Odds and ends at the end of the week

A few things of potential interest…

• A good tool for all you cleantech VCs and Founders out there:  Joel Moxley, an EIR at Northbridge, came up with a pretty useful prior-art search engine, PriorSmart.  Check it out.

• Must-read:  A terrific article on Georges Doriot, “venture capital’s grandfather”.

• Here’s a good interview with Susan Preston, GP at CalCEF’s new Clean Energy Angel Fund.

Deals from the past week:

• Evolutionary Genomics, which is developing biofuel feedstocks with improved yields, has raised a round of financing (amount undisclosed) from Altira Group.

• Small-wind innovator Mariah Power has taken in an additional $500k in financing, from Greenhouse Capital Partners and Big Sky Partners.  It’s unclear if this was a Series A or just a continuation of their seed round from last year.

• Jonathan Shieber at VentureWire wrote today that AMR developer Silver Spring Networks has raised an additional $17.4mm in what appears to be an insider Series C extension (with members from existing investors Foundation Capital, Edison Electric Institute and JVB Properties participating).  The original Series C was previously reported to be $40mm, last year.

• LED developer Bridgelux raised a $30mm Series D and $10mm in lines of credit.  VentureTech Alliance led the round, and existing investors DCM, El Dorado Ventures, VantagePoint, Chrysalix Energy Venture Capital and Harris & Harris Group also participated.  This follows on the company’s $23mm Series C from last summer.

• Greenline Industries, which claims a biodiesel production process that doesn’t require the use of water, has raised a $20mm financing, led by Leaf Clean Energy.  Somewhere, Jim Matheson’s ears just perked up...

• Brighter Planet, an online clean energy services and info provider, raised a $3.2mm Series B.  Crow Hill Ventures led the round.

Cleantech regional updates:  Here’s a good article on all the various efforts around the U.S. to create new cleantech clusters…  And then I thought this recent comment by Tim Chapman (who writes the Clean Ventures blog focusing on UK cleantech investing) was worth elevating for everyone—his response, after I had previously mentioned an article lamenting the dearth of venture capital in his neck of the woods:

That Independent story on the UK VC scene is a little overblown - 3i’s been doing next to nowt in the early-stage space for years, so their recent announcement just confirmed what everyone knew. Established firms move up-market - it’s always happened, and will continue to do so. Anyway, 3i’s not symptomatic of the UK market - they’re adamant they’re a global player, so the move should say as much about the global market as the domestic.

The figures show an increase in seed and early-stage deals, at least up till 2006, for the UK and Europe. It’s not as active a market as in the US, but it’s still in relatively good shape. Interestingly, a fair few low-end investors I’ve spoken to say that the problem isn’t in VC supply, but in demand - there’s barely enough quality early-stage businesses to take the money that’s currently in the market. Maybe that says something about the appetite for risk, or quality of entrepreneurship, but I don’t think lack of VCs is the problem.

Thanks much, Tim.

Finally, it’s not really about the venture capital side of things, but I thought this interview with David Kurzman of Panel Intelligence was interesting.