Mayfield Cranks Up Green Effort by Recruiting Todd Kimmel

Todd Kimmel, the boy wonder behind many of the greentech investments at Advanced Technology Ventures, has joined Mayfield Fund as a partner. He will work with managing director Navin Chaddha.

Mayfield is one of Silicon Valley’s oldest and most respected VC firms—it put money into stalwarts like 3Com, SGI and SanDisk, companies that are probably older than many people reading this—but to-date it hasn’t been an active player in green. It has investments in Servomax, which makes voltage stabilizers, and Lattice Semiconductor, which makes blue LEDs.

The addition of Kimmel will likely change that. The 33-year old Kimmel was behind ATV’s investment in cellulosic-ethanol-maker Coskata (he actually incubated Coskata) and GreatPoint Energy, which wants to burn coal cleanly by gassifying it. Kimmel was a principal at ATV. It’s an old Silicon Valley tradition for a firm to not elevate principals to partner. As a result, many migrate to other firms to become partner.

We interviewed Kimmel back in August for our newsletter The Venture Power Report (a must have for investors and a great gift idea). He said that he was becoming more interested in green chemistry, water and bioplastics. Solar has become a bit overheated, he said at the time. A shift into chemistry and water, though, also means looking more at earlier-stage companies.

Mayfield, though, will likely also put a heavy emphasis on energy efficiency and smart grid. Efficiency and smart grid investments largely revolve around porting hardware, software and networking technologies to control the consumption of power. It’s a hot market and Mayfield has a pretty good grasp on the underlying components.