CleanTech Open Global Forum 2011 - Part 1

Oddly, cleantech markets and social capital markets are barely aware of each other, despite obvious areas of complementary expertise. So I traipsed to San Jose to the Clean Tech Open Global Forum to interact with the very high quality CleanTech entrepreneurs, and those entities that fund them.

I have a project in mind to facilitate the bridging of these investment ecosystems that I hope will unlock further capital, but for now, let me simply report on some excellent startups I spoke with.

Impact investors would be interested in what I think of as Alchemy 2.0, and Regenerative Products

• Waste (post-consumer, especially) to energy
• Waste (post-consumer or industrial) to disaster recovery goods
• Energy Grid-busters
• Off-grid irrigation and energy solutions
• Those companies in the gray area described below that add Social Entrepeneurial connection into the communities they serve, primarily via directly creating Green Jobs and providing education.
• Very low impact transportation solutions, whether local fabrication, mass transit, remote monitoring, etc.

Impact investors MIGHT be interested in super-stopgaps

• Efficiency solutions for water use
• Alternative building materials
• Efficiency solutions for currently deployed energy or power systems; including transportation
• Behavioral change solutions even if they provide only incremental energy/water advantages, because of the learning involved
• Alternatively-powered individual vehicles (rather than mass transit)

Lost in translation are those solutions that appear to work against inevitable change

• Cleaner dirty energy
• Industrial waste to consumer goods

 

In Part 2, I'll expand on specific companies.

Comments

[Mitra Ardron]

I don't think we met there Jessica. I was one of the judges of the Global Ideas track.

One point I think distinguishes this space from Impact spaces (e.g. SoCap, Investors Circle) is that investors at CTO are primarily $$$ focused. I've spoken to two companies that had potential investors try and talk them out of their social mission, or try and talk them into focusing on the western ($$$) rather than developing country (impact) version of their product.

I was also helping a company with a really interesting water treatment project talk to investors, and it was disappointing how little the investors were interested in the potential impact of their product.