Word: sectoral
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...just flashbacks to that meltdown that initially kept venture capitalists cool on clean tech. Starting up an Internet company required relatively low levels of capital - at least before you started buying your employees massage chairs - and dangled the possibility of a quick and lucrative payoff. Cracking the energy sector, with its powerful incumbent companies and forbiddingly high capital costs, requires a more patient investor. "There may be some VCs willing to finance a $100 million project plant, but most can't," says Howard Berke, a veteran tech entrepreneur and co-founder of the solar company Konarka. "It could mean...
...clean-tech sector was absorbing 11% of all venture capital in North America and Europe. Investors started knocking on Todaro's door, and they haven't stopped since. "We went from hat in hand to not being able to return investor calls," Todaro says. The company won millions in financing, and has just announced a deal with a firm called Green Earth Fuels to develop 100 million gallons (380 million L) of biodiesel by 2010. Says Richard Kaufman, CEO of the international sustainable investment company Good Energies: "There is just a wall of money out there...
...names from the mainstream business world are migrating into the clean-tech sector - because they want to help the planet and their bankbook. Lois Quam, a pioneering health-care executive, who was last year named one of Fortune's 50 Most Powerful Women in Business, joined the Minneapolis-based investment bank