Nevada Assemblyman Steve Yeager, second left, responds to a question during a StartUpNV panel discussion on entrepreneurship and public policy at WeWork in Town Square Tuesday, Nov. 28, 2023. StartUpNV, a nonprofit statewide incubator and accelerator for Nevada-based startups, is sponsoring the Las Vegas edition of Techstars Startup Week, a five-day event held across the world to celebrate entrepreneurship and showcase the local startup community.
Wednesday, Nov. 29, 2023 | 2 a.m.
With the 2025 Nevada Legislature on the not-too-distant horizon, entrepreneurs and business owners are engaging state lawmakers about how they can continue to better Nevada’s economy through different forms of legislation — particularly in regard to fostering startups.
A panel Tuesday morning featured multiple Nevada lawmakers and business leaders as part Techstars Startup Las Vegas, a five-day event sponsored by Las Vegas-based StartUpNV celebrating Nevada entrepreneurs and scaling the state’s economy, and offering participants workshops, networking opportunities and more.
“It’s just always good for legislators to be able to interact with people in the community,” Assembly Speaker Steve Yeager, D-Las Vegas, told the Sun at Tuesday’s panel. “And, especially, I think the startup community is often neglected in the legislative process. There’s no natural voice or natural lobbyists.”
Moderators discussed legislative efforts that have been made to ease the startup and overall entrepreneurial process in Nevada, primarily in regard to issuing securities and raising capital.
Nevertheless, many Nevada entrepreneurs remain doubtful of the likelihood that legislators will prioritize their issues, or listen to their problems and possible solutions, said Heather Brown, president and co-founder of StartUp Vegas, and a senior vice president of entrepreneurial development at the Las Vegas Global Economic Alliance.
In response to a question from Brown about how constituents can engage with their legislators effectively, Assemblywoman Erica Mosca, D-Las Vegas, encouraged people to reach out to their legislators, introduce themselves and build a relationship with them.
“If you’ve never invited your legislator to come and meet and know more about what you’re doing for our state — for our community — that should be something that you’re thinking about,” she said. “Because you’re helping us do the work, as being a Nevadan who’s making our economy grow.”
Another topic of discussion during the roundtable — titled “Caffeinated Governance: Brewing Insights on Entrepreneurship and Policy” — was the costly expense of starting a business, especially what many termed exorbitant fees around something as simple as obtaining a business license.
Hopefully there can be a more streamlined process or one-stop-shop for starting a business in the future, said Yeager, who pointed to the new Office of Entrepreneurship in the Nevada Governor’s Office of Economic Development as a possible proponent of that mission.
The biggest barrier to such streamlining, he said, is that it requires the cooperation of elected officials at the state, county and city levels of government.
“It’s going to take a lot of people at the table, and it’s going to take a collective vision to make sure that everyone in that chain all the way up to the top of the state is happy with the changes that were made,” Yeager said, acknowledging the plight of business owners who have to pay at least hundreds of dollars for city, county and state licensing. “ … I think there’s a way.”
The roundtable — which featured input from State Sen. Rochelle Nguyen, D-Las Vegas, Assemblyman Gregory Hafen, R-Pahrump, and Doug Erwin, senior vice president of entrepreneurial development at the Economic Development Authority of Western Nevada, as well — also focused on how Nevada can compete with other states to incentivize business, including by building up the workforce in Nevada, which participants noted was lacking in comparison to its peers.
Brown, a member of the Board of Regents, noted that the pipeline from education to the workforce in Nevada may need some work, and there’s not really a good apparatus for training employees in-state. She pointed to a state requirement in which training curriculums for employees must undergo a rigorous and expensive review by a commission that only meets four times yearly.
“We’ve actually stifled our innovation future quite significantly, because folks do not come to the state to train,” she said. “And I wanted to talk about training credits and stuff like that, but I actually think the root of the problem is we can’t get people to come here and train.”
The roundtable, which also included discussion on tax abatements for businesses, investments and resources for aspiring business owners, was not just a great opportunity for legislators to connect with their constituents and celebrate past legislative wins for business, but also a way to look forward and generate new ideas for the next legislative session, Yeager said.
The ideas brought forward will hopefully be brought to the forefront of the legislative session in 15 months, he said after the panel, noting that improving the business climate both to incentivize business people to come to Nevada and for them to stay in Nevada is important.
“Those two things are, sort of, two sides of the same coin,” he said. “And I think anything we can do to improve the environment for startups is going to help bring them here and help keep our own people here.”
The goal going forward is to have more meetings between industry leaders and legislators ahead of the 2025 legislative session, and Yeager said he would like to see state agencies who can play a role in solving problems in business also become involved.
“Our goal is to hopefully go into that legislative session with four, five (or) six solid ideas that are well-vetted, that the Legislature likes and wants to see,” said Jeff Saling, co-founder and executive director of StartUpNV during the roundtable. “And hopefully they’re all going to be impactful.”
