CAE’s Origin Story
It began with the financial crisis of 2008. John had a ringside seat to that historic incident because he was serving as policy director at the Financial Services Forum. In his role, he was closely involved in the policy response that became the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.
But even after that legislation was implemented and the economy began to revive, it became clear that the recovery was not nearly as robust as it should have been. The economy’s growth remained below 2% in the spring of 2011, and unemployment exceeded 9%, despite considerable efforts by Washington and the Federal Reserve.
At that time, research began to yield major insights into entrepreneurship. Spearheading this work was the organization that has done so much for the causes I care about: the Kauffman Foundation, with Carl Schramm as president and CEO and Bob Litan as vice president of research and policy.
The research revealed three significant facts:
- Startups drive economic growth. New businesses are disproportionately the source of innovation in our economy. And innovation fuels economic growth by improving productivity (as demonstrated by the economist Robert Solow in the 1950s).
- Startups account for virtually all net-new jobs. Established companies tend to pare down their workforces as they mature. In fact, firms five years old or older eliminate more jobs than they create. New companies create most new jobs.
- US entrepreneurship had been declining for decades. Ian Hathaway and Bob Litan showed that entrepreneurship had been waning in virtually every US metro area and across industry sectors since the late 1970s.
Listening to Entrepreneurs
All these findings led to a crucial question: Why was US entrepreneurship—so crucial to the health of our economy—in decline?
No one had the answer.
So John Dearie and his colleague Courtney Geduldig spent the summer of 2011 traveling the country and conducting roundtables with more than 200 entrepreneurs in a dozen cities, asking them directly, “What’s in your way?” What they heard became a book and a bright idea.
CAE Was Born
John realized, “We needed an organization in Washington to educate policymakers about why US entrepreneurship was failing—and what to do about it.” He believed that if policy action could reverse the decline, we could return to the kind of economic growth and job creation the country needed.
He left his role as CEO of the Financial Services Forum to found the nonprofit CAE in July, 2017.
The Power of the Network
CAE is made up of many exceptional contributors who not only connected me with the organization initially but who have supercharged my knowledge and abilities ever since. It was Ian Hathaway who first brought CAE’s good work to my attention. Brad Feld was another link—I’d been involved with Techstars for many years. And of course, I knew of Bob Litan because of his influential work with the Kauffman Foundation.
Today, as part of CAE, I’m plugged into a network of extraordinary experts who support my endeavors in capital innovation and science-based technologies, including Steve Case<, Gina Raimondo, Kristina Johnson,and Eric Smith.
This is a beautiful aspect of the entrepreneurial world. All of us feel responsible for connecting one another, because we know the power of relationships over time. Together, we create a flywheel of support, collaboration, and potential for US entrepreneurship—and the economy it stokes.
The INVEST Act: CAE in Action
An excellent example of CAE’s transformative work is a legislative package called the INVEST Act, comprising the twenty-two bills summarized here, which passed the House of Representatives with a bipartisan vote of 302–123 on December 11, 2025.
While CAE works to improve many different aspects of entrepreneurship, the INVEST package focuses on capital—specifically, on making it easier for investors to provide entrepreneurs with the capital they need to launch their new ideas. Assuming this important legislation gets enacted, it will address a number of egregious problems currently afflicting the startup world:
- Only 2% of equity capital raised and deployed in this country goes to women founders.
- Less than 1% of equity capital goes to entrepreneurs of color.
- Approximately 75% of venture capital is raised and invested in only three cities: New York, San Francisco, and Boston.
These disparities are caused by an investor base that, due to antiquated restrictions, is overwhelmingly white and male. Human beings have a natural tendency toward homophily—that is, “a liking of the same”—which means investors tend to invest in people who look like them, have similar backgrounds, and are starting businesses they can relate to.
CAE understands that to diversify capital recipients, we must diversify the investor base to include more women, people of color, and residents from all regions of our vast country. The INVEST Act will do just that. Or, to quote the fund managers of color who participate in CAE’s ongoing roundtables, “If this legislation passes, it will change the world for us.”
Changing the world: a big goal, but an achievable goal—and one that all of us at CAE share.