion in 1983 to just over $4 billion more than a decade later in 1994.

The advent of the World Wide Web in the early 1990s reinvigorated venture capital as investors saw companies with huge potential being formed. Netscape and Amazon (company) were founded in 1994, and Yahoo! in 1995. All were funded by venture capital. Internet IPOs—AOL in 1992; Netcom in 1994; UUNet, Spyglass and Netscape in 1995; Lycos, Excite, Yahoo!, CompuServe, Infoseek, C/NET, and E*Trade in 1996; and Amazon, ONSALE, Go2Net, N2K, NextLink, and SportsLine in 1997—generated enormous returns for their venture capital investors. These returns, and the performance of the companies post-IPO, caused a rush of money into venture capital, increasing the number of venture capital funds raised from about 40 in 1991 to more than 400 in 2000, and the amount of money committed to the sector from $1.5 billion in 1991 to more than $90 billion in 2000.

The bursting of the dot-com bubble in 2000 caused many venture capital firms to fail and financial results in the sector to decline.

2001 Private equity crash
The Nasdaq crash and technology slump that started in March 2000 shook virtually the entire venture capital industry as valuations for startup technology companies collapsed. Over the next two years, many venture firms had been forced to write-off large proportions of their investments, and many funds were significantly "under water" (the values of the fund's investments were below the amount of capital invested). Venture capital investors sought to reduce the size of commitments they had made to venture capital funds, and, in numerous instances, investors sought to unload existing commitments for cents on the dollar in the secondary market. By mid-2003, the venture capital industry had shriveled to about half its 2001 capacity. Nevertheless, PricewaterhouseCoopers' MoneyTree Survey shows that total venture capital investments held steady at 2003 levels through the second quarter of 2005.

Although the post-boom years represent just a small fraction of the peak levels of venture investment reached in 2000, they still represent an increase over the levels of investment from 1980 through 1995. As a percentage of GDP, venture investment was 0.058% in 1994, peaked at 1.087% (nearly 19 times the 1994 level) in 2000 and ranged from 0.164% to 0.182% in 2003 and 2004. The revival of an Internet-driven environment in 2004 through 2007 helped to revive the venture capital environment. However, as a percentage of the overall private-equity market, venture capital has still not reached its mid-1990s level, let alone its peak in 2000.

Venture capital funds, which were responsible for much of the fundraising volume in 2000 (the height of the dot-com bubble), raised only $25.1 billion in 2006, a 2% decline from 2005 and a significant decline from its peak. The decline continued till their fortunes started to turn around in 2010 with $21.8 billion invested (not raised). The industry continued to show phenomenal growth and in 2020 hit $80 billion in fresh capital.

Financing
Obtaining venture capital is substantially different from raising debt or a loan. Lenders have a legal right to interest on a loan and repayment of the capital irrespective of the success or failure of a business. Venture capital is invested in exchange for an equity stake in the business. The return of the venture capitalist as a shareholder depends on the growth and profitability of the business. This return is generally earned when the venture capitalist "exits" by selling its shareholdings when the business is sold to another owner.

Venture capitalists are typically very selective in deciding what to invest in, with a Stanford survey of venture capitalists revealing that 100 companies were considered for every company receiving financing. Ventures receiving financing must demonstrate an excellent management team, a large potential market, and most importantly high growth potential, as only such opportunities are likely capable of providing financial returns and a successful exit within the required time frame (typically 3–7 years) that venture capitalists expect.

Because investments are illiquid and require the extended time frame to harvest, venture capitalists are expected to carry out detailed due diligence prior to investment. Venture capitalists also are expected to nurture the companies in which they invest, in order to increase the likelihood of reaching an IPO stage when valuations are favourable. Venture capitalists typically assist at four stages in the company's development:
 * Idea generation;
 * Start-up;
 * Ramp-up; and
 * Exit

Because there are no public exchanges listing their securities, private companies meet venture capital firms and other private-equity investors in several ways, including warm referrals from the investors' trusted sources and other business contacts; investor conferences and symposia; and summits where companies pitch directly to investor groups in face-to-face meetings, including a variant known as "Speed Venturing", which is akin to speed-dating for capital, where the investor decides within 10 minutes whether he wants a follow-up meeting. In addition, some new private online networks are emerging to provide additional opportunities for meeting investors.

This need for high returns makes venture funding an expensive capital source for companies, and most suitable for businesses having large up-front capital requirements, which cannot be financed by cheaper alternatives such as debt. That is most commonly the case for intangible assets such as software, and other intellectual property, whose value is unproven. In turn, this explains why venture capital is most prevalent in the fast-growing technology and life sciences or biotechnology fields.

If a company does have the qualities venture capitalists seek including a solid business plan, a good management team, investment and passion from the founders, a good potential to exit the investment before the end of their funding cycle, and target minimum returns in excess of 40% per year, it will find it easier to raise venture capital.

Financing stages
There are multiple stages of venture financing offered in venture capital, that roughly correspond to these stages of a company's development.
 * Pre-seed funding: The earliest round of financing needed to prove a new idea, often provided by friends and family, angel investors, startup accelerators, and sometimes by venture capital funds. Equity crowdfunding is also emerging as an option for seed funding.
 * Early Stage: Early stage funding includes Seed and Series A financing rounds. Companies use this capital to find product-market fit.
 * Growth Capital: Once companies have found product-market fit, companies will use growth capital to scale the business. These are typically larger financing rounds with have higher valuations because the companies have started to prove traction and de-risk the investment. Growth capital typically includes Series B, Series C, and later rounds.
 * Exit of venture capitalist: VCs can exit through secondary sale or an initial public offering (IPO) or an acquisition. Early stage VCs may exit in later rounds when new investors (VCs or private-equity investors) buy the shares of existing investors. Sometimes a company very close to an IPO may allow some VCs to exit and instead new investors may come in hoping to profit from the IPO.
 * Bridge financing is when a startup seeks funding in between full VC rounds. The objective is to raise a smaller amount of money to "bridge" the gap when current funds are expected to run out prior to planned future funding, intended to meet short-term working capital needs.

In early stage and growth stage financings, venture-backed companies may also seek to take venture debt.

Venture capitalist
A venture capitalist or sometimes simply called a capitalist, is a person who makes capital investments in companies in exchange for an equity stake. The venture capitalist is often expected to bring managerial and technical expertise, as well as capital, to their investments. A venture capital fund refers to a pooled investment vehicle (in the United States, often an LP or LLC) that primarily invests the financial capital of third-party investors in enterprises that are too risky for the standard capital markets or bank loans. These funds are typically managed by a venture capital firm, which often employs individuals with technology backgrounds (scientists, researchers), business training and/or deep industry experience.

A core skill within VCs is the ability to identify novel or disruptive technologies that have the potential to generate high commercial returns at an early stage. By definition, VCs also take a role in managing entrepreneurial companies at an early stage, thus adding skills as well as capital, thereby differentiating VC from buy-out private equity, which typically invest in companies with proven revenue, and thereby potentially realizing much higher rates of returns. Inherent in realizing abnormally high rates of returns is the risk of losing all of one's investment in a given startup company. As a consequence, most venture capital investments are done in a pool format, where several investors combine their investments into one large fund that invests in many different startup companies. By investing in the pool format, the investors are spreading out their risk to many different investments instead of taking the chance of putting all of their money in one start up firm.

