With early stage capital for cleantech innovation becoming increasingly scarce, crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter, Indiegogo and a new crop of clean/green ones are beginning to emerge as significant sources of funding for selected next-gen clean technologies. Hurdles remain, particularly for investors seeking returns, but I’m more optimistic about these sites’ usefulness to cleantech entrepreneurs than I used to [...]
I drafted this memo in early 2003 for a venture capitalist friend of mine, well before the bubble in cleantech. In light of the back and forth on the recent Solar City IPO, I thought it was worth revisiting. Some of the points were pretty prescient, calling out many of the challenges cleantech investors and [...]
We all know energy is global, and as much policy driven as technology driven. We have a quote, in energy, there are no disruptive technologies, just disruptive policies and economic shocks that make some technologies look disruptive after the fact. In reality, there is disruptive technology in energy, it just takes a long long time. [...]
By Tao Zheng, with David Anthony, an active cleantech venture capitalist, who passed away in April 2012. The sun is the champion of all energy sources, in terms of capacity and environmental impact. The sun provides earth with 120,000 terawatt (TW) energy, compared to technical potential energy capacity of single digit TWs from other renewable sources, [...]
by H Lee Rust Not long ago I had a visit from my friend Al B. Rich. I had seen Al a year ago just after he completed the concept design for an Internet B2B portal for buyers of eye glass hinges and screws. I had explained then that the Internet bubble had already burst [...]
A large portion of the energy and ag sectors cleantech targets are strongly backed by liquid and well developed debt markets and lending practices. But in cleantech, basic nuts and bolts debt has been scarce or weird. We have cleantech companies, venture capitalists and pundits babbling self servingly about a “gap in the capital markets” that we [...]
GreentechMedia and Cleantech Group this quarter reported near record levels of cleantech venture capital investment. Nearly $2.6 Billion in deals. No, quantitative easing hasn’t made the dollar slide that much yet, the numbers are real – mainly as the solar and transport deals vintage 2004-07 are getting deep into their capital intensive cycles. But a [...]
Live from the Cleantech Forum, the largest investor conference for energy and environmental technologies, our take on how to tell if the venture capital investor you are talking to really may be your friend. Only partly tongue in cheek. 1) when you ask how things are going, he moans about all of his portfolio companies [...]
Every few conversations about venture capital, someone laments the “herd mentality” of the venture capital sector. That is, the tendency of venture capital investors to invest in similar areas. It’s a favorite topic of cleantech afficianados as well, both before cleantech got hot, and since then. I’d like to ask though, are we sure the [...]
by Jason Barkeloo, CEO of Pilus Energy My business partners and I discovered an innovative way to unlock energy stored in carbon compounds. After a little back-slapping and “atta-boys,” we sought to raise the capital to launch a pilot. This led to another discovery; the destructive impact the economic crisis is having upon the capital [...]
It’s been a long year and a half or so since we published our last Cleantech Blog Power 5 on the top investors in cleantech. Time for round two. As usual the criteria for inclusion. Investor made a significant contribution to the cleantech investment sector More smart looking investments than stupid looking investments On balance, I’d [...]
Here’s what Kachan and Co. believe we can expect for the new year in cleantech worldwide… and the outlook is positive, if that darn economy thing doesn’t get in the way.
By Sanford Selman We live in an age of intense global competition for more sustainable ways of providing food, water, energy and transportation to a growing population against a backdrop of diminishing and deteriorating natural resources. And thus, the race is on to create the next generation of technologies, business models and companies to provide [...]
by Richard T. Stuebi This past week in New York, at its annual East Coast investor forum, the Cleantech Group released its 2010 Global Cleantech 100, profiling the private cleantech companies that a set of panelists thinks has the most promise for large long-term impact. Some highlights from the list and the report: In the [...]
Voices from the cleantech venture sector whine at least once a quarter about lack of M&A activity. In carbon that hasn’t been the case this year (though only a handful of US venture capitalists could stomach that “obscene” foreign policy risk in carbon, and so largely non traditional investors made the bucks). Despite the carbon [...]
by Richard T. Stuebi I was recently forwarded an article by Amol Desphande, partner of the renowned venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, entitled “Investing in the Biomass Industry”, which appeared in the September 2009 issue of BioCycle magazine. No doubt seeking to contrast Kleiner Perkins from its peers, Deshpande questions the prudence of investing in [...]
Cleantech limited partners have a big conundrum. It’s called unrealized gains. After years of struggling, cleantech investors are now quietly but optimistically beginning to talk about impressive gains in their funds. Unfortunately, the elephant behind them that LPs are beginning to talk about is the prevalence of massive unrealized gains from the behemoth solar, biofuels [...]
I’ve now been asked enough times, that at the risk of destroying what little edge Jane Capital may have in cleantech, I finally got around to blogging our “Rules” in cleantech investing and business in general. Hopefully it will stimulate some good debate. One of the things that makes cleantech different from other investing areas, [...]
I’ve been warning about a massive mispricing of risk in cleantech investing for years. Cleantech Venture Capitalists Beware – What You Don’t Know About Energy Can Kill You Beware the Allure of Ethanol Investing Is there a cleantech bubble? Experts don’t think so That certainly doesn’t mean that cleantech investing is bad. On the contrary, [...]
The cleantech crunch is on. And a few juicy tidbits are coming to light. Optisolar – Crunched. Several 9 figures into it, what do we find? The only thing of real value are the development deals in a post subsidy boom year. Is it a “financial market” issue? Only if manufacturing and technology development are [...]
