Apparently, June is Innovation Month in New England.  So I thought I would write a bit about one of the perplexing things about cleantech investing in New England.

Now, every region ends up being a bit self-centered at times, and New England is certainly no exception.  But it's a commonly-held and oft-stated position among those involved in energytech innovation in this region that "Massachusetts is THE world-class center of research in energy and clean technologies".

If you are one of those who takes this kind of statement literally, then it probably comes as some surprise to then see that California typically attracts significantly more cleantech venture dollars than Massachusetts, and even New England overall.  I've been part of meetings with investors and other industry participants here in the Boston area where the goal is put out there that Massachusetts should -- especially given its primacy in energy R&D! -- be able to top or at least equal California in terms of cleantech entrepreneurial activity.  And for lack of other trackable statistics, the disparity in cleantech venture capital spending is then lamented as a sign that Massachusetts is "falling behind."

I've been one to say such things myself at times.  Being here, surrounded by so many great researchers in so many varied energy and clean technology fields, really does give one the sense of being in a world-class research cluster that is second-to-none.  And then, as an investor, when I find myself inevitably investing on the west coast, I start wondering "Why?"  

Why do I seem to generally find California a better place to invest in (when I'm wearing my VC hat, versus my other private equity roles), when there's so much innovation around here?  Is it that that's where the dominant amount of cleantech venture dollars are sitting, and therefore more entrepreneurs go there?  Is it something about a disparity in entrepreneurial culture in general between the regions?  Is it just that MIT researchers hate venture capital while many California researchers seek it?  In other words, is there something "wrong" with Massachusetts (from a self-centered VC point of view)?  Or is it simply that California is so much bigger than Massachusetts, in terms of people and economy, so research cluster or not is a moot question?

I decided to take a really quick look into the question.  Starting with cleantech patents.  I wanted to test the theory that innovation is just as prevalent here as it is in California, and started naturally with patents as a proxy.  I couldn't find anyone who had already done this analysis the way I wanted it done (there are some cleantech patent tracking efforts out there, but I can't really get a tangible understanding of their methodologies, and they don't have the state-level breakdowns the way I wanted it), so I went to an online patent search engine and started searching for all published patents from 2007 to the present, with at least one inventor in the searched-for state (CA, MA, and NY).  I didn't scrub the results at all, because I wasn't looking for 100% absolutely accurate totals, I was simply looking for comparisons across regions.  Here's what I found:

As you can see, not only does it appear that California dramatically outpaced Massachusetts in terms of published cleantech patents over the past few years, but MA is even mostly behind New York state as well.  This is pretty damaging to all those Mass-philes out there who claim that this is the dominant place for cleantech innovation.  To put it another way, if you're a cleantech VC, looking at the above tallies, would you rather be in Massachusetts or California? Or even New York state?

Now two big caveats:  First of all not all patents are created equal.  This is just an unscrubbed tally of patents based on very simple search terms, and it might be that the 3 most important photovoltaic patents during this period, from an investor standpoint, were all in Massachusetts.  Or perhaps in NY, for example, a higher proportion of these patents were claimed by large corporate research arms (ie: GE) and therefore aren't accessible to venture investors.  So the above tallies might not tell the full story.  But even still -- there's a wide gulf between the number of cleantech patents published in California and Massachusetts.

Secondly, patents aren't a full proxy for innovation.  They're just a proxy of applied innovation.  For the most part, basic science research results in papers, not patents.  

In fact, I would argue that there's an important distinction between Research and Innovation.  Let me propose a taxonomy of sorts:  "Research" helps uncover basic principles, or invent entire new technology innovation areas.  "Innovation" is the application of those principles to the development of new, commercializable, patentable technology.  And then "Commercialization", the productization of that innovation and the introduction of those products to the market, is where venture and corporate capital is supposed to plug in.

So the answer might be that Massachusetts is indeed a dominant center of excellence for energy research -- but fundamental Research, not patentable technology Innovation.