Structure
Venture capital firms are typically structured as partnerships, the general partners of which serve as the managers of the firm and will serve as investment advisors to the venture capital funds raised. Venture capital firms in the United States may also be structured as limited liability companies, in which case the firm's managers are known as managing members. Investors in venture capital funds are known as limited partners. This constituency comprises both high-net-worth individuals and institutions with large amounts of available capital, such as state and private pension funds, university financial endowments, foundations, insurance companies, and pooled investment vehicles, called funds of funds.

Types
Venture capitalist firms differ in their motivations and approaches. There are multiple factors, and each firm is different.

Venture capital funds are generally three in types:

 * 1. Angel investors
 * 2. Financial VCs
 * 3. Strategic VCs

Some of the factors that influence VC decisions include:
 * Business situation: Some VCs tend to invest in new, disruptive ideas, or fledgling companies. Others prefer investing in established companies that need support to go public or grow.
 * Some invest solely in certain industries.
 * Some prefer operating locally while others will operate nationwide or even globally.
 * VC expectations can often vary. Some may want a quicker public sale of the company or expect fast growth. The amount of help a VC provides can vary from one firm to the next. There are also estimates on how big of an exit a VC will expect for the company (i.e. if the size of the VC fund is $20M, estimate that they will at least want the company to exit for the size of the fund).

Roles
Within the venture capital industry, the general partners and other investment professionals of the venture capital firm are often referred to as "venture capitalists" or "VCs". Typical career backgrounds vary, but, broadly speaking, venture capitalists come from either an operational or a finance background. Venture capitalists with an operational background (operating partner) tend to be former founders or executives of companies similar to those which the partnership finances or will have served as management consultants. Venture capitalists with finance backgrounds tend to have investment banking or other corporate finance experience.

Although the titles are not entirely uniform from firm to firm, other positions at venture capital firms include:

Structure of the funds
Most venture capital funds have a fixed life of 10 years, with the possibility of a few years of extensions to allow for private companies still seeking liquidity. The investing cycle for most funds is generally three to five years, after which the focus is managing and making follow-on investments in an existing portfolio. This model was pioneered by successful funds in Silicon Valley through the 1980s to invest in technological trends broadly but only during their period of ascendance, and to cut exposure to management and marketing risks of any individual firm or its product.

In such a fund, the investors have a fixed commitment to the fund that is initially unfunded and subsequently "called down" by the venture capital fund over time as the fund makes its investments. There are substantial penalties for a limited partner (or investor) that fails to participate in a capital call.

It can take anywhere from a month to several years for venture capitalists to raise money from limited partners for their fund. At the time when all of the money has been raised, the fund is said to be closed and the 10-year lifetime begins. Some funds have partial closes when one half (or some other amount) of the fund has been raised. The vintage year generally refers to the year in which the fund was closed and may serve as a means to stratify VC funds for comparison.

From an investor's point of view, funds can be: (1) traditional—where all the investors invest with equal terms; or (2) asymmetric—where different investors have different terms. Typically asymmetry is seen in cases where investors have opposing interests, such as the need to not have unrelated business taxable income in the case of public tax-exempt investors.

Investment Decision Process
The decision process to fund a company is elusive. One study report in the Harvard Business Review states that VCs rarely use standard financial analytics. First, VCs engage in a process known as "generating deal flow," where they reach out to their network to source potential investments. The study also reported that few VCs use any type of financial analytics when they assess deals; VCs are primarily concerned about the cash returned from the deal as a multiple of the cash invested. According to 95% of the VC firms surveyed, VCs cite the founder or founding team as the most important factor in their investment decision. Other factors are also considered, including intellectual property rights and the state of the economy. Some argue that the most important thing a VC looks for in a company is high-growth.

The funding decision process has spawned bias in the form of a large disparity between the funding received by men and minority groups, such as women and people of color. In 2021, female founders only received 2% of VC funding in the United States. Some research studies have found that VCs evaluate women differently and are less likely to fund female founders.

Compensation
Venture capitalists are compensated through a combination of management fees and carried interest (often referred to as a "two and 20" arrangement):

Because a fund may run out of capital prior to the end of its life, larger venture capital firms usually have several overlapping funds at the same time; doing so lets the larger firm keep specialists in all stages of the development of firms almost constantly engaged. Smaller firms tend to thrive or fail with their initial industry contacts; by the time the fund cashes out, an entirely new generation of technologies and people is ascending, whom the general partners may not know well, and so it is prudent to reassess and shift industries or personnel rather than attempt to simply invest more in the industry or people the partners already know.

Alternatives
Because of the strict requirements venture capitalists have for potential investments, many entrepreneurs seek seed funding from angel investors, who may be more willing to invest in highly speculative opportunities, or may have a prior relationship with the entrepreneur. Additionally, entrepreneurs may seek alternative financing, such as revenue-based financing, to avoid giving up equity ownership in the business. For entrepreneurs seeking more than just funding, startup studios can be an appealing alternative to venture capitalists, as they provide operational support and an experienced team.

Furthermore, many venture capital firms will only seriously evaluate an investment in a start-up company otherwise unknown to them if the company can prove at least some of its claims about the technology and/or market potential for its product or services. To achieve this, or even just to avoid the dilutive effects of receiving funding before such claims are proven, many start-ups seek to self-finance sweat equity until they reach a point where they can credibly approach outside capital providers such as venture capitalists or angel investors. This practice is called "bootstrapping".

Equity crowdfunding is emerging as an alternative to traditional venture capital. Traditional crowdfunding is an approach to raising the capital required for a new project or enterprise by appealing to large numbers of ordinary people for small donations. While such an approach has long precedents in the sphere of charity, it is receiving renewed attention from entrepreneurs, now that social media and online communities make it possible to reach out to a group of potentially interested supporters at very low cost. Some equity crowdfunding models are also being applied specifically for startup funding, such as those listed at Comparison of crowd funding services. One of the reasons to look for alternatives to venture capital is the problem of the traditional VC model. The traditional VCs are shifting their focus to later-stage investments, and return on investment of many VC funds have been low or negative.

In Europe and India, Media for equity is a partial alternative to venture capital funding. Media for equity investors are able to supply start-ups with often significant advertising campaigns in return for equity. In Europe, an investment advisory firm offers young ventures the option to exchange equity for services investment; their aim is to guide ventures through the development stage to arrive at a significant funding, mergers and acquisition, or other exit strategy.

In industries where assets can be securitized effectively because they reliably generate future revenue streams or have a good potential for resale in case of foreclosure, businesses may more cheaply be able to raise debt to finance their growth. Good examples would include asset-intensive extractive industries such as mining, or manufacturing industries. Offshore funding is provided via specialist venture capital trusts, which seek to use securitization in structuring hybrid multi-market transactions via an SPV (special purpose vehicle): a corporate entity that is designed solely for the purpose of the financing.

In addition to traditional venture capital and angel networks, groups have emerged, which allow groups of small investors or entrepreneurs themselves to compete in a privatized business plan competition where the group itself serves as the investor through a democratic process.

Law firms are also increasingly acting as an intermediary between clients seeking venture capital and the firms providing it.

Other forms include venture resources that seek to provide non-monetary support to launch a new venture.

