The importance of early-stage investments should not be underappreciated. For example, as recently observed in the last quarterly Silicon Valley Venture Capitalist Confidence Index®  “approximately 49% of all job creation in the U.S. since the year 2000 has come in the areas of early and expansion stage businesses with early stage* investments experiencing a rise of 47% and expansion stage venture capital of $10 billion representing a 37% increase.”  

A number of recent reports documented how the prolonged financial instability…