This is, in fact, what I believe to be happening.  For instance, in the 2007 US Department of Energy budget, California universities and colleges received $100M in DOE support (mostly grants from the Office of Science, very basic research), whereas Massachusetts universities and colleges received $78M, a much closer amount (NY state, btw, received $84M).  And if you could map that out, I bet a 100 mile radius centered around Boston would end up being the top academic research dollar garnering area of comparable size, compared to California and New York state where the research institutions are much more spread out.  It's just one small slice of the cleantech research picture, but it does start to lend some credence to what I and others are sensing anecdotally -- that Massachusetts really is a world-class center of basic academic cleantech Research.

But basic Research.  Not Innovations ready to be Commercialized within a venture capital type time period.  

So let's go back to the original question about cleantech venture capital... In light of the above analysis, New Englanders should celebrate the fact that the region is receiving almost as much attention as the west coast in terms of early stage cleantech venture capital.  I looked it up, and thanks to the Cleantech Group's new data format for members (really a terrific job of data presentation, I absolutely love this new sortable format, kudos to them), I was able to look only at "early stage" (ie: 1st round) financings within each region:

In terms of dollars tracked by the Cleantech Group, the Northeast is only about half of the West Coast, but in terms of number of deals they're actually pretty comparable.  And as long-time readers know, because of the really broad range of capital-intensity across sectors and business models within cleantech, I always say that the number of deals, and not the dollars, is a much more accurate indicator of venture investment activity.  So the Northeast overall is right up there with the West Coast in terms of venture investments in cleantech innovation.

So Beat L.A.! and all that...  Massachusetts can declare (near) victory and walk away happy from this analysis, right?

Sort of.  I actually think what I may have identified is an unsustainable trend in the region.  If the patent-level innovation shows such a wide disparity, but the venture investments and research dollars look much more similar in number, one of three things is happening.

1. New England innovations, on a per-patent basis, are much more valuable than West Coast innovations.

2. New England cleantech investors have been harvesting available patentable innovations at a comparable rate to West Coast investors, but with a shallower pool to work from, so are going to hit diminishing returns much sooner.

3. New England cleantech investors have been more eager than West Coast investors (on average) to put venture dollars into more basic research efforts that are further away from commercialization.

The first one is probably nonsense.  And the second two possible scenarios (which aren't mutually exclusive, btw) are unsustainable.  When coupled with the fact that, anecdotally at least, the Boston cleantech venture capital community is rapidly shrinking and spending a lot of time on airplanes right now, it paints a picture that's less happy looking forward.

In other words, those who want to see a continued vibrant cleantech innovation-based economy in Massachusetts should be pretty pleased with how the region has performed to date, in comparison with California and other regions.  No doubt greatly helped by strongly supportive government policy at the state level. And they should be proud of the world-class energy technology research being undertaken here.  But they should also be concerned about the fact that there appears to be a possible disconnect between the large amount of brilliant basic energy Research being done here, and a relatively low amount of commercializable Innovation development being undertaken.  

To put it another way, there's an important R&D step between fundamental Research and venture-backed or corporate-driven Commercialization of new clean technologies, and in Massachusetts there's some evidence that this Innovation step is a relative weakness, at least when compared to some other top regions (it's not like Massachusetts is an absolute laggard or anything, but you get my point).

Massachusetts needs to be thinking about how to better hand-off all this fundamental science Research to the engineering-based Innovator community (which could be either internal or external to the research's academic setting) that can drive it closer to actual Commercialization.  

Or else the research will go elsewhere for commercialization -- or worse, go nowhere.

I've been most recently reading When China Rules the World.  A fascinating treatise on what happens to the world economy when, over the coming decades, China's economy becomes paramount in the world economic system.  China and cleantech is something I've been thinking about and investigating for some time now.

Timely then to see the report from New Energy Finance (note: opens pdf) that in Q1, China was the biggest recipient of clean energy project finance, nearly double that of the amount invested in clean energy project finance in the U.S., nearly two-thirds again more than that invested in Europe.

I think it's safe to say that China will be a major driver of clean energy and water technology adoption over the coming decades.  Not only because their economy is growing so quickly.  Not only because China has only 1/5th the water per capital, as well as much less domestic energy supply and arable land, than the U.S., thus necessitating wiser use of natural resources earlier in their economic development cycle.  But also because now they've visibly committed themselves to becoming leaders in the sector and, as one regional GP told me today, "they don't want to lose face by not meeting that target."

