Rob Day | December 15, 2008 at 3:59 PM

The revolution will not be publicized

The end of last week was probably a terrible time for @Ventures to have put out a presentation challenging recent trends in cleantech venture capital, given what's been going on in the news cycle...  There were meaty discussions by Michael Kanellos at GreenTech Media (I'll discuss that column a bit more in another post) and Katie Fehrenbacher at Earth2Tech, but otherwise financial reporters were too busy throwing shoes at ponzi-scheme hedge fund owners.  Some I spoke with blamed the failed auto bailout or the Obama energy and environment team rumors as among several bigger stories that needed to be covered.  One reporter I spoke with explained that he'd just gotten fired.  Tough times in the media industry right now, hard to argue with anyone's choices about which stories to cover. Still waiting to hear Dan Primack's take, however, since he's been particularly critical of the sector as being too capital-intensive. But the amazing thing was how many people engaged in the discussion even without much press coverage.  In the first 24 hours after we posted the presentation, it was viewed by around 1,000 people and downloaded nearly 100 times.  And the emails and comments I've been getting are pretty interesting.  Mostly positive reviews, and some engaging questions and pushback. Here's hoping that the news continues to get out, because the investment trends discussed in the presentation should be the topic of a lot more conversations in the cleantech VC and limited partner communities... In the spirit of continuing the dialogue, here are some selected (and unattributed) comments I've gotten over the past couple of days since posting the presentation:

"A question I have for you is, why is there such a late-stage mentality?  You made great points--that clean tech isn't going to have the rapid returns of Web 2.0 (what industry could?) and that the timeframe for commercialization for most clean tech companies is not longer (and probably shorter, in many cases) than biotech.  Is it simply the herd mentality driving the late-stage focus ("everyone's moving to late-stage investing to get more rapid returns")?  Or is a fundamental lack of understanding of the dynamics of the markets for clean tech products; in other words, many VCs and other investors don't understand the fundamental structural characteristics of development of such technologies, and so they have unreasonable expectations of timeframes for returns?" "Saw your post yesterday on 'what's wrong with cleantech venture capital' and flipped through the PowerPoint - I thought you were right on - like you, we have been looking at this developing landscape trying to figure out the best places and stages to play in..." "It’s interesting, the perspective one takes on the conclusion on your last slide wholly depends on what point of view you’re arriving at it from. If you’re an existing VC investor with money that you must spend and LPs beyond the 'getting interested' state of energy/environment, I’d agree with you – except that if too many people pursue the same strategy it’s going to be tough to make money. If you’re coming from outside it and looking at how to set up an optimal financing vehicle for energy/environment, I’d be 180 degrees in the other direction." "You stole my pitch!" -- early stage cleantech VC

More comments and reactions are welcomed, as I think this will be a topic on this site for some time to come. . . . .