Napster founder Sean Parker and a group of major players in the Silicon Valley tech scene have launched a new “ideas laboratory and advocacy organization” called the Economic Innovation Group in Washington, D.C. to promote the kind of agenda in Congress that the entrepreneurs backing the group have been pushing for for a while, with very mixed success.
“It’s time for a paradigm shift in the way we think about growth, investment, and job creation. Important voices are missing from the policy debate, and Washington is mired in the same, stale conversations,” said EIG’s executive director and co-founder Steve Glickman in a statement. “We’re bringing together entrepreneurs and investors who are at the vanguard of our economy to tap into their ideas, resources, and creativity to help increase economic opportunity around the country.”
Glickman, formerly an economic advisor to President Obama, is leading EIG along with former trade association executive and Republican Senate aide John Lettieri. Along with Parker, the group has backing from SV Angel founder Ron Conway, Canvas Venture Fund co-founder Rebecca Lynn and a few other big names in the world of Silicon Valley venture capital.
The goals of the group are apparently not quite as tech-focused as the names might suggest. Rather, it wants to try and create a “centrist” message and political agenda. That’s going to be more than a littler difficult in a Congress where political polarization has made it difficult even for the Republican majority to garner enough support to pass its own legislation. Still, EIG was created by people with a history of taking big risks and winning.
“It’s time for those of us in the tech community to look beyond the borders of Silicon Valley, and to think long term about solutions to broader national challenges,” Parker said. “Our approach to public policy should leverage the lessons we learned as technology entrepreneurs and investors: take big risks, seek out innovative solutions, and don’t shy away from big problems.”
Parker also co-founded FWD.us, the immigration reform advocacy group that, among other activities, unsuccessfully tried to get the leaders of the House of Representatives to vote last year on the immigration reform bill passed by the Senate. EIG will be focused on issues that they hope will be bi-partisan, economic opportunity issues and boosting the creation of better-paying jobs in the U.S. Whether or not the new group can actually convince lawmakers to take up its ideas remains to be seen.
“Washington needs to facilitate new approaches for driving private investment to entrepreneurs struggling to access capital, grow new businesses, and create high-paying jobs,” Lettieri said. “We know there are policymakers on both sides of the aisle who share this vision, and we intend to leverage our resources to help their ideas break through.”