Role in employment
Every year, there are nearly 2 million businesses created in the US, but only 600–800 get venture capital funding. According to the National Venture Capital Association, 11% of private sector jobs come from venture-backed companies and venture-backed revenue accounts for 21% of US GDP.

Gender disparities
In 2020, female-founded companies raised 2.8% of capital investment from venture capital, the highest amount recorded. Babson College's Diana Report found that the number of women partners in VC firms decreased from 10% in 1999 to 6% in 2014. The report also found that 97% of VC-funded businesses had male chief executives, and that businesses with all-male teams were more than four times as likely to receive VC funding compared to teams with at least one woman.

Currently, about 3% of all venture capital is going to woman-led companies. More than 75% of VC firms in the US did not have any female venture capitalists at the time they were surveyed. It was found that a greater fraction of VC firms had never had a woman represent them on the board of one of their portfolio companies. For comparison, a UC Davis study focusing on large public companies in California found 49.5% with at least one female board seat.

Geographical differences
Venture capital, as an industry, originated in the United States, and American firms have traditionally been the largest participants in venture deals with the bulk of venture capital being deployed in American companies. However, increasingly, non-US venture investment is growing, and the number and size of non-US venture capitalists have been expanding.

Venture capital has been used as a tool for economic development in a variety of developing regions. In many of these regions, with less developed financial sectors, venture capital plays a role in facilitating access to finance for small and medium enterprises (SMEs), which in most cases would not qualify for receiving bank loans.

In the year of 2008, while VC funding were still majorly dominated by U.S. money ($28.8 billion invested in over 2550 deals in 2008), compared to international fund investments ($13.4 billion invested elsewhere), there has been an average 5% growth in the venture capital deals outside the US, mainly in China and Europe. Geographical differences can be significant. For instance, in the UK, 4% of British investment goes to venture capital, compared to about 33% in the U.S.

VC funding has been shown to be positively related to a country's individualistic culture. According to economist Jeffrey Funk however more than 90% of US startups valued over $1 billion lost money between 2019–2020 and return on investment from VC barely exceed return from public stock markets over the last 25 years.

United States
Venture capital investing reached $209.4 billion in 2022, the second highest investment year in history.

Venture capitalists invested some $29.1 billion in 3,752 deals in the U.S. through the fourth quarter of 2011, according to a report by the National Venture Capital Association. The same numbers for all of 2010 were $23.4 billion in 3,496 deals.

According to a report by Dow Jones VentureSource, venture capital funding fell to $6.4 billion in the US in the first quarter of 2013, an 11.8% drop from the first quarter of 2012, and a 20.8% decline from 2011. Venture firms have added $4.2 billion into their funds this year, down from $6.3 billion in the first quarter of 2013, but up from $2.6 billion in the fourth quarter of 2012.

Canada
Canadian technology companies have attracted interest from the global venture capital community partially as a result of generous tax incentive through the Scientific Research and Experimental Development (SR&ED) investment tax credit program. The basic incentive available to any Canadian corporation performing R&D is a refundable tax credit that is equal to 20% of "qualifying" R&D expenditures (labour, material, R&D contracts, and R&D equipment). An enhanced 35% refundable tax credit of available to certain (i.e. small) Canadian-controlled private corporations (CCPCs). Because the CCPC rules require a minimum of 50% Canadian ownership in the company performing R&D, foreign investors who would like to benefit from the larger 35% tax credit must accept minority position in the company, which might not be desirable. The SR&ED program does not restrict the export of any technology or intellectual property that may have been developed with the benefit of SR&ED tax incentives.

Canada also has a fairly unusual form of venture capital generation in its labour-sponsored venture capital corporations (LSVCC). These funds, also known as Retail Venture Capital or Labour Sponsored Investment Funds (LSIF), are generally sponsored by labor unions and offer tax breaks from government to encourage retail investors to purchase the funds. Generally, these Retail Venture Capital funds only invest in companies where the majority of employees are in Canada. However, innovative structures have been developed to permit LSVCCs to direct in Canadian subsidiaries of corporations incorporated in jurisdictions outside of Canada. In 2022, the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector closed around 50% of Canada's venture capital deals, 16% were in the Life Sciences.

Mexico
The Venture Capital industry in Mexico is a fast-growing sector in the country that, with the support of institutions and private funds, is estimated to reach US$100 billion invested by 2018.

Australia and New Zealand
In Australia and New Zealand, there have been 3 waves of VC, starting with Bill Ferris who founded IVC in 1970. are more than one hundred active VC funds, syndicates, or angel investors making VC-style investments. The 2nd wave was led by Starfish & Southern Cross VC, with the latter producing the leading VC of the 3rd wave, Blackbird. There was a boom in 2018, and today there are more than one hundred active VC funds, syndicates, or angel investors making VC-style investments. There have been few Nasdaq IPOs of Australian VC backed startups, with only Looksmart from Bill Ferris's fund, and Quantenna from Larry Marshall's Southern Cross VC, but Blackbird is expected to IPO Canva soon.

The State of Startup Funding report found that in 2021, over AUD $10 billion AUD was invested into Australian and New Zealand startups across 682 deals. This represents a 3x increase from the $3.1 billion that was invested in 2020.

Some notable Australian and New Zealand startup success stories include graphic design company Canva, financial services provider Airwallex, New Zealand payments provider Vend (acquired by Lightspeed), rent-to-buy company OwnHome, and direct-to-consumer propositions such as Eucalyptus (a house of direct-to-consumer telehealth brands), and Lyka (a pet wellness company).

In 2022, the largest Australian funds are Blackbird Ventures, Square Peg Capital, and Airtree Ventures. These three funds have more than $1 billion AUD under management across multiple funds. These funds have funding from institutional capital, including AustralianSuper and Hostplus, family offices, and sophisticated individual high-net-wealth investors.

Outside of the 'Big 3', other notable institutional funds include AfterWork Ventures, Artesian, Folklore Ventures, Equity Venture Partners, Our Innovation Fund, Investible, Main Sequence Ventures (the VC arm of the CSIRO), OneVentures, Proto Axiom, and Tenacious Ventures.

As the number of capital providers in the Australian and New Zealand ecosystem has grown, funds have started to specialise and innovate to differentiate themselves. For example, Tenacious Ventures is a $35 million specialised agritech fund, while AfterWork Ventures is a 'community-powered fund' that has coalesced a group of 120 experienced operators from across Australia's startups and tech companies. Its community is invested in its fund, and lean into assist with sourcing and evaluating deal opportunities, as well as supporting companies post-investment.

Several Australian corporates have corporate VC arms, including NAB Ventures, Reinventure (associated with Westpac), IAG Firemark Ventures, and Telstra Ventures.

Europe
Leading early-stage venture capital investors in Europe include Mark Tluszcz of Mangrove Capital Partners and Danny Rimer of Index Ventures, both of whom were named on Forbes Magazine's Midas List of the world's top dealmakers in technology venture capital in 2007. In 2020, the first Italian Venture capital Fund named Primo Space was launched by Primomiglio SGR. This fund first closed €58 million out a target €80 million and is focused on Space investing.

Comparing the EU market to the United States, in 2020 venture capital funding was seven times lower, the EU having less unicorns. This hampers the EU's transformation into a green and digital economy.

As of 2024, tighter financial conditions have harmed venture capital funding in the European Union, which remains undeveloped in comparison to the United States.