So China will be a major mover in cleantech markets.  But what does that mean?

I believe that the developments will impact cleantech investors in three phases:

1. The rapid-growth market phase

At first, the major impact on the cleantech economy will be China as outsourced manufacturer, and China as fast-adopter market.  We are already seeing this happening.  With such strong economic growth comes strong resource needs, and many cleantech startups I speak with are already in discussions in China about potential early rollouts of technology.  Using local distribution or other types of partners, they are looking to build early projects and find early customers there.  

This requires establishing such local partnerships, however, as it's a lot easier said than done to sell cleantech goods and services into this market.  So I know many entrepreneurs and investors who are racking up lots of frequent flier miles getting back and forth.  And spending a lot of time establishing strong partnerships there as a stepping stone to actual sales.

Furthermore, as cleantech hardware markets shift toward a fabless model using contract manufacturers for their device businesses, China will naturally increasingly become the actual manufacturer of cleantech hardware systems and components, just like has happened in the IT and telecom industries.

2. The homegrown innovation phase

China is awash in liquidity.  There is a lot of external capital chasing the opportunities presented by the market, but there is a lot of internal capital as well, looking for good domestic investment opportunities in China.  Plus, there is the national commitment to establish more homegrown technology leadership in this sector.

In the next few years we will see the emergence of more homegrown Chinese clean technology startups that are developing proprietary IP.  It is already beginning in sectors (such as large-scale wind turbines) where the technology is readily adaptable from technology developed elsewhere.  But with a steady source of strong technical expertise and domestic markets available, Chinese cleantech entrepreneurs will increasingly be among those developing first-to-commercialize solutions across a number of cleantech sectors and subsectors.

For cleantech investors, finding out how to access these entrepreneurs, and develop winning deals from such relationships, is the still-unanswered question.

3.  The China-sets-the-standards phase

As the Chinese market becomes the most important global market, and especially as homegrown producers become more independent producers of technology themselves, China will hold increasing sway over the development of entire industries like smart grid communications, smart buildings, distributed generation power management, M2M communications, and other subsectors of cleantech where standards-setting will be important.  

In smart buildings, languages like Bacnet are important standards that have been brought to market by European and U.S. technology developers to date.  But in the future, what the Chinese market settles on a standard will often be what the world settles on.  

And thus China will shift from being an attractive market for western cleantech entrepreneurs to think about servicing, to a critical must-address market that will be addressed by both domestic and foreign innovators alike.

All of the above will happen a lot more rapidly than many might expect.

Why on earth would anyone care about new homes right now? Isn't that a dead market?

Yes, in the U.S. the new home construction market is down 75% from its 2005 bubble levels.  The industry is badly hurting and won't go back to bubble levels.  But that still represents around 400,000 new home starts per year.  This is still a huge market.

During the last decade the way to make money in U.S. home construction was obvious:  Just throw up some homes and let people buy them.  It was a seller's market.  But now in the "new normal" where existing home sales are down and new home sales are way down, this puts pressure on builders and developers to think more creatively as market power shifts more to the buyers who are going to discriminate not only on price, but on value.

Meanwhile, we are seeing the early signs of backlash against commuting in this country.  The decades-long trend of suburbanization and exurbinization appears to be somewhat reversing itself.  It took the downturn to reveal this, but available market data indicates that the biggest price and default hits have taken place in the exurbs, and urban and near suburbs have been the most insulated from such effects.  Basically, as the real estate market has gotten softer, overall people have preferred to take advantage of availability closer to the downtown areas to migrate inward (or at least abandon the further out properties).

As people expect energy prices to continue to rise, this trend will continue.  So-called "smart growth" and "urban infill" are going to become more widely-heard buzzwords.

But energy prices don't only hit on the commute, they hit on the home itself.  Homeowners are going to increasingly care about the energy usage of their home... and they're going to be caring about other attributes (eg: indoor air quality, overall use of "sustainable" materials, etc.) as well.

All of this is on the margin.  I mentioned that the new home construction market in 2009 was around 400k units -- compare that with around 5M overall existing home sales per year.  And 72M in total owner-occupied homes in the U.S.  Any analysis of green homes in the U.S. needs to account for the fact that change is hampered by the deep installed base of existing inefficient homes.

