Viewing posts tagged "Conferences"

Rob Day | August 31, 2009 at 8:13 AM

Two upcoming conferences for entrepreneurs seeking funding

I always hesitate to highlight conferences on this site, since there are far too many interesting ones than I could ever mention, and I hate to highlight some and not others.  However, for entrepreneurs seeking funding, there are two upcoming conferences that haven't gotten a huge amount of attention yet, but could be valuable showcase opportunities for the right startups.

Cleantech startups with at least one woman in a leadership role (at the "C" level) or in a significant position of equity and influence may want to reach out to Astia about their upcoming Silicon Valley conference, which will have a dedicated cleantech track.  The application deadline is Sept. 10th.

Also, here in New England the Fifth Conference on Clean Energy will be taking place on November 12 & 13, at the end of Clean Energy Week.  Selected entrepreneurs will be giving 10 minute investor pitches, and previous participants have raised $80M.

It's still tough out there to raise funds, so I thought I would pass these two lesser-known opportunities along to those interested.

Rob Day | September 17, 2008 at 1:06 AM

There was one?

Pretty safe to say that most of the financial world isn’t focused on cleantech venture capital this week.

However, here in Washington, DC the 18th Cleantech Venture Forum is in full swing, with nearly 500 attendees from VC firms, startups, larger companies, and assorted other market participants.  I’ve already been asked by a couple of reporters about the impact of Lehman, et al, on cleantech venture capital, and the answer seems to be “we’ll have to see.”  There seems to be little direct impact, aside from perhaps a few companies re-evaluating their choice of i-bankers.  But the overall market conditions may impact the sector in less direct but still significant ways.

Meanwhile, the first day of the CTVF was another good networking and learning experience.  Interestingly there’s a relatively strong presence here of Scandanavian companies—not sure what that means, but it’s interesting.

Perhaps the two highlights from the day were the water presentation by Dr. Peter Rogers of Harvard and the political roundtable discussion moderated by John Harris of Politico.

Dr. Rogers spoke on the challenges facing our society when it comes to freshwater supplies, based on his article published in Scientific American back in July.  The talk was great not because it was full of new info (at least for those readers who already follow this issue), but because it was a terrific summary and crystalization of the challenge and the necessary solutions.  Dr. Rogers proposed a 6 point action plan:

1.  Price water closer to its real societal cost

2.  Conserve irrigation water, including the use of low-water plants (perhaps via implementation of GMOs)

3.  Invest in water infrastructure (which will require trillions of dollars worldwide)

4.  Adopt eco-sanitation—reducing the use of water in sanitation and recovering what water is used

5.  Ship “virtual water” by rationalizing world food trade

6.  Utilizing advanced desalination technologies

Later in the day, the political discussion featured Jason Grumet from the Obama campaign, Hank Habicht of Sail Ventures (representing the red team but not nec. the McCain campaign), Frances Beinecke of the NRDC, and Jeff Leonard of GEF, alongwith the aforementioned John Harris as moderator.  It was a good, rational discussion of energy and climate policy and likely shifts next year; but of course, during this good, rational discussion there was concurrent horse-trading going on just down the street as the House worked on a very politically-driven energy bill.  A bit of an awkward juxtaposition.  But it gives me the excuse to link to Politico, one of my favorite websites, so there’s that at least.

Rob Day | April 14, 2008 at 3:52 PM 1 Comment

MIT Energy Conference and other events

Very much enjoyed attending the MIT Energy Conference this past weekend. It has become the best of all the student-run conferences on energy technology, attracting attendees from all over the world, and is also one of the better networking opportunities for cleantech VCs on the east coast. They always seem to get some interesting speakers (last year it was Jeff Immelt, this year John Doerr and Jim Rogers), and hundreds of attendees. Doerr gave his usual stump speech (receiving some good natured ribbing later by Rogers and Bob Metcalfe), mixing some inspirational thoughts, some examples from Kleiner's own greentech activity, and some plain talk during Q&A. For example: over the past 3 years, Kleiner's seen 1,500 plans, met with 150 entrepreneurs, done 50 visits to research labs, and put $250mm into more than 30 startups. The foci are "the 3 C's: Cars, Coal and Conservation." Fisker, Bloom Energy ("It's been seven years so far, and I think it will be 9 until they are fully commercialized"), Miasole, Amyris and RecycleBank were all highlighted, as was California's AB32. [as always, note that yours truly would make a terrible journalist and likely got quotes wrong] Some of the best moments came during Q&A:

