Some members of venture capital firm @Ventures prepared the following presentation (embedded below) entitled "What’s Wrong with Cleantech Venture Capital?" Additional background on this presentation can be found on this post by Rob Day, Principal at @Ventures. Some of the key points of the presentation are:
[W]hat we at @Ventures have started to see in the cleantech venture capital sector are some unhealthy and likely unsustainable trends. Not undermining the overall cleantech VC investment thesis, mind you, but some specific trends within that opportunity that bear watching closely:
- The shift to larger and larger funds.
- The related shift to later-stage investing.
- The related shift into capital-intensive subsectors and business models within cleantech.
- The mismatch of investment concentration with the geographic dispersion of cleantech innovations and innovators.
- The concentration of venture capital investments into just a few subsectors, while the lion’s share of subsectors receive much less attention (much less dollars) from investors.