Nordic countries
Recent years have seen a revival of the Nordic venture scene with more than €3 billion raised by VC funds in the Nordic region over the last five years. Over the past five years, a total of €2.7 billion has been invested into Nordic startups. Known Nordic early-stage venture capital funds include NorthZone (Sweden), Maki.vc (Finland) and ByFounders (Copenhagen).

Switzerland
Many Swiss start-ups are university spin-offs, in particular from its federal institutes of technology in Lausanne and Zurich. According to a study by the London School of Economics analysing 130 ETH Zurich spin-offs over 10 years, about 90% of these start-ups survived the first five critical years, resulting in an average annual IRR of more than 43%. Switzerland's most active early-stage investors are The Zurich Cantonal Bank, investiere.ch, Swiss Founders Fund, as well as a number of angel investor clubs. In 2022, half of the total amount of CHF 4 billion investments went to the ICT and Fintech sectors, whereas 21% was invested in Cleantech.

Poland
As of March 2019, there are 130 active VC firms in Poland which have invested locally in over 750 companies, an average of 9 companies per portfolio. Since 2016, new legal institutions have been established for entities implementing investments in enterprises in the seed or startup phase. In 2018, venture capital funds invested €178M in Polish startups (0.033% of GDP). As of March 2019, total assets managed by VC companies operating in Poland are estimated at €2.6B. The total value of investments of the Polish VC market is worth €209.2M.

Bulgaria
The Bulgarian venture capital industry has been growing rapidly in the past decade. As of the beginning of 2021, there are 18 VC and growth equity firms on the local market, with the total funding available for technology startups exceeding €200M. According to BVCA – Bulgarian Private Equity and Venture Capital Association, 59 transactions of total value of €29.4 million took place in 2020. Most of the venture capital investments in Bulgaria are concentrated in the seed and Series A stages. Sofia-based LAUNCHub Ventures recently launched one of the biggest funds in the region, with a target size of €70 million.

Asia
South Korea has been undergoing an investment boom over the last ten years, peaking at US$10 billion in 2021. The Korean government and mega-corporations such as Kakao, Smilegate, SK, and Lotte has been behind much of the funding, backing both venture firms and accelerators, but has recently announced a 40% slash to funding, leaving fledgling VCs in dire straits.

India is catching up with the West in the field of venture capital and a number of venture capital funds have a presence in the country (IVCA). In 2006, the total amount of private equity and venture capital in India reached $7.5 billion across 299 deals. In the Indian market, venture capital consists of investing in equity, quasi-equity, or conditional loans in order to promote unlisted, high-risk, or high-tech firms driven by technically or professionally qualified entrepreneurs. It is also used to refer to investors "providing seed", "start-up and first-stage financing", or financing companies that have demonstrated extraordinary business potential. Venture capital refers to capital investment; equity and debt; both of which carry indubitable risk. The anticipated risk is very high. The venture capital industry follows the concept of "high risk, high return", innovative entrepreneurship, knowledge-based ideas and human capital intensive enterprises have become common as venture capitalists invest in risky finance to encourage innovation. A large portion of funding from startups in India arise from Foreign Venture Capital Funds such as Sequoia, Accel, Tiger Global, SoftBank, etc.

China is also starting to develop a venture capital industry (CVCA).

Vietnam is experiencing its first foreign venture capitals, including IDG Venture Vietnam ($100 million) and DFJ Vinacapital ($35 million).

Singapore is widely recognized and featured as one of the hottest places to both start up and invest, mainly due to its healthy ecosystem, its strategic location and connectedness to foreign markets. With 100 deals valued at US$3.5 billion, Singapore saw a record value of PE and VC investments in 2016. The number of PE and VC investments increased substantially over the last 5 years: In 2015, Singapore recorded 81 investments with an aggregate value of US$2.2 billion while in 2014 and 2013, PE and VC deal values came to US$2.4 billion and US$0.9 billion respectively. With 53 percent, tech investments account for the majority of deal volume.

Moreover, Singapore is home to two of South-East Asia's largest unicorns. Garena is reportedly the highest-valued unicorn in the region with a US$3.5 billion price tag, while Grab is the highest-funded, having raised a total of US$1.43 billion since its incorporation in 2012.

Start-ups and small businesses in Singapore receive support from policymakers and the local government fosters the role VCs play to support entrepreneurship in Singapore and the region. For instance, in 2016, Singapore's National Research Foundation (NRF) has given out grants up to around $30 million to four large local enterprises for investments in startups in the city-state. This first of its kind partnership NRF has entered into is designed to encourage these enterprises to source for new technologies and innovative business models.

Currently, the rules governing VC firms are being reviewed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to make it easier to set up funds and increase funding opportunities for start-ups. This mainly includes simplifying and shortening the authorization process for new venture capital managers and to study whether existing incentives that have attracted traditional asset managers here will be suitable for the VC sector. A public consultation on the proposals was held in January 2017 with changes expected to be introduced by July.

In recent years, Singapore's focus in venture capital investments has geared more towards more early stage, deep tech startups, with the government launching SGInnovate in 2016 to support the development of deep tech startups. Deep tech startups aim to address significant scientific problems. Singapore's tech startup scene has grown in recent years, and the city-state ranked seventh in the latest Global Innovation Index 2022. For the first nine months of 2022, investments up to Series B rounds amounted to $5.5 billion Singapore dollars ($4 billion), an increase of 14% by volume and 45% by value, according to data from government agency Enterprise Singapore.

Middle East and North Africa
The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) venture capital industry is an early stage of development but growing. According to H1 2019 MENA Venture Investment Report by MAGNiTT, 238 startup investment deals have taken place in the region in the first half of 2019, totaling in $471 million in investments. Compared to 2018's H1 report, this represents an increase of 66% in total funding and 28% in number of deals.

According to the report, the UAE is the most active ecosystem in the region with 26% of the deals made in H1, followed by Egypt at 21%, and Lebanon at 13%. In terms of deals by sector, fintech remains the most active industry with 17% of the deals made, followed by e-commerce at 12%, and delivery and transport at 8%.

The report also notes that a total of 130 institutions invested in MENA-based startups in H1 2019, 30% of which were headquartered outside the MENA, demonstrating international appetite for investments in the region. 15 startup exits have been recorded in H1 2019, with Careem's $3.1 billion acquisition by Uber being the first unicorn exit in the region. Other notable exits include Souq.com exit to Amazon in 2017 for $650 million.

Israel
In Israel, high-tech entrepreneurship and venture capital have flourished well beyond the country's relative size. As it has very little natural resources and, historically has been forced to build its economy on knowledge-based industries, its VC industry has rapidly developed, and nowadays has about 70 active venture capital funds, of which 14 international VCs with Israeli offices, and additional 220 international funds which actively invest in Israel. In addition, as of 2010, Israel led the world in venture capital invested per capita. Israel attracted $170 per person compared to $75 in the USA. About two thirds of the funds invested were from foreign sources, and the rest domestic. In 2013, Wix.com joined 62 other Israeli firms on the Nasdaq.

Sub-Saharan Africa
The Southern African venture capital industry is developing. The South African Government and Revenue Service is following the international trend of using tax-efficient vehicles to propel economic growth and job creation through venture capital. Section 12 J of the Income Tax Act was updated to include venture capital. Companies are allowed to use a tax-efficient structure similar to VCTs in the UK. Despite the above structure, the government needs to adjust its regulation around intellectual property, exchange control and other legislation to ensure that Venture capital succeeds.