• "Clearly we need a national cap-and-trade for greenhouse gases."
• Refering to the fact that federal government R&D into clean energy per year is less than one single day of Exxon's revenues: "These numbers are so low, they're almost criminal."
• In response to the inevitable "bubble" question: "We do not have overinvestment against the scale of the problem."
• In response to a question about how to make it profitable to stop deforestation and agriculture-related GHG emissions: "I don't know."

Later, Jim Rogers of Duke Energy gave a highly entertaining talk (after a hilarious intro by MIT's Ernie Moniz -- former ruggers out there will be amused to learn Rogers is a former hooker) on the challenges facing Duke while managing the challenges he fully acknowledged face us on climate change. What came through loud and clear was Rogers' commitment to energy efficiency as a primary energy source -- he went so far as to argue that "decoupling" policies are not enough because they only make the utility ambivalent about whether to go with energy efficiency efforts or energy generation capacity in order to satisfy growth in demand, and so instead utilities should be able to treat efficiency as a "production option" and get additional revenues for it. It was a very good effort to help the audience see things from Roger's chair, and to pragmatically engage on the issues. Some notable quotes:

• "It's a 'bet the company' bet to build a nuclear plant." The cost of nuclear power is going up like the cost of everything, and all costs are going up dramatically.
• "Sequestration's no walk in the park."
• "We need urgency, not panic."
• "If we have the price of carbon right," all but two of Duke's existing power plants will be retired by 2050.
• "We need an economy-wide cap-and-trade," but not an auction for the rights, which would essentially be a carbon tax, which could result in a consumer revolt. (However, Jim did favor a "surcharge on electricity" to fund more DOE research, so I guess the real issue is making sure that the coal-heavy utilities don't carry too much of the burden -- at some point, Jim and I will have to talk about tax shifts...)
• Upon taking a sip of his drink, "It's not water, it's vodka. When you build coal plants, you need vodka."

Both Doerr and Rogers gave nice reasons for their commitment to addressing climate change: Daughters and grand-daughter, respectively. It was also very entertaining to be invited as a member of the "press" to attend the adjacent press conference for the big announcement that MIT and the Fraunhofer Institute are teaming up to launch the "MIT-Fraunhofer Institute for Sustainable Energy Systems." German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier was there alongside Massachusetts Sec. of Energy and Environmental Affairs Ian Bowles, so lots of scribes and photogs... and one highly amused VC.   Yours truly's self-centered entertainment value aside, this launch is a big deal and yet another good sign of the major efforts being undertaken to help build the cleantech cluster here in New England. More info here. A very good conference overall, a must-attend next year as well. Two other events to keep in mind:

________________________________________________

On the west coast, make sure to come out to the next REBN event -- REBN will be hosting a happy hour next Wednesday, April 16th from 6:00pm - 8:00pm. It's been some time since our last event, so try not to miss this excellent opportunity to network and talk all that's clean and green. Our membership has exploded in the last year, so I expect a great turnout. These events will be more regular in the future, so if you can't make this one, there will be another just around the corner. Wednesday's event will be held at MR at 560 Sacramento St (between Sansome St & Montgomery St). There will be drink specials and plenty of opportunity to mingle. No need to RSVP, just come and enjoy. Thanks to all who responded with interest to volunteer helping to put these events and others together. We received an overwhelming response and have assembled a great crew to deliver content and activities on a more regular basis.

________________________________________________

In the Boston area:

Join your Boston-area cleantech colleagues at the next Renewable Energy Business Network happy hour:

April 22nd, 6:30PM

REBN-East’s Earth Day Happy Hour Location: The BU Pub (click for details, map and directions) 225 Bay State Road Boston, MA Co-sponsored by @Ventures and the BU Energy Club

Rob Day | March 5, 2008 at 5:40 PM

Cleantech Venture Forum wrap-up and other news

Thanks much to Eric W. for filling in while I was off the grid for over a week—I hereby BOTH denounce AND reject his “snark”...  but hope everyone enjoyed it.

