I just finished moderating a panel at the Always On Venture Summit in Menlo Park, CA with some heavy-hitter investment pros in the world of Greentech Venture Capital.
- Ray Lane of Kleiner Perkins
- Marianne Wu of Mohr Davidow
- Jennifer Fonstad of Draper Fisher Jurvetson
- Michael Dannaher of WSGR
- Duncan Williams of Wedbush Morgan Securities
In looking for a theme in Greentech VC investing, Ray Lane of KP said the last few years was the "Age of Innocence," this year was the "Battle for Middle Earth" and from now on it's "Back to the Future." All the panelists seemed hopeful about the future and glad to see 2009 in the rearview mirror. We are going to see "more rational investment" from VCs going forward according to Lane.
Lane said that every year the partners at KP list areas they'd like to consider investing in and water and algae biofuels always make the list. The problem is "You have to kiss a lot of frogs" to find the right investment in those sectors . They continue to look.
Mr. Lane also alluded to their stealth vehicle firm V-Vehicle, covered by GTM here. He stressed that cars need to be built for specific regions and Americans don't like tiny cars. V-Vehicle will be building cars directly targeted at the American market. Lane suggested we take a look at The Electrification Coalition, a not-for-profit group focused on bringing electric vehicles to mass scale in order to combat the economic, environmental, and national security risks caused by our dependence on petroleum.
On the subject of rational investments Lane spoke about how start-ups have begun moving from ambitions of being power suppliers to equipment suppliers. Ausra might be a good example here, moving from solar thermal energy provider to solar thermal equipment provider. Ausra actually has a few "strategics chasing them," and in Lane's words, "a lot of liquidity in greentech will happen this way as legacy players look for companies that have removed technical risk, but don't have the balance sheet to scale."