Currently, there are not many venture capital funds in operation and it is a small community; however, the number of venture funds are steadily increasing with new incentives slowly coming in from government. Funds are difficult to come by and due to the limited funding, companies are more likely to receive funding if they can demonstrate initial sales or traction and the potential for significant growth. The majority of the venture capital in Sub-Saharan Africa is centered on South Africa and Kenya.

Entrepreneurship is a key to growth. Governments will need to ensure business friendly regulatory environments in order to help foster innovation. In 2019, venture capital startup funding grew to 1.3 billion dollars, increasing rapidly. The causes are as of yet unclear, but education is certainly a factor.

Confidential information
Unlike public companies, information regarding an entrepreneur's business is typically confidential and proprietary. As part of the due diligence process, most venture capitalists will require significant detail with respect to a company's business plan. Entrepreneurs must remain vigilant about sharing information with venture capitalists that are investors in their competitors. Most venture capitalists treat information confidentially, but as a matter of business practice, they do not typically enter into Non Disclosure Agreements because of the potential liability issues those agreements entail. Entrepreneurs are typically well advised to protect truly proprietary intellectual property. Startups commonly use a data room to securely share this information with potential investors during the due diligence process.

Limited partners of venture capital firms typically have access only to limited amounts of information with respect to the individual portfolio companies in which they are invested and are typically bound by confidentiality provisions in the fund's limited partnership agreement.

Governmental regulations
There are several strict guidelines regulating those that deal in venture capital. Namely, they are not allowed to advertise or solicit business in any form as per the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission guidelines.

In books

 * Mark Coggins' novel Vulture Capital (2002) features a venture capitalist protagonist who investigates the disappearance of the chief scientist in a biotech firm in which he has invested. Coggins also worked in the industry and was co-founder of a dot-com startup.
 * Drawing on his experience as reporter covering technology for the New York Times, Matt Richtel produced the novel Hooked (2007), in which the actions of the main character's deceased girlfriend, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, play a key role in the plot.
 * Great, detailed work on VC method of funding.

In comics

 * In the Dilbert comic strip, a character named "Vijay, the World's Most Desperate Venture Capitalist" frequently makes appearances, offering bags of cash to anyone with even a hint of potential. In one strip, he offers two small children with good math grades money based on the fact that if they marry and produce an engineer baby he can invest in the infant's first idea. The children respond that they are already looking for mezzanine funding.
 * Robert von Goeben and Kathryn Siegler produced a comic strip called The VC between the years 1997 and 2000 that parodied the industry, often by showing humorous exchanges between venture capitalists and entrepreneurs. Von Goeben was a partner in Redleaf Venture Management when he began writing the strip.

In film

 * In Wedding Crashers (2005), Jeremy Grey (Vince Vaughn) and John Beckwith (Owen Wilson) are bachelors who create appearances to play at different weddings of complete strangers, and a large part of the movie follows them posing as venture capitalists from New Hampshire.
 * The documentary Something Ventured (2011) chronicled the recent history of American technology venture capitalists.

In television

 * In the TV series Dragons' Den, various startup companies pitch their business plans to a panel of venture capitalists.
 * In the ABC reality television show Shark Tank, venture capitalists ("Sharks") hear entrepreneurs' pitches and select which ones they will invest in.
 * The short-lived Bravo reality TV show Start-Ups: Silicon Valley had participation from venture capitalists in Silicon Valley.
 * The sitcom Silicon Valley parodies startup companies and venture capital culture.
 * The AMC Drama Halt and Catch Fire features the use of venture capital firms for the startup companies during the PC revolution of the 1980s and rise of the world-wide-web in the early 1990s.

title: Venture capital


text:
Burgerville

Burgerville (originally Burgerville USA) is a privately held American restaurant chain in Oregon and southwest Washington, owned by The Holland Inc. As the chain's name suggests, Burgerville's sandwich menu consists mostly of hamburgers. As of May 2005, all Burgerville locations were within a 180-mile (290-km) radius, mostly in the Portland metropolitan area. The chain had annual revenue of around $75 million in 2010, at which time it had 39 locations and about 1,500 employees.

In addition to burgers and fries, Burgerville offers other products such as chicken and turkey sandwiches, veggie burgers, fish sandwiches, and fish and chips. The chain uses local ingredients, such as Tillamook Cheddar, and locally grown strawberries in its milkshakes and sundaes. Throughout the year it offers seasonal items such as milkshakes made with hazelnuts, pumpkin, fresh raspberries, fresh strawberries, and blackberries, and side orders such as Walla Walla onion rings, sweet potato fries, tempura-style fried asparagus and Yukon Gold potatoes.

History
Burgerville was founded in 1961 by George Propstra in Vancouver, Washington. The first Burgerville was located on Mill Plain Blvd in Vancouver, about three miles east of downtown on the southeast corner of Mill Plain and Morrison.

The chain uses 100% wind power for all of its restaurants and headquarters, and is the largest chain in America to do so. Burgerville uses only trans fat-free canola oil and sends 7,500 gallons per month to be transformed into biodiesel. In 2004, Burgerville switched to range-fed beef raised without hormones and antibiotics. In 2007, it began composting food waste which is expected to result in an 85% reduction in waste and $100,000 annual savings.

In September 2009, after complaints from bicycle commuters, Burgerville began allowing bicyclists to order using its drive-through windows.

The fast casual restaurant chain was named by Gourmet magazine as having the freshest fast food in the country in 2003, with offerings such as a salad with smoked salmon and Oregon hazelnuts. As of August 2007, their slogan is, "Choose Fresh, Local, Sustainable. Choose Burgerville." Also in 2007, Burgerville was awarded with the "Better Burger" award at the 1st Annual Food Network Awards.

In January 2008, Jeff Harvey accepted the position of President and CEO of Burgerville after Tom Mears, the former holder of the titles stepped aside, and became Chairman of the company.

In October 2018, Burgerville disclosed that it had suffered a data breach by the Fin7 hacking group of all customer credit and debit card information processed from September 2017 to September 2018.

Burgerville Workers Union
In April 2016, Burgerville workers organized and formed a labor union, the Burgerville Workers Union, with support from Portland IWW, among other groups. The company opposed the union organizing effort and sought to discourage workers from joining. In 2018, the workers of one Burgerville restaurant in southeast Portland voted 18-4 in an NLRB-administered election to form a labor union; the vote compels the company to officially recognize the Burgerville Workers Union (BVWU) and to collectively bargain with it. The BVWU is the only fast food union in the United States with federal recognition.

The union has demanded a $5 an hour increase in wages for all workers, fair scheduling, improved health care, and parental leave. In October, 2019, the workers union was preparing to strike following a breakdown of negotiations with the company over the previous 18 months. The company had offered an increase of $1 per hour for all employees to $13.50, six months ahead of when Portland's local minimum was set to increase to $13.25.

As of October 2019, five Burgerville locations have held successful union drives.

Locations
As of October 2016, Burgerville had 47 locations throughout Oregon and Washington.