Also regrettably missed the Cleantech Venture Forum out in San Francisco last week, which sounds like it was a pretty good one.   Some media coverage on major developments at the event:

•  WalMart and the Cleantech Group’s new sourcing announcement
• Cleantech Group expansion into India with Vinod “Greentech” Khosla at the helm
• Discussions on investing in India and China cleantech
• Google, Masdar and Simbol Mining Corp winning awards
• Some photos from the event
• The winning VC firms for the DOE’s new EIR program

Deals from the last week or so:

• GTM already discussed Southridge Enterprises, Miles Electric Vehicles, Ausra, 1-Solar, Solar Systems, Hoku, and Climos, as well as Mascoma, APX, PureSense, and ActaCell.  More on the PureSense round here.

• PurFresh (f/k/a Novazone) also closed their Series C, previously discussed back in December.

• Khosla Ventures is part of a reportedly $12mm Series A (in two $6mm tranches) into Pax Streamline.

• GE has so far put $20mm into A123 and $4mm into Think Global.

• SolarPower Israel has raised $1.1mm (“at a company value of a few million dollars”) from Precede Technologies and Rosenram Development.

Investors in the news:

• Altira Group closed their fifth fund at $176mm (or $178mm, the linked article appears to have some confusion).

• The latest cleantech deal numbers—from Dow Jones VentureSource and from New Energy Finance.

• An interview with Dave Ryan of GreenSpark Ventures

• An effort is launched to create a democratic pledge-fund-format cleantech venture fund for “average Joes”

Cleantech cluster-building updates:  Massachusetts thinking big, the Rice Business Plan Competition looks like it will be very strong, New York’s renewable energy task force says the state should put $400mm into cleantech, and the Bay Area may enact a carbon tax (hope they checked out my last post on the topic).

Finally, it’s well worth checking out GTM’s 9 big solar trends.

Rob Day | February 23, 2008 at 5:30 PM

Squeegees and t-shirts and air-powered cars

Lots happened this past week:

• Sub-One Technology, an advanced coatings company that helps infrastructure resist corrosion and reduce friction, raised a $24mm Series C led by Nomura and including GE Energy Financial Services, Chevron, and ATV.  Perhaps the company’s products could be used on the proposed $3B ethanol pipeline that’s being talked about for bringing the fuel from Iowa to the Northeast.

• Solid state lighting startup Albeo raised a $1.5mm round of financing from Green Spark Ventures.

• At the GreenTech Media solar data day in NYC, there were several sobering opinions—including the consensus of a panel of investment analysts that the solar industry shakeout is now a question of when, not if.

• Tata Motors said they’re going to work on an air-powered car… sort of.

• GTM also came out with a report on solar PPA markets, and Arno had some must-read thoughts on it.

• I stumbled on this interesting article on the need (sometimes) for “patient capital” in cleantech.

• Clean Technology Investor had a very interesting column on how the lack of standards in the U.S. carbon credit market is hindering its growth, and thus hindering the ability of low carbon technology startups to monetize the additional potential value from offset sales.  “So, in the absence of national standards, regional authorities, an alliance of investment banks and even a voluntary marketplace - the Chicago Climate Exchange, or CCX - are attempting to develop them ad hoc. The process of setting up specific qualifications, trading rules and market operations is still in the embryonic stage.”  Track down a copy of the full article for an interesting read…

• “Hercules, Hercules, Hercules!”

• At the Piper cleantech conference in NYC, a representative from Ausra gave probably the world’s first investment presentation to ever combine a) a revenue forecast chart with the y-axis denominated in Billions; and b) the statement: “we have an army of squeegee men.”

• Finally, this fantastic site made the rounds among VCs…  Drop it like it’s hott, like cleantech hott.

Rob Day | October 31, 2007 at 6:45 PM

Toronto and Boston conferences

Enjoyed attending two very strong cleantech conferences over the past few days.

The semi-annual Cleantech Venture Forum was, as always, well-attended and a great opportunity to network with peers in the industry.  You can see some summaries of the proceedings here, here and here.  Prism Solar won the prize for most promising company among the presenters—later, the company shared with VentureWire that they’ve raised $6.5mm of their ongoing Series A round (in February we mentioned they’d raised a bit over $2mm to date), with I2BF Venture Capital providing some of the capital.

