Attacks against climate science and global warming countermeasures seem to have sidetracked renewable energy and even cleantech. Public sector funding for solar energy has been almost criminalized in the current Congress. Here at Tula, friends and acquaintances sometimes urge us to find a less beleaguered field.
And yet we are buoyant, even optimistic. We see a large difference between noise and turmoil in the short run compared with impressive potential in the longer term. Nor are we alone in these hopes, since serious investment is flowing into very long-term cleantech possibilities.
Pension funds and asset managers are committed to cleantech, but the long-term view can best be seen in venture capital and private equity firms. These patient investors know that picking winners eludes even the savviest. Thus venture capital firms may back dozens of companies representing a broad variety of technologies. They know that few of them will result in an explosive initial public offering. To justify risking their capital, they just need one to succeed.
Consider one well-known venture capital firm, Technology Partners. Their portfolio includes both cleantech and life science companies. Under the cleantech umbrella, they have undertaken more than a dozen investments in energy technology, water technology and advanced materials.
The deeper you delve into their cleantech portfolio, the more varied it appears. Technology Partners has put capital into alternative energies from coal, into exchanges for energy and environmental capital markets, into thin-film solar, into metering and smart grid applications, not to mention energy storage, a new wind turbine design, biodiesel, a methanol innovation with telecommunications uses, advanced batteries, nanomaterials, water sensors, and electric cars.
Several factors unify this diverse list. One is that they fit Technology Partners’ criteria, offering large market opportunities and a unique and defensible technology. Another similarity is no less important. These companies and others like them all need excellent, dynamic managers, as well as leaders who can overcome the harrowing chasm that stretches between start up and IPO.
Maybe it’s our bias as an executive search firm, but we believe that leadership ability is a necessary condition for everything else. Leaders are the ones who can persist effectively in the face of short-term hardship, and keep aiming at the long-term rewards.