Nevertheless, I think we can expect to see some significant changes over the next ten years.  

On the existing homes side, as energy prices do indeed rise (or at least become more volatile), we will see new residential construction further emphasizing efficiency and dense growth.  Oil price future are indicating long-term price expectations above $80/barrel.  Natural gas price futures indicate expectations of price rises of at least 50% over the next couple of years (and this will also drive marginal electricity prices).  Potential homeowners -- and even renters -- will start caring more about the energy efficiency of their homes.  And not just because of the energy costs themselves, but because of that as an indicator of construction quality overall.

There's a limit to how much premium potential homeowners and renters will be willing to pay for energy efficiency, but bear in mind two other factors: 1) as "smart growth" drives shorter commutes, that will free up more wallet-space for home "green-ness"; and more importantly 2) green attributes will be increasingly important to the developers themselves as it will help accelerate necessary approvals.

It's this latter point that's often forgotten, but all real estate markets are incredibly local, and any developer will tell you that construction is actually relatively easy to manage -- it's siting and getting necessary approvals that are the huge determinant of their profits.  The time it takes to get a development started and the costs along the way.  And the fact that evidence suggests "green buildings" have lower vacancy rates than other buildings. So even in the absence of a "green premium," developers have strong incentives to adopt green building attributes.

Not to mention new laws in many places like California that are often requiring zero energy homes and other similar mandates by 2020.  I expect that such deadlines will get pushed back.  But they still are important market signals.

Meanwhile, in the existing homes market, energy efficiency can be retrofitted, with compelling paybacks.  In a low energy cost market this type of activity has lapsed, but it is clearly coming back strong.  Again, it's on the margins, but even if only 1% of homes got energy efficiency audits and basic retrofits (air sealing, insulation, etc.) it would make a huge difference overall -- and certainly would be rewarding for that 1%.  And new government incentive programs designed to encourage such efforts are only now starting to have an impact and will not go away quickly even if the programs are not re-upped.  

So what does this all mean?

Well first of all, we can expect significant activity in the green homes market.  But it won't be geared around "sustainability", it will be focused on location and energy efficiency.  "Sustainability" implies environmentally-sensitive materials (ie: bamboo, or certified wood) and above-standard environmental performance (ie: water re-use, etc.) that appeals to a certain small high-end niche of the market, but most homeowners won't be willing to pay for (because of long payback periods, if any paybacks are even applicable at all).  But many more homeowners will care about the energy efficiency of a home because of aforementioned cost and quality indications.  And, barring a long-term drift downward in gasoline prices, on the margins new homeowners will increasingly care about shorter commutes as well, driving increased interest in denser, closer-in neighborhoods.  Mid-range "green homes" are a relatively untapped niche, but with strong latent demand.

Therefore, developers who can address energy efficient new home construction in a cost-advantaged way will be rewarded.  And developers who can do this in a dense-housing format will be doubly rewarded.  This is a tiny part of the market now, but I wouldn't be surprised to see a quarter of new residential construction in the U.S. (mostly on the coasts, but also in places like Chicago and Dallas) qualify under such concepts by 2020.  This will create an entirely new industry in new home construction done to tighter tolerances, using new processes and designs to improve energy efficiency, and with intelligence and automation built into the home from Day 1.

But this will add up to only a small dent in the installed base of homes.  But we can also expect a significant chunk of existing homes to start to adopt such technologies as well.  It will be hard to retrofit core designs to be more energy efficient.  But air sealing and insulation is easy.  And HVAC will be increasingly intelligent, able to incorporate retrofitted, very small (and cheap) sensors to more efficiently meet required comfort levels.  Home automation will be flirted with, but really boils down to HVAC controls from an energy perspective, and it would make sense that it would eventually be integrated into central HVAC rather than be a standalone add-on application.

All of this will be only a "niche" even by 2020.  But with such a huge overall market, even as a niche it will be measured in the billions of dollars by then.  And it will be growing quickly.

I've been thinking a bit about water lately.  So much media attention and investor and entrepreneurial interest are expended on looming energy shortages, but water shortages are perhaps even more acute.  A recent article in Fortune gave a good brief overview of water from a global standpoint.  If you're looking for water statistics and updates, the website of XPV Capital (a water tech specialist) has some good info.