One particularly intriguing session at the Forum was a presentation by member of the “Developer and Platform Evangelism Group” from Microsoft—for anyone interested in smart building technologies and environmental performance tracking, take careful note that MSFT is now moving into the sector…

We also learned that cleantech venture capital took another big jump up in the third quarter in North America, with $1.26B in investments.  That was a 36% increase over the third quarter of 2006, and a 50% jump up from Q2 2007.  Once again solar and biofuels led the way, apparently.  We’ll have to revisit these numbers once the details are known—as always, it’s interesting to see how much of the increase is concentrated in a small number of big “venture” deals.

Then I had the pleasure of taking part in a venture capital panel at the 3rd Annual Conference on Clean Energy here in Boston.  It was a very good showing, demonstrating all the commitment here by the regional government, investment and non-profit communities, toward the development of a strong cleantech cluster.  What was quite interesting was the hosting of a parallel Energy Workforce Summit at the same event, illustrating nicely the jobs growth potential that is at the heart of cleantech cluster-building efforts.

Gov. Deval Patrick gave a very well-crafted speech on the topic at hand, which was all the more notable for the fact that the Red Sox victory parade was going by right outside the convention center.  It worked out very well for everyone who sprinted out the door after the Governor’s speech in time to see the “duck boats” drive by with the team members waving and the crowds roaring… Worked out very well for everyone except Peter Girguis of Living Power Systems, who was stuck not only presenting directly after the Governor, but also right at the height of the parade goings-on.  So for those of you (like me) who skipped out on Peter’s presentation to gawk at Big Papi, do yourself a favor and check out LPS at www.living-power.com, they have a very smart technology with a good potential solution to a lot of off-grid power challenges in both developed and developing economies.

Deals from the past week:

• Solar concentrator startup GreenVolts announced a $10mm Series A, led by Greenlight Energy Resources, and including participation by Avista Corporation and other undisclosed investors.

• Lots of talk about Shai Agassi’s Project Better Place startup, which has apparently raised a whopping $200mm in financing from a group of investors including Israel Corp., to develop infrastructure for re-charging and support for electric cars.  This will be a fascinating one to watch…

• Optimal Technologies International, which is developing supply-side and demand-side systems to optimize (note: not “maximize”, which would be entirely different…) the consumption of electricity, raised a tranched $25mm financing from Goldman Sachs ($13mm in the first tranche).

• ImageTree, which has developed land-imagery offerings for monitoring forests (with a variety of potential cleantech-related benefits) has raised a $4.5mm Series B led by Battelle Ventures.  PA Early Stage Partners, the West Virginia Jobs Investment Trust Board, the Conservation Fund and Innovation Valley Partners all also participated in the round.

• Last but not least, congrats to the Cleantech Group on their recent investment by Credit Suisse.

• VentureWire is also reporting that SensorTran (full disclosure: note that in the past I briefly served as an observer on their board), which has developed fiber optic technology for temperature, pressure and other sensing, is looking to raise a Series B by year-end.  Kent Kalar, the CEO, told VWire that they have received a term sheet, and that they expect this to be their final round of venture financing.

Cleantech investors in the news:

• Israeli cleantech venture group Terra Venture Partners has raised $15mm of their inaugural fund, and has already made two investments…  Meanwhile, also in Israel,  Greylock and Israel Cleantech Ventures have formed a joint venture, CleanStart, to provide seed capital and mentoring for startups in the region.

• General Catalyst has closed their fifth fund at $714mm—the firm invests across a broad range of sectors, but here in Boston, Hemant Taneja has been a driving force behind a lot of the recent cleantech cluster-building efforts in the region.

• Kyoto Planet Asset Management has launched the Kyoto Planet Fund, which will invest in both public and private cleantech businesses.

Other news and notes:  Here’s a terrific recap of the recent Solar Decathlon...  Speaking of solar, Duke Energy wants to buy a solar developer (and there are lots to choose from)...  Econometric dorks like myself might appreciate this interesting event study...  The California Clean Tech Open winners have been announced, congrats to all…  Yikes... And finally, enjoy.