Cleantech companies typically require a lot of capital before they become profitable and bring success to their investors. Investing in them can be rather strange business for all the IT/media/tech investors (which is a majority of the the VCs out there) who are used to deploying smaller capital amounts to reach commercial success. John Doer told us (again) just last week that Google required a total investment of merely $25million!
So what are early stage cleantech venture investors to do when their portfolio companies require >$100 million before scalability of technology is proven and reached? To prevent dilution VCs have to keep on investing in subsequent rounds. But doing so might require slightly difference investment vehicles, and probably a different set of professionals.
So that is exactly what they are doing! Many major VC firms are raising large funds solely focused on later stage financing of energy/cleantech companies. Private equity investors and investment banking professionals are in demand and they are joining leading firms in large numbers. Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia, etc…‘they are all doing it’, as a VC remarked to me. Interesting!
Here’s the news on Seqouia Capital from the PE Week Wire.
Asset diversification has become business as usual in private equity, as many top-tier firms have launched distressed funds, real estate funds, hedge funds, sub-debt funds and other things that don’t involve privacy or equity (let alone both). Venture capital firms, on the other hand, have mostly stuck to their knitting. Sure, you can argue the demerits of certain firms moving toward later-stage deals or raising country-specific funds, it most of it still falls within the conventional rubric of venture capital.
Posted by Bilal Zuberi 