On major highways leaving Burgerville's reach, there is usually a billboard resembling an overhead highway warning sign alerting drivers that there will not be another Burgerville location for approximately another 24,700 miles (39,750 km), which is the distance to the next Burgerville should one continue around the globe in that direction. The distance reported on each sign varies depending on the actual location of the billboard.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Burgerville


text:
Millbank

Millbank is an area of central London in the City of Westminster. Millbank is located by the River Thames, east of Pimlico and south of Westminster. Millbank is known as the location of major government offices, Burberry headquarters, the Millbank Tower and prominent art institutions such as Tate Britain and the Chelsea College of Art and Design.

History
The area derives its name from a watermill owned by Westminster Abbey that once stood at a site close to present day College Green. Norden's survey, taken during the reign of Elizabeth I in 1573, records the existence of such a mill although much of the area that comprises Millbank today, was referred to by Samuel Pepys and others as Tothill Fields. Described as a place of plague pits and a "low, marshy locality" suitable for shooting snipe in the nearby "bogs and quagmires".

After Cromwell's victory at the Battle of Worcester in September 1651, some 4,000 defeated Royalists were imprisoned at Tothill Fields prior to being sold as slaves to merchants trading with Africa and the West Indies. Facilities at the prison camp on the marshy ground were so poor that 1,200 prisoners were recorded as having died in the primitive conditions.

Prior to the development of Millbank Prison in 1816, the area was sparsely covered with residential houses, but did feature a distillery by the river owned by a Mr. Hodge and numerous small almshouses, bridewells and pest houses for the poor, criminally inclined and sick. Baltic Wharf, a site just to the north of Vauxhall Bridge, was for much of the 19th century the location of a Henry Castle & Son, a ship breaking and timber merchant. Numerous wooden ships of the line of the Royal Navy were dismantled at this location, their ornate figureheads often displayed on the gates and perimeter of the yard walls.

Millbank's general appearance today dates from the 1930s, when the area was extensively rebuilt to repair damage caused by the 1928 Thames flood disaster, following the collapse of a 25-metre-long section of the Thames Embankment. Millbank shares the name of the main road (A3212) along the north bank of the River Thames, extending northwards from Vauxhall Bridge to Abingdon Street, just south from Parliament Square. There are parliamentary offices situated across this road, notably No.7, built as the headquarters of British American Tobacco. The road was created as part of the Thames Embankment in the mid 19th century and lies above a large interceptor sewer.

The former Royal Army Medical College, situated at Millbank, is the site where the vaccine for typhoid was first developed, and in the late 19th century, was where the world's first modern prison (Millbank Prison) was established. The listed site has since been renovated as a purpose-built arts college for the Chelsea College of Art and Design in 2005. The Tate Britain art gallery (former Tate Gallery) is directly opposite near the end of Vauxhall Bridge, providing a distinct arts presence in the area.

The headquarters of the British chemicals giant ICI was originally located at Imperial Chemical House on Millbank (The Smith Square entrance of which was called Nobel House) before it relocated to Manchester Square, also situated in London. The headquarters for the Northern Ireland Office, MI5 and Thames House are also nearby.

On 18 December 1973, the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) exploded a bomb on Thorney Street at 8:50am. The bomb resulted in over 50 people injured, including two seriously (see 1973 Westminster bombing).

Millbank Studios reside in the area as an independent broadcast company, owned by ITV. The studio is situated opposite the Houses of Parliament. The BBC Parliament broadcasting channel is also situated nearby (intended to broadcast parliamentary and general political coverage on behalf of the BBC). No.4 is the location commonly used by broadcasters for producing coverage of the Westminster area, including the BBC, Sky News and ITV. Neighbouring College Green is used as a setting for interviewing politicians outdoors. Foreign countries' broadcasters also have bureaus in the Millbank studio compound. Australian broadcasters ABC, Seven and Nine all have bureaus in the building. Channel Ten (of Australia) used to have an office as well, but it was scrapped due to financial difficulties. Japan's broadcaster NHK has an office in the compound as well. RTÉ News and Current Affairs also have their London bureau at the same location.

Notable buildings
Millbank Estate is a large but highly regarded Grade II-listed red-brick housing estate that gives the area behind Tate Britain a distinct character. The estate was built between 1897 and 1902, the bricks being recycled from Millbank Prison, which had closed in 1890. The 17 buildings, comprising one of London's earliest social housing schemes, are named after distinguished painters such as Turner, Gainsborough, Millais, etc. The estate has 562 flats, all managed on behalf of Westminster City Council by MEMO, the largest tenant management organisation in Westminster. The estate's management board is elected annually from the resident population. Half of the estate's flats are private leaseholds, the other half are rented from Westminster City Council. The estate's buildings are maintained by a regular works program.

In 1914–1916, architects John W. Simpson and Maxwell Ayrton designed and built 4 Millbank, a six-story Neoclassical office building for the Offices of the Crown Agents for the Colonies. This structure has since been converted into multi-let office building with a central, glass-roofed atrium.

Hide Tower is a 20-storey building (with an additional walk-up penthouse level) of 162 flats with a garden and a community hall. When built in 1962 it was the tallest all residential building in Europe. Approximately a quarter of the accommodation is privately rented; half is rented from Westminster City Council and the remainder is owner-occupied. The name was derived from the "hide", an old English land measure (used in the Domesday Survey of 1086).

Millbank Tower is a large, modernistic office complex between the River Thames, Millbank Estate and Tate Britain Gallery. It has several restaurants and a public garden. Before the 1997 General Election, the Labour Party acquired two floors of the building as its headquarters. The £1 million annual rent, however, forced the party to vacate the tower in 2001 for 16 Old Queen Street, Westminster. In British politics, the term "Millbank Machine" or "Millbank tendency" (a play on "Militant tendency") has been linked with the activities of spin doctors. The Conservative Party also formerly had its headquarters, CCHQ based in the tower.

Public transport
Millbank Millennium Pier is a modern River Thames pier structure. A regular service by a Damien Hirst-designed riverboat connects Tate Britain with Tate Modern.

The nearest London Underground stations are Westminster, Pimlico and Victoria. London Victoria station is also a National Rail mainline terminus with an adjacent national coach station. Waterloo and Charing Cross stations are also nearby. Millbank is well connected by buses.

title: Millbank


text:
Fertility

Fertility in colloquial terms refers the ability to have offspring. In demographic contexts, fertility refers to the actual production of offspring, rather than the physical capability to reproduce, which is termed fecundity. The fertility rate is the average number of children born during an individual's lifetime. In medicine, fertility refers to the ability to have children, and infertility refers to difficulty in reproducing naturally. In general, infertility or subfertility in humans is defined as not being able to conceive a child after one year (or longer) of unprotected sex. The antithesis of fertility is infertility, while the antithesis of fecundity is sterility.

Demography
In demographic contexts, fertility refers to the actual production of offspring, rather than the physical capability to produce which is termed fecundity. While fertility can be measured, fecundity cannot be. Demographers measure the fertility rate in a variety of ways, which can be broadly broken into "period" measures and "cohort" measures. "Period" measures refer to a cross-section of the population in one year. "Cohort" data on the other hand, follows the same people over a period of decades. Both period and cohort measures are widely used.

