By Alexandra Ulmer and Dawn Chmielewski

MILWAUKEE (Reuters) – Donald Trump’s pick of Jay Dee Vance for vice president boosted hopes among Silicon Valley conservatives on Tuesday that they are about to have a fellow “tech brother” near the White House for the first time.

“WE HAVE A FORMER TECH VC IN THE WHITE HOUSE. GREATEST COUNTRY ON EARTH BABY,” Delian Asparouhov, a partner at billionaire investor Peter Thiel’s venture capital firm Founders Fund, wrote on social networking site X.

Author of the best-selling memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” graduate of Yale Law School and later a San Francisco businessman, Vance had a rapid rise through American politics.

At 39, he has only served two years in the US Senate representing the state of Ohio.

The Republican National Convention on Monday officially named Trump and Vance as their ticket in the Nov. 5 election to challenge Democratic President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.

Some right-wing investors began recirculating old Vance tweets and set their sights on friendlier regulations ranging from artificial intelligence to cryptocurrencies.

“He has a direct line to some major influencers as he evaluates or thinks about some of the policy around technology,” said Matt Murphy, a partner at venture capital firm Menlo Ventures, noting the traditional divide between Washington and Silicon Valley.

On the campaign trail, Vance used his background to serve as a bridge between Trump associates and wealthy Silicon Valley donors, many of whom opened their wallets to Trump this election.

Republicans are a minority in the heavily left-leaning San Francisco Bay Area, although conservatives in the tech industry, including Thiel, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen and entrepreneur Elon Musk, have become more vocal .

Encouraged by the promise of technology, they protest what they see as unnecessary restrictions placed on their businesses by progressive politicians and labor.

Vance rode that wave, with the help of Thiel, who poured about $15 million into Vance’s successful 2022 US Senate campaign and invested in the VC firm Narya he founded in 2019.

Silicon Valley conservatives say they see Vance as one of their own, even as they differ on some policies.

Despite his record, Vance has said big tech companies have too much influence and has called for the breakup of Google (NASDAQ: ), positions at odds with conservatives who question government regulation.

Entrepreneur and cryptocurrency investor Tim Draper, who supported former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley in the Republican primary, said he was optimistic that Vance “is more of a VC than a lawyer.”

“A good understanding of how freedom and startups drive growth in our economy is critical to the continued success of Silicon Valley, our nation’s ‘golden goose,’” said Draper.

Draper saw Vance’s cryptocurrency investments as a sign that he is “probably misreading (intuitively understanding) the economy of the future to some extent,” he said, using a term popular in tech circles. Grok is also the name of the ChatGPT challenger from Musk’s xAI startup.

Vance owned more than $100,000 as of 2022, according to his federal disclosure from October 2023.

The Trump-Vance campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Vance’s ties to Silicon Valley, his proposed technology policies and whether he still owns cryptocurrencies.

Asked whether the Trump-Vance ticket would seek to break up Google, Trump’s son and adviser Donald Jr., who favored Vance for the No. 2 slot, told Reuters at the conference in Milwaukee: “I’ll let them discuss some of the intricacies of the platform… but I like his (Vance’s) understanding of the technology.”

Vance introduced Donald Trump Jr. to businessman and investor David Sachs and helped organize a fundraiser in June at Sachs’ San Francisco mansion that raised $12 million for the former president.

Sachs thanked Vance in his speech at the event, according to a source familiar with the matter, saying “this all started with JD Vance calling and asking if we could do an event for President Trump.”

The former president used the June event to cast himself as a champion of cryptocurrencies and criticized efforts by Democrats to regulate the sector, Reuters reported at the time.