WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senators Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) and Dean Heller (R-NV) as well as Congressman Patrick McHenry (R-NC) today announced their bipartisan, bicameral bill to help encourage investments in small businesses and startups in smaller communities passed in key committees in both the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives – the final step before votes in the full Senate and House.

Today, the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, & Urban Affairs – where Heitkamp and Heller both help lead subcommittees – and the U.S. House Financial Services Committee, both passed the members’ Supporting America’s Innovators Act – which they just introduced last week. Their bill would help eliminate unnecessary red tape which would then incentivize venture capital funds to invest in small businesses, startups, and entrepreneurs in rural states. As a result, the bill would help support economic growth in rural communities tackle the challenge too many smaller venture capitalists face when seeking to establish investment funds in areas outside of the coasts, where there are fewer high net worth individuals, like North Dakota and other rural communities across the country.

The bill would increase the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) limit of accredited investors before a fund is required to spend the time and money registering with the agency from 100 to 250, so more venture capital funds can expand their footprint in areas like North Dakota. That increased proximity to capital can help pave the way the investment opportunities that burgeoning startup and small business communities need to get off the ground – and help encourage more diverse local economic growth.

“By making sure rural startups and small businesses have better access to investments from venture capital funds, we can help create new jobs and strengthen our hometown economies,” said Heitkamp. “Today, committees in both the House and Senate agreed. By passing our bipartisan, bicameral bill, it will help sharpen the focus on exciting new startup and small business investment opportunities that exist here in the heartland and get rid of a barrier to economic growth. We introduced our bill just last week, and it’s already gained tremendous momentum – and I’ll keep working to build on that excitement for bipartisan reforms that grow and invigorate our economy.”

“This bipartisan piece of legislation allows for more investors to enter into venture capital-type funds. That means small businesses will now have more access to capital to grow and create jobs. It also allows for more individual investors to participate in ventures with small businesses.  I’d like to thank Senator Heitkamp for her leadership on this legislation,” said Heller.   

"Over the past five years I've worked tirelessly to update our federal regulatory framework so it works for small businesses and startups,” said McHenry. “Today, we took a huge step in those efforts as the Supporting America's Innovators Act passed out of both the House Financial Services and Senate Banking Committees. With bipartisan support in both chambers, I'm confident this bill will soon become law allowing angel investing to reach its true potential."

Click here to learn more about the Supporting America’s Innovators Act, and here to read a statement of support from James Burgum, partner at Arthur Ventures – a Fargo-based venture capital fund.

In December 2016, Heitkamp and Heller’s bipartisan SEC Small Business Advocate Act to make sure small businesses and startups have a seat at the table as new federal rules are made was signed into law. Now, small businesses and startups will have voice on how they can raise funding and access the resources they need to succeed. Heitkamp and Heller’s bill creates an Office of the Advocate for Small Business Capital Formation within the SEC – the nation’s regulatory authority on protecting investors and keeping the U.S. marketplace fair and efficient – establishing clear lines of communication between small businesses and the federal rule makers to make sure small businesses can advocate for policies that help them build investments in their companies as well as jobs across the country.

Just last year, Heitkamp introduced her Startup Entrepreneur Empowerment Delivery (SEED) Act which would grant up to $120,000 in federal funds to ten small cities in rural states to invest in promising startups in their communities by providing the early stage funding that can often be a challenge to obtain. In the Fargo-Moorhead region, about a third of startups identified accessing early stage funding as the greatest hurdle to growing their business. By opening up more public-private resources for the smaller investments rural startups need to get off the ground, Heitkamp’s bill would help tackle that problem.

Last month, Heitkamp voted to confirm Linda McMahon to lead the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) after McMahon accepted Heitkamp’s invitation to visit North Dakota to see firsthand the importance of growing public-private partnerships that bolster the state’s small businesses and startups.

Heitkamp’s efforts to maintain SBA’s focus on North Dakota entrepreneurs builds on her work in July 2015 when she brought then-SBA Administrator Maria Contreras-Sweet to Fargo for the first U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship field hearing in North Dakota. At the hearing, and during a separate meeting with female entrepreneurs in Bismarck about collaborative strategies to encourage and support women-owned small businesses, Heitkamp and Contreras-Sweet spoke with local entrepreneurs about the roadblocks they often face in starting or growing their businesses. Since then, Heitkamp has been meeting with leaders in the startup and small business communities across the state to better understand their needs and concerns

Small businesses make up almost 96 percent of North Dakota’s employers, with close to 195,000 workers employed by small businesses statewide. Across the country, small businesses make up almost half of the country’s private-sector workforce from 2002 to 2010, creating about two-thirds of the nation’s net new jobs between mid-2009 and 2011.

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