There are clear looming issues with water use in the U.S.  And there are lots of uncoordinated actions going on in various parts of the country, and some hand-waving in general, but I haven't seen anyone really start to play out what's going to happen.

But it's clear to me that water is going to get more expensive over time.  It likely won't be because of any proactive water price increases by the governing bodies.  Indeed, local governing bodies appear to be just as allergic as ever to doing any kind of forward strategic planning around water.  And historically, in the U.S. people view water (for drinking, agriculture, or industrial purposes) as some kind of god-given right that shouldn't really need to be paid for.  So I think water pricing will only be affected by local and regional shortages and crises, not by any overarching strategic approach.

But such local and regional shortages and crises are happening.  In parts of the American southeast and southwest water shortages are already acute.  Here where I am this week in Texas, The Aransas Project has sued the governing state bodies for failing to manage water properly and thus endangering the whooping crane.  Take a step back and think about this one -- this is a group of Texans from all political persuasions, filing a lawsuit under the Endangered Species Act.  Water issues break across political lines, in other words, but they're also very local.  It's a really good illustration of what's likely to start happening lots of other places around the country where water withdrawals are starting to exceed water supplies.  (And an effort I've supported, btw)

And what will happen in the Southwest when the upstream states on the Colorado River start demanding access to their existing water rights?  In fact, California, Arizona, Nevada, etc. are all only able to access the water they need, thanks to upstream states like Wyoming and Colorado not fully using their own rights.  But that can't happen for long.  And even if it could, the water usage is already at unsustainable levels as it is.  We've built out some pretty major population centers in the Southwest that are dependent upon unsustainable levels of water demand. 

So I don't expect to see any forward-looking strategic policy shift at the national level that would result in any significant shift in the pricing of water.  But I do expect local water shortages (and the resulting legal, economic, etc. challenges) to rise up over the next couple of decades, and thus de facto raise the cost of water where they occur.

What does this all mean?

1. Water will be a sub-regional issue.  Which means that future water price rises will happen in isolated fashion, on a watershed basis in many cases, but certainly by region.  It will be a lot cheaper to access water in some places (like New England, for instance) than in other places (like the Southwest, for instance).

2. As such price disparities arise, it will start to affect the location of manufacturing operations.  Water-intensive manufacturers will have to trade off locating close to cheap water and energy supplies (mostly: far away from cities) with transportation costs to deliver to demand (generally: cities).  Easily transportable end products that are water-intensive, like pharmaceuticals, will relocate where water remains cheap.  

3. As water gets to be more of a strategic issue, corporations will lead the way in terms of adoption of new water treatment technology and water "microgrids" with significant re-use of water.  It'll be easier for corporations to adopt to the "new normal" in such situations than the local politically-driven processes affecting municipal drinking water, etc.  So selling new water tech to corporations will continue to be a key entry point for innovations.

4. Water efficiency will be increasingly important for agricultural use.  Water efficiency will be increasingly important for energy generation.  Both are very large consumers of water, but startups that can address either or both issues in a scalable and low-cost way will see entry points.

5. During the NEXT economic downturn, water infrastructure may be given the same government subsidies as energy infrastructure saw during this economic downturn.  Ditch-digging and pipe repair are good jobs creators, they just didn't get the necessary attention this time, but when people in swing states start being told they can't water their lawns because of infrastructure issues...

6. Local water districts will be pressured to encourage more intelligence at the end of the pipe -- the water analogy of demand response in energy.  So far the local government response has been necessarily binary: When there's a shortage, no one gets to water their lawn, etc.  But faced with more such instances, I expect we'll see more startups start focusing on "smart use" of water, and then they'll start pressuring local cities to grant exceptions for consumers who implement such solutions.

These are just some shallow thoughts around water, but it's interesting to think about how water shortages will specifically play out.  And that will affect entrepreneurs and investors in the water space as well.

"My job is to look for entrepreneurs who want to change the world," one young cleantech VC told me in an engaging twitter conversation last night, "and build bigger companies."

Very true words!  But how do we define "bigger companies"?