Period measures

 * Crude birth rate (CBR) - the number of live births in a given year per 1,000 people alive at the middle of that year. One disadvantage of this indicator is that it is influenced by the age structure of the population.
 * General fertility rate (GFR) - the number of births in a year divided by the number of women aged 15–44, times 1000. It focuses on the potential mothers only, and takes the age distribution into account.
 * Child-Woman Ratio (CWR) - the ratio of the number of children under 5 to the number of women 15–49, times 1000. It is especially useful in historical data as it does not require counting births. This measure is actually a hybrid, because it involves deaths as well as births. (That is, because of infant mortality some of the births are not included; and because of adult mortality, some of the women who gave birth are not counted either.)
 * Coale's Index of Fertility - a special device used in historical research

Cohort measures

 * Total fertility rate (TFR) - the total number of children a woman would bear during her lifetime if she were to experience the prevailing age-specific fertility rates of women. TFR equals the sum for all age groups of 5 times each ASFR rate.
 * Gross Reproduction Rate (GRR) - the number of girl babies a synthetic cohort will have. It assumes that all of the baby girls will grow up and live to at least age 50.
 * Net Reproduction Rate (NRR) - the NRR starts with the GRR and adds the realistic assumption that some of the women will die before age 49; therefore they will not be alive to bear some of the potential babies that were counted in the GRR. NRR is always lower than GRR, but in countries where mortality is very low, almost all the baby girls grow up to be potential mothers, and the NRR is practically the same as GRR. In countries with high mortality, NRR can be as low as 70% of GRR. When NRR = 1.0, each generation of 1000 baby girls grows up and gives birth to exactly 1000 girls. When NRR is less than one, each generation is smaller than the previous one. When NRR is greater than 1 each generation is larger than the one before. NRR is a measure of the long-term future potential for growth, but it usually is different from the current population growth rate.

Social and economic determinants of fertility
A parent's number of children strongly correlates with the number of children that each person in the next generation will eventually have. Factors generally associated with increased fertility include religiosity, intention to have children, and maternal support. Factors generally associated with decreased fertility include wealth, education, female labor participation, urban residence, cost of housing, intelligence, increased female age and (to a lesser degree) increased male age.

The "Three-step Analysis" of the fertility process was introduced by Kingsley Davis and Judith Blake in 1956 and makes use of three proximate determinants: The economic analysis of fertility is part of household economics, a field that has grown out of the New Home Economics. Influential economic analyses of fertility include Becker (1960), Mincer (1963), and Easterlin (1969). The latter developed the Easterlin hypothesis to account for the Baby Boom.

Bongaarts' model of components of fertility
Bongaarts proposed a model where the total fertility rate of a population can be calculated from four proximate determinants and the total fecundity (TF). The index of marriage (Cm), the index of contraception (Cc), the index of induced abortion (Ca) and the index of postpartum infecundability (Ci). These indices range from 0 to 1. The higher the index, the higher it will make the TFR, for example a population where there are no induced abortions would have a Ca of 1, but a country where everybody used infallible contraception would have a Cc of 0.

TFR = TF × Cm × Ci × Ca × Cc

These four indices can also be used to calculate the total marital fertility (TMFR) and the total natural fertility (TN).

TFR = TMFR × Cm

TMFR = TN × Cc × Ca

TN = TF × Ci

 * Intercourse
 * The first step is sexual intercourse, and an examination of the average age at first intercourse, the average frequency outside marriage, and the average frequency inside.

 * Conception
 * Certain physical conditions may make it impossible for a woman to conceive. This is called "involuntary infecundity." If the woman has a condition making it possible, but unlikely to conceive, this is termed "subfecundity." Venereal diseases (especially gonorrhea, syphilis, and chlamydia) are common causes. Nutrition is a factor as well: women with less than 20% body fat may be subfecund, a factor of concern for athletes and people susceptible to anorexia. Demographer Ruth Frisch has argued that "It takes 50,000 calories to make a baby". There is also subfecundity in the weeks following childbirth, and this can be prolonged for a year or more through breastfeeding. A furious political debate raged in the 1980s over the ethics of baby food companies marketing infant formula in developing countries. A large industry has developed to deal with subfecundity in women and men. An equally large industry has emerged to provide contraceptive devices designed to prevent conception. Their effectiveness in use varies. On average, 85% of married couples using no contraception will have a pregnancy in one year. The rate drops to the 20% range when using withdrawal, vaginal sponges, or spermicides. (This assumes the partners never forget to use the contraceptive.) The rate drops to only 2 or 3% when using the pill or an IUD, and drops to near 0% for implants and 0% for tubal ligation (sterilization) of the woman, or a vasectomy for the man.

 * Gestation
 * After a fetus is conceived, it may or may not survive to birth. "Involuntary fetal mortality" involves natural abortion, miscarriages and stillbirth (a fetus born dead). Human intervention intentionally causing abortion of the fetus is called "therapeutic abortion".

In medicine
In medicine, the definition of fertility is "the capacity to establish a clinical pregnancy."

Women have hormonal cycles which determine when they can achieve pregnancy. The cycle is approximately twenty-eight days long, with a fertile period of five days per cycle, but can deviate greatly from this norm. Men are fertile continuously, but their sperm quality is affected by their health, frequency of ejaculation, and environmental factors.

Fertility declines with age in both sexes. For women, the decline begins around the age of 32, and becomes precipitous at age 37. For men, potency and sperm quality begins to decline around the age of 40. Even if an older couple does manage to conceive a child, the pregnancy will be increasingly difficult for the mother, and carries a higher risk of birth defects and genetic disorders for the child.

Pregnancy rates for sexual intercourse are highest when it occurs every 1 or 2 days, or every 2 or 3 days. Studies have found no significant difference between different sex positions and pregnancy rate, as long as it results in ejaculation into the vagina.

Menstrual cycle
A woman's menstrual cycle begins, as arbitrarily assigned, with menses. Next is the follicular phase where estrogen levels build as an ovum matures (due to the follicular stimulating hormone, or FSH) within the ovary. When estrogen levels peak, it spurs a surge of luteinizing hormone (LH) which completes maturation and enables the ovum to break through the ovary wall. This is ovulation. During the luteal phase following ovulation LH and FSH cause the post-ovulation ovary to develop into the corpus luteum which produces progesterone. The production of progesterone inhibits the LH and FSH hormones which (in a cycle without pregnancy) causes the corpus luteum to atrophy, and menses to begin the cycle again.

Peak fertility occurs during just a few days of the cycle: usually two days before and two days after the ovulation date. This fertile window varies from woman to woman, just as the ovulation date often varies from cycle to cycle for the same woman. The ovule is usually capable of being fertilized for up to 48 hours after it is released from the ovary. Sperm survive inside the uterus between 48 and 72 hours on average, with the maximum being 120 hours (5 days).

These periods and intervals are important factors for couples using the rhythm method of contraception.

Female fertility
The average age of menarche in the United States is about 12.5 years. In postmenarchal girls, about 80% of the cycles are anovulatory (ovulation does not actually take place) in the first year after menarche, 50% in the third and 10% in the sixth year.

Menopause occurs during a woman's midlife between ages 48 and 55. During menopause, hormonal production by the ovaries is reduced, eventually causing a permanent cessation of the creation of the uterine lining (period). This is considered the end of the fertile phase of a woman's life.

