The emblem
One badge, one claim
A company displaying the NOVC emblem has made a simple public commitment.
We have not accepted venture capital, and we will not accept it while we are members of the NOVC Alliance.
That is the entire shared position. The emblem does not mean every member has the same politics, ambitions, business model, or opinion of venture capital. It does not certify a company’s ethics, product quality, labor practices, or profitability, and it does not endorse every decision a member makes.
It means the company has made one specific promise about how it is funded. A narrow promise is easier to understand, verify, and hold accountable.
Download
Every variant is available as SVG and as a transparent PNG. Prefer the SVG: it stays sharp at any size and weighs about 15 KB against roughly 600 KB for the PNG.
For light backgrounds
For dark backgrounds
The full-colour emblem carries its own disc and outer ring, so it holds up on either surface without a panel behind it. The two-tone and monochrome cuts are ink on transparency, which is why each has a light and a dark cut — pick the one that suits your background rather than placing the wrong one on a panel.
One file for both themes
If you can inline the SVG, novc-emblem-mono.svg is the monochrome cut painted in currentColor. Inlined, it inherits the surrounding text colour and follows your theme automatically — one file, no swapping.
<span style="color: var(--your-text-colour)"> <svg viewBox="0 0 1024 1024" width="96" height="96" …>…</svg> </span>
Referenced with <img src> instead, currentColor resolves to black — inline it, or use one of the fixed-colour cuts above.
Self-host, or hotlink
Members get a live emblem URL tied to their registry entry:
https://novc.fyi/badge/<your-slug>.svg
Hotlinking that URL means the emblem is served against your current membership. If a company withdraws, the badge stops resolving rather than sitting on their site making a claim that has stopped being true. Add ?v=mono-light, ?v=two-tone-reversed, ?v=mono-charcoal or ?v=two-tone to pick a variant.
Self-hosting the downloaded file is equally fine, and means your site does not depend on this one staying up. The tradeoff is that the emblem then keeps rendering regardless of membership, so honouring the pledge is on you.
The badge URL is only served to the member's own domain and its subdomains. Requests carrying a referrer from anywhere else are refused, so the emblem cannot be borrowed by embedding someone else's badge.
Requests with no referrer are served normally — plenty of sites suppress the header for privacy, and breaking a compliant member's emblem over a missing header would be worse than the abuse it prevents.
Link it to your entry
Every listed member has a page at novc.fyi/registry/<your-slug> — for example novc.fyi/registry/sawdust. Point the emblem there rather than at the registry index, so a visitor who clicks it lands on proof of your membership instead of a list to search.
For your README
A shields.io-style bar is served alongside the emblem, sized for a repository README:
[](https://novc.fyi/registry/<your-slug>)
Three styles, matching the shields.io conventions: ?style=flat (the default), ?style=flat-square, and ?style=for-the-badge. You can override the wording with ?label= and ?message= if it suits your README better.
A caveat specific to GitHub. GitHub does not load README images directly — it proxies them through its own image cache. That proxy fetches without a referrer, which is served normally, but it also caches the result for a long time.
So a README badge will keep rendering for a while after a company withdraws, until the proxy's cache expires. The revocation is real but not instant there. On your own site, where the browser requests the badge directly, it takes effect immediately.
Add it with your coding tool
If you build with Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot, or anything similar, copy the prompt below and paste it in. It names the variants, the markup, and the usage rules, so the tool can place the emblem correctly without further explanation.
Add the NOVC emblem to my website.
NOVC (https://novc.fyi) is a public pledge for companies built without venture
capital. My company is a member and I want to display the emblem.
1. Use ONE of these. Either is fine - ask me which I prefer if it matters.
(a) Hotlink my live badge, which stops resolving if my membership ends:
https://novc.fyi/badge/<MY-SLUG>.svg
Variants: add ?v=mono-light, ?v=two-tone-reversed, ?v=mono-charcoal
or ?v=two-tone. Ask me for my slug if you do not have it.
(b) Download one of these and save it into this project's own static
assets, so the site does not depend on novc.fyi being up:
https://novc.fyi/assets/novc-emblem-color.svg
full colour - reads correctly on light or dark backgrounds
https://novc.fyi/assets/novc-emblem-two-tone.svg
two-tone grey - light backgrounds
https://novc.fyi/assets/novc-emblem-mono-charcoal.svg
monochrome charcoal - light backgrounds and print
https://novc.fyi/assets/novc-emblem-two-tone-reversed.svg
two-tone reversed - dark backgrounds
https://novc.fyi/assets/novc-emblem-mono-light.svg
monochrome light - dark backgrounds
Look at the background colour where the emblem will actually sit and pick
the matching variant. If you are unsure, use the full-colour one.
2. Place it somewhere persistent and visible - usually the site footer, an
About page, or alongside other trust marks.
3. Link it to my own registry entry, https://novc.fyi/registry/<MY-SLUG>, so
a visitor who clicks it lands on proof of my membership rather than a list
they have to search. Ask me for my slug. If I do not know it, fall back to
https://novc.fyi/registry.
4. Markup, adapted to this project's conventions and templating:
<a href="https://novc.fyi/registry/<MY-SLUG>">
<img src="/assets/novc-emblem-color.svg"
alt="NOVC - Venture Capital Free"
width="96" height="96">
</a>
5. Usage rules that must be respected:
- Display at 48px or larger, so the "Venture Capital Free" ring stays legible.
- Keep clear space around it of roughly 10% of its width.
- Do not recolour, rotate, stretch, crop, or add text inside the badge.
- Do not combine it with our own logo into a single composite mark.
- Do not imply that NOVC endorses, certifies, or audits our product. The
emblem makes one claim only: we have not taken venture capital.
Match the existing code style, formatting, and component patterns of this
project rather than pasting the markup in verbatim.
Displaying it
Link the emblem back to your registry listing so visitors can verify the claim. A minimal example:
<a href="https://novc.fyi/registry">
<img src="/novc-emblem-color.svg"
alt="NOVC — Venture Capital Free"
width="96" height="96">
</a>
Host the file yourself rather than hotlinking it here, so your emblem does not depend on this site staying up.
Guidelines
- Display the emblem at 48 px or larger so the “Venture Capital Free” ring stays legible.
- Keep clear space around it equal to about 10% of its width.
- Do not recolour, rotate, stretch, crop, or add text inside the badge.
- Do not combine the emblem with your own logo into a single composite mark.
- Do not use the emblem in a way that implies NOVC endorses, certifies, or audits your product.
The licence
Use of the emblem is licensed to members for as long as they remain in good standing. The licence ends when membership ends.
A company that accepts venture capital must stop displaying the emblem before the funding is accepted, and follow the rest of the withdrawal requirements in the membership standard.