Venture Capital Law in Cambodia: Engineer the Regulatory Framework to Promote the Startup Ecosystem

Abstract

As the startup ecosystem emerges, Cambodia requires a distinct set of legal frameworks to promote many regulatory aspects to boost national innovation and strengthen the connection of key players in the ecosystem. One of them is financial support for startups, ‘Venture Capital Law’. Therefore, this paper studies the current existing legal framework of Venture Capital (VC) in Cambodia, key bottlenecks that VC encountered, comparative analysis with other countries such as the United States, Japan, and China, and then propose new regulatory frameworks which solve the key bottlenecks and aim to optimise the growth of a startup ecosystem. The finding is that different stages of VC present different bottlenecks such as fundraising (funding source), startup investment (investment readiness of the startup, and deal structure), and exit (immature the capital market for startup's IPO and lack of regulations for Merger and Acquisition (M&A)). The new regulatory frameworks should endorse the use of pension funds as a source of VC funds in the future, encourage private corporations to invest in startup causes, include regulations to promote the readiness of founders, encourage the use of convertible notes, and fasten the regulation governing M&A with the balance of antitrust law.