The predicted effect of age on female fertility in women trying to get pregnant, without using fertility drugs or in vitro fertilization:
 * At age 30
 * 75% will conceive ending in a live birth within one year
 * 91% will conceive ending in a live birth within four years.
 * At age 35
 * 66% will conceive ending in a live birth within one year
 * 84% will conceive ending in a live birth within four years.
 * At age 40
 * 44% will conceive ending in a live birth within one year
 * 64% will conceive ending in a live birth within four years.

Studies of couples trying to conceive have yielded better results: one 2004 study of 770 European women found that 82% of 35- to 39-year-old women conceived within a year, while a study in 2013 of 2,820 Danish women saw 78% of 35- to 40-year-olds conceive within a year.

According to an opinion by the Practice Committee of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, specific coital timing or position, and resting supine after intercourse have no significant impact on fertility. Sperm can be found in the cervical canal seconds after ejaculation, regardless of coital position.

Successful pregnancies facilitated by fertility treatment have been documented in women as old as 67.

Male fertility
Some research suggests that older males have decreased semen volume, sperm motility, and impaired sperm morphology. In studies that controlled for female partner's age, comparisons between men under 30 and men over 50 found relative decreases in pregnancy rates between 23% and 38%. Sperm count declines with age, with men aged 50–80 years producing sperm at an average rate of 75% compared with men aged 20–50 years and larger differences exist in the number of seminiferous tubules in the testes containing mature sperm: Decline in male fertility is influenced by many factors, including lifestyle, environment and psychological factors.
 * In males 20–39 years old, 90% of the seminiferous tubules contain mature sperm.
 * In males 40–69 years old, 50% of the seminiferous tubules contain mature sperm.
 * In males 80 years old and older, 10% of the seminiferous tubules contain mature sperm.

Some research suggests increased risks for health problems for children of older fathers, but no clear association has been proven. A large scale study in Israel suggested that the children of men 40 or older were 5.75 times more likely than children of men under 30 to have an autism spectrum disorder, controlling for year of birth, socioeconomic status, and maternal age. Increased paternal age has been suggested to correlate with schizophrenia but it is unproven.

Australian researchers have found evidence to suggest obesity may cause subtle damage to sperm and prevent a healthy pregnancy. They reported fertilization was 40% less successful when the father was overweight.

The American Fertility Society recommends an age limit for sperm donors of 50 years or less, and many fertility clinics in the United Kingdom will not accept donations from men over 40 or 45 years of age.

France
The French pronatalist movement from 1919 to 1945 failed to convince French couples they had a patriotic duty to help increase their country's birthrate. Even the government was reluctant in its support to the movement. It was only between 1938 and 1939 that the French government became directly and permanently involved in the pronatalist effort. Although the birthrate started to surge in late 1941, the trend was not sustained. Falling birthrate once again became a major concern among demographers and government officials beginning in the 1970s. In mid-2018, there was a bill introduced to legalize single women and lesbian couples to get fertility treatment. At the beginning of 2020, the Senate approved the bill 160 votes to 116. They are a step closer to legalizing fertility treatments for all women regardless of sexual orientation or marital status. Soon there will be no reason for lesbian couples or single women to travel to be able to start their own family.

Korea

South Korea has the lowest fertility rate in the world at 0.78. A variety of explanations have been proposed, ranging from investment in education to birth control, abortion, a decline in the marriage rate, divorce, female participation in the labor force, and the 1997 Asian financial crisis. After being legal from the 1960s to the 1980s, abortion was again made illegal in South Korea in the early 2000s in an attempt to reverse the declining fertility rate.

United States
From 1800 to 1940, fertility fell in the US. There was a marked decline in fertility in the early 1900s, associated with improved contraceptives, greater access to contraceptives and sexuality information and the "first" sexual revolution in the 1920s.

Post-WWII
After 1940 fertility suddenly started going up again, reaching a new peak in 1957. After 1960, fertility started declining rapidly. In the Baby Boom years (1946–1964), women married earlier and had their babies sooner; the number of children born to mothers after age 35 did not increase.

Sexual revolution
After 1960, new methods of contraception became available, ideal family size fell, from 3 to 2 children. Couples postponed marriage and first births, and they sharply reduced the number of third and fourth births.

title: Fertility


text:
Porvoo Communion

The Porvoo Communion is a communion of 15 predominantly northern European Anglican and Evangelical Lutheran churches, with a couple of far-southwestern European (in the Iberian Peninsula) church bodies of the same denomination. It was established in 1992 by a theological agreement entitled the Porvoo Common Statement which establishes full communion between and among these churches. The agreement was negotiated in the town of Järvenpää in Finland, but the communion's name comes from the nearby city of Porvoo, where a joint Eucharist (or Holy Communion) was celebrated in Porvoo Cathedral after the formal signing in Järvenpää.

Overview
The first seeds to the broader communion formed in 1992 were planted in 1922 when the Anglican Church and the Church of Sweden agreed to enter communion with each other. In 1938, the Archbishop of Canterbury, symbolic head of the Anglican Communion, invited the representatives of the Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church and Latvian Lutheran Church to Lambeth Palace in London in order to reach "altar and pulpit fellowship" between the Anglican and Baltic Lutheran churches. This process came to a formal conclusion with the establishment of the much wider Porvoo Communion in 1992. The churches involved are the several Anglican churches of the British Isles (headed by the founding Church of England) and the other Evangelical Lutheran churches of the Northern European countries. Later negotiations brought the small Anglican churches of the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal) into the agreement. These churches all share episcopal polity of church organization with the three-fold ministry of bishops, priests (or pastors) and deacons within the historical episcopate with apostolic succession (only bishops ordaining clergy or other bishops, priests and deacons). This is based on the original ministry of the early church.

The Porvoo Communion has no central office or overseer. Each member church has a contact person and these form a contact group which meets each year. Two bishops, one Lutheran and the other Anglican, are co-moderators of the contact group, and there are two co-secretaries also drawn from each tradition. Both are members of the Lutheran World Federation and the Anglican Communion. There are also various conferences and meetings organized to discuss issues of concern to the entire Communion.

Participants
Signatories of the Porvoo Communion:
 * 1994
 * Estonian_Evangelical_Lutheran_Church_arms.gif Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church
 * Arms of Evangelical Lutheran Church in Lithuania.png Evangelical Lutheran Church in Lithuania
 * Den_norske_kirkes_våpen.svg Church of Norway
 * Scottish Episcopal Church
 * Svenska_kyrkan_vapen.svg Church of Sweden
 * 1995
 * Logo_of_the_Church_of_England-cropped.png Church of England
 * Coat_of_Arms_of_the_Evangelical_Lutheran_Church_of_Finland.svg Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland
 * Church of Ireland
 * Church of Iceland
 * Coat_of_arms_of_the_Church_in_Wales.svg Church in Wales
 * 2001
 * Lusitanian Catholic Apostolic Evangelical Church
 * Sello-iere_comunion784x1181.jpg Spanish Reformed Episcopal Church
 * 2010
 * Church of Denmark
 * 2014
 * Latvian Evangelical Lutheran Church Worldwide
 * Lutheran Church in Great Britain

 * Observers:
 * Evangelical Lutheran Church of Latvia, since 1994

title: Porvoo Communion


text:
Talk:Millbank

Untitled
Which is it? MilBank or MillBank? And is the capital B really correct? Evercat 00:20 3 Jul 2003 (UTC)
 * Millbank. –  iride scent  18:56, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

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title: Talk:Millbank