Some tips if you are looking for VC funding

This is not related to CleanTech but I thought this may help in general. Here are some tips from me if you are looking for funding from a VC firm.

1. Be very focused: You have an hour or two to prove yourself when you are meeting a VC firm. Do not spend too much time in teaching the VC firm the market landscape. The chances are they have come across ten companies like you before. Come straight to your offering, what differentiates you, your team background, competitive landscape and how big your business can become. Always include how much you are looking to raise and how do you plan to use that capital in the presentation.

2. Show your commitment: VCs like entrepreneurs who show commitment to their venture. That commitment can be in the form that you have put lot of your own capital in the venture, you have left your job and working full time on the venture or it can be that you have worked hard in thinking through all the issues, challenges and risks in executing the business and have a definite game plan.

3. Do not mumble: You should come out very strongly and passionate when you are talking to VCs. Make sure all people can hear you well and you do not eat words in between. More than your venture, VCs are judging you as a person. Can you sell? That is the question on the back of their mind.

4. Never say you do not have a competition: VCs usually will throw you out if that is the case. One thing that can signal is that you do not have a market and other thing it will do is make hard for VCs to benchmark you and also in some cases understand what you are doing and how big you can become.

5. Get yourself referenced: It is very important to get yourself referenced through somebody who knows the VCs. The chances are you will have lesser uphill climb if a strong person who knows the VCs is first introducing you to them than you doing that directly.

Intel Capital warns of 'cleantech' bubble

The president of Intel Capital, one of the biggest venture capital investors, has warned that his industry is on the brink of another dangerous asset price bubble, particularly in so-called “cleantech” environmentally friendly technologies.

Arvind Sodhani told the Financial Times: “The biggest challenge for venture capital companies is when valuations get out of whack – this always ends in pain, and we’ve started to see a little bit of that in the recent past.

“It is particularly the case in cleantech/greentech. These areas are hugely overvalued for their fundamentals. The credit crunch has made it slightly better but not much.”

Clean technology spans a range of industries including alternative energy, energy storage, recycling and waste management and advanced new “clean” materials.

Total “cleantech” investment by all groups including venture capitalists was estimated at $94bn last year, up from $75bn in 2006, according to New Energy Finance, a consultancy.

Mr Sodhani compared the rush to invest in areas such as solar power and waste management to the overheating of the internet boom, when venture capitalists were burnt by hundreds of failed investments after the dotcom bubble burst.

Clean energy accounted for 7.4 per cent of all US venture capital investment last year, up from 1.1 per cent in 2003, according to the National Venture Capital Association and PwC.

However, Mr Sodhani said cleantech would still be a key focus for Intel Capital, especially in the wake of rising energy costs. “The way energy has been used and consumed has been grossly inefficient because we lived in an era of cheap energy.

“Technology is going to be deployed across the energy consumption food chain to help make it more efficient,” said the boss of Intel Capital, which has invested more than $6bn in over 1,000 companies and 40 countries since it was created in 1991.

Mr Sodhani said Intel Capital’s portfolio, which was valued at $2.6bn in September 2007, had produced its highest returns in recent years from India, followed by China, then the US and finally Europe.

He said this explained why venture capital was dominated by global funds able to straddle the globe. “The venture capital industry has discovered that innovation and entrepreneurship takes place all over the world and not just in Silicon Valley or Route 128 in Boston.”

The main focus for Intel Capital in recent years has been to invest in the high-speed Wimax internet technology to ensure the mobile spectrum is opened up to all users, rather than being dominated by different proprietary technologies.

CleanTech market landscape

I will recommend people to browse this link to get a broad overview of CleanTech market

http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/greentech-market-taxonomy-chart.html

Manoj

CleanTech Top 10 Startups

I thought worthwhile sharing this list of top 10 CleanTech start-ups (Source: www.greentechmedia.com). Technology landscape cover innovative battery storage, Solar Thermal, lower cost PV cell, electric Car and transportation network, Smart Grid monitoring and metering, fuel cell, LEDs and biofuels through gasification route.

Is anybody aware of similar companies in India, specially in the battery space? Let me know if you have come across interesting companies like these in India.

1. A123 Systems : Fast-charging, high-cycle lithium ion batteries are based on a proprietary nanophosphate electrode technology developed by the founders at MIT.

2. Gridpoint: SmartGrid Platform which acts like a modem, transmitting information about the distributed load from homes and businesses to a centrally located GridPoint Operations Center.

3. Project Better Place: Create an integrated electric vehicle transportation network providing vehicles, charging stations, batteries, and an innovative financing package.

4. BrightSource: Solar Thermal concentrator using flat mirrors

5. Luminus Devices: LED lights

6. Coskata: Biofuel from multiple feedstock using syngas to liquid fuel route.

7. Bloom Energy, Inc.: Solid Oxide fuel cell

8. TH!NK: Electric car

9. Suniva: Higher efficiency PV cell

10. Silver Spring Networks: Smart grid with real-time networking between energy consumers and energy suppliers on open-platform Internet protocols.

Manoj