I've seen someone mention that only two percent of startups get their financing from venture capital.  I don't know the accuracy of that number, but it does ring directionally true.  That doesn't mean 98% of startups are bad businesses, however.

Let me describe two basic types of startups:

1. The big game-changing startup that is going to be manufacturing or otherwise producing something very new.  They're going to need some significant level of capital in order to accomplish this, because R&D and commercialization efforts and then production capacity don't come cheap, but they do come before revenues. 

2. The small local startup that is going to be a nice personal business, perhaps growing over time into something a bit bigger.  These tend more to be service or retail companies going after an established market, perhaps with a new twist.  These can be really compelling businesses for the entrepreneur, and if pursued in a lean way they won't require millions of dollars to get started.

The first type of company is the purview of VCs like the one I cited above.  The latter type of startup is the one that is classically self-funded by the entrepreneur (and their credit cards), as well as friends and family, and perhaps a community bank.

But what about the companies in the middle?

Let's better define the upper end of the problem...  What many entrepreneurs often don't realize is that large VC firms typically have a pretty significant minimum check size they'll write -- quite often the bar is set at $2M or $5M, depending upon the firm.  Even funds that will do smaller seed stage checks need to see enough capital intensity in the model that they'll have the opportunity to put significant money into the company over time.

Why?

Simple math.  The larger the venture firm, the more pressure to put significant dollars at work.  And the single most limited resource for that company is the time of the partners in the firm.  Each company in the portfolio requires time to manage, whether they hold a Board seat or not.  And there are often companies in the portfolio from previous funds that haven't exited as well.  They can't have a 100 company portfolio and claim to be "value add" with a straight face.  So these larger funds are pressured to invest only when they see the opportunity to put significant dollars in either up front, or over time.

In other words, IRRs are not enough.  If you have a $400M fund, and you put only $1M into a company, even if that returns 10x it's nice but not going to move the needle in terms of aggregate fund returns (not to mention the chances for glory for the GP who did the deal, btw, which is no small consideration for some).

You can't just add more partners because GP salaries and support staff have to be paid out of the management fees, typically 2%.  So this is why most large VCs I speak with -- even early stage and seed stage ones -- tell me they need to see the potential to put something like $10M into a company over time, at a minimum.  

That's a long way of explaining why VCs need to see some level of capital intensity in a startup before they can get involved.  And yet, if a company is going to need $1-3M of capital over time, that's probably too much for credit cards and friends and family to support. 

Where does this all hit in cleantech?  In Web2.0, people are already used to capital efficient businesses, so they've had to invent efforts like Y Combinator to compliment the bigger check-writers in the space who won't touch certain sized deals.  But in cleantech the gap remains.  If you are trying to develop something like a new solar cell, or a smart-grid network, or a new LED chip or fixture, that will require some significant capital before you get to cashflow breakeven.  But what if you're just developing something purely software-based?  Or a scalable service model?  If managed well, often these won't require such large amounts of capital.  And yet they can grow to be decently-sized businesses, even if they probably won't be the "Google of cleantech".

For outside observers tracking cleantech VC dollars, to a certain extent the reason they tend to declare that ALL of cleantech is capital-intensive is because they see all the VCs flocking to capital-intensive businesses because of the above dynamics.  Even in areas like energy efficiency and smart grid, where VCs now say they're interested because it's less capital-intensive, they typically are backing businesses that will "only" require tens of millions before an exit, instead of the hundreds of millions that have been required for some of the bigger named startups that were the focus a couple of years ago.

But there are indeed truly capital-efficient businesses in cleantech.  I get contacted by entrepreneurs all the time who are only looking for $1-3M or so to get started.  They're entrepreneurs, and they read about certain high-profile VCs who are interested in cleantech, so they reach out to those investors to raise their funding.  They have a business that, with a little bit of money, might turn into a $20-50M company, resulting (they believe) in very nice IRRs for the investor with such a light capitalization.  In many cases, they may already have significant revenues, and they just need a little bit of capital to hire up some more sales and implementation teams, or to shore up the balance sheet.

And then they're surprised they can't get any big name VCs interested.

