While Anil makes a lot of great comments about VC's shift towards institutional PE, the legal issues he harps on are insignificant.

Until 2012 or so there was no legal concept of "venture capital". Around that time, the SEC adopted some new rules in response to the GFC. In those rules came the "venture capital adviser" exemption. To be a "venture capital adviser", a firm needed to avoid doing a lot of things that looked like private equity investments or hedge fund management. The only consequence of falling awry of the new "venture capital adviser" definition was registration as an "investment adviser" with the SEC.

The important anti-fraud provisions of the Advisers Act still apply to "venture capital advisers" even though they aren't registered, and most big VC shops would have probably been pushed to register for other reasons anyway.

The legal stuff is nearly irrelevant here.