In some cases, these entrepreneurs are simply underestimating the amount of capital they'll really need -- I'll write about that sometime soon as well (short version: take more money than you think you need, especially in the current fundraising environment).  But there are a lot of solid service, software, web-based, etc. cleantech businesses out there, that are having real trouble raising the capital they need.

It's a serious capital gap, if you care about more than just innovation in cleantech -- if you care about actual near-term implementation.  Because these businesses are the ones positioned to make an impact today.  To go back to the initial quote, these are companies that are poised to change the world... even if they're not poised to become a "big company" of the massive scale that young VC thinks he needs to see.

If you are one of these entrepreneurs, however, there are some underexplored options you should focus on instead.  Don't waste your time with the big-name firms who structurally won't be able to engage with you.  Instead, look to regional, smaller VCs -- such as the network of Village Ventures firms.  Reach out to local angel groups, and local smaller family offices.  And if you are indeed already at a revenue stage, local commercial bankers may be able to do a venture loan alongside any equity you might be able to bring in.  In other words, don't waste your time flogging your plan up and down Sand Hill Rd., spend your time networking locally to find the investors in the right check size range.

My point isn't to knock the perspective of the VC I quoted at the beginning of this overly-long column.  He's looking for a certain profile of investment that is right for his firm's size and strategy.  And I'm certainly not saying there aren't big-dollar VCs who won't write smaller checks.

But as this same VC wrote elsewhere in the conversation, "VCs want to be involved if the entrepreneur wants to build to a big outcome.  If you are happy selling [your business] for $20M, surely go to angels."  A snarky comment, but I would say it's completely valid at the $50M exit level and below, not $20M.

When the average venture-backed M&A event is well under $100M, a $20-50M exit can be considered a real win for the vast majority of startups.  Entrepreneurs need to acknowledge to themselves when their business is most likely going to be a <$50M exit down the road -- if it even exits at all, it may instead become a cashflow producer for the entrepreneur and angel investors.  That's NOT a bad business.  It can be a phenomenal business that makes the entrepreneur and angel quite wealthy, and makes a significant impact on their community. 

But it does mean you have to be smart about what types of funders you approach when you need startup and growth capital.

Most high-profile cleantech VCs will tell you they're looking for breakthrough technology.  The "black swan".  The "grid parity".  The "unicorns". (Okay, I made that last one up, but it wouldn't surprise you to see some VCs talking like that, would it.)

But there's an alternative model -- that the winners in cleantech will be the integrators, those combining proprietary and non-proprietary technologies into systems, rather than those innovating breakthroughs at the component level.

Absolutely, there's value to further innovation at what I'm describing in this column as the "component level" but which can be pretty important.  Cheaper solar cells, better battery chemistries, more efficient LED chips -- all these have value that I don't mean to discount.

But at the end of the day, all such innovations will need to be integrated into products, if not systems, intended to cannibalize existing markets and applications. 

I would argue that the "economic rent", or the real economic value, is going to be captured by the system integrators, not the component innovators, however valuable those component innovations are.

Why?

First of all, the existing markets don't know how to use such component innovations.  Adoption is slow. Lighting fixture OEMs have shown themselves to not be able to incorporate solid state lighting into their product portfolios either rapidly or effectively.  Solar installers have little interest in the latest hot but unproven solar cell technology.  Utilities don't want to risk reliability in the pursuit of efficiency improvements.  The markets aren't automatically incorporating innovations into actual products in a timely fashion.

Secondly and relatedly, component manufacturers don't have the point of contact with the customer.  By having to work through channel partners or other influencers, the component manufacturers lose sight of what the customers really care about.  When it comes to lighting, does the customer really care about how the fixture puts out light, and how much total light is sprayed out from the fixture in all directions?  No, they care about the amount of light that is delivered to where they need it -- on the manufacturing floor, or workers' desks.  All of a sudden, directionality matters.  If you're just selling LED chips, do you get that message from customers? No, but the integrators do.  And designing a system to meet a customer's specific needs becomes do-able to them.

Thirdly, the component manufacturers are delivering, for the most part, a commodity.  In solar or other generation technology? Kilowatt-hours.  In water? Gallons. In batteries it gets a bit more complex, but essentially it comes down to the amount of power that can be stored, and how quickly it can be released. There are lots of ways to accomplish this.  But from the customer's perspective, they want a comprehensive solution, not just the commodity or process itself.  All these components are best used when managed intelligently.  That's what the integrators do.  That's not what a solar cell manufacturer, an LED chip manufacturer, or a battery manufacturer necessarily do.  The integrators will be able to cherry-pick each such innovation as it comes along. Plus, customers will have specific needs for their products beyond just the basic commodity being delivered.  And the integrators will be developing products that not just accomplish the main mission, but do it with the right mix of other attributes.  And the smart integrator will also be future-proofed -- offering customers the promise that the components may be evolving rapidly, but the core system being bought will be stable for several years to come.

Finally, integrators are at the point of contact between products and services.  And I believe that is where the money is going to be made in cleantech.  Component innovation by itself is just building a better mousetrap and expecting the world to beat a path to your door.  Maybe one such innovation catches on, but many such pure tech bets will end up disappointing, even if the tech makes sense on paper.  Meanwhile, services without technology innovation are from the VCs' perspective low-margin and slower-scaling.  But at the intersection between those you find the integrators, who can latch onto access to new technology to drive installation and implementation services that can create a sticky customer relationship with good win-win margins for both vendor and customer.

So what kind of system integrator is best positioned to take advantage of these factors? An attractive system integrator will combine some proprietary technology with off-the-shelf components.  Ideally, the main tech engine (LED chips, solar cells, battery cells, etc.) are treated by the company as a flexible input.  And the proprietary technology comes in the form of controls or other "ancillary" features that actually make a significant difference to customer value.  This gives the company an edge versus competing integrators, but allows them to take advantage of the rapid innovation cycle at the component level.

Such thinking may not go over well in a venture community that values component-type ARPA-E fund-able intellectual property more than it values systems-level IP and know-how.  But it's what I've found so far to hold true in the cleantech sector.

At ARPA-E, listening to Jim Woolsey talk about the possible important role of natural gas in any effort for both "energy independence" and climate change mitigation in the U.S.

It reminds me of a personal opinion I've been sharing with peers for a while now:  That Oil & Gas need a divorce.

Historically, in the U.S. it's been a single industry.  "Oil&Gas", practically all one word.  You put a hole in the ground, and sometimes one comes out, sometimes the other comes out, so many large producers do a bit of both.  You can see how a marriage of convenience, at the very least, would be natural for the group.  Represented by the same industry servicers: Trade associations, lobbyists, PR efforts, organizations, research, etc. 

But the universe of oil and gas producers is not monolithic.  To use the parlance of Wall Street, there are "oily" producers and "gassy" producers.  The "oily" ones have been larger and have largely driven the industry's public positioning over the past few decades.  Which works for the overall group when priorities are in alignment.

But energy independence and climate change are creating a serious divergence of interests.  Oil is an imported commodity in large part, natural gas is domestic and seemingly abundant.  Natural gas fired generation, and transportation, has a very different carbon emissions profile than coal, or oil, the two incumbent fuels in each category respectively.

The problem is that the "oily" part is still driving the overall "Oil&Gas" community's positioning and perception.  So in climate change legislation that's been proposed, coal gets significant incentives to go "clean", but natural gas fired generation gets relatively little support.  There's significant opportunity in the U.S. for natural gas fueled transportation, but other alternative fuels get more support.  Switching home heating and appliances to natural gas from oil or even coal-fired electricity would make a significant emissions and efficiency impact, but the incentives have been underwhelming to date. 

Longtime readers will know I'm an "all of the above" proponent -- we need a robust mix of clean and cleaner energy sources if we're to make any kind of impact on our energy challenges.  Certainly, in my mind, natural gas has a very important role to play, as the most available already-scaled solution representing at least some improvement on the incumbent oil and coal fuels.  The natural gas industry, in my opinion, actually stands to gain significantly from many of the climate change policy ideas being thrown around in DC.  Some experts have described it as the best "bridge solution" to carry us through to an eventual low-carbon energy system.  But right now, the natural gas industry seems to be getting tarred by the same brush being applied to the oil industry.  And the "gassy" players seem to increasingly recognize that as a problem.

There are now some efforts out there to provide a voice specifically for the natural gas industry.  I expect to see even more such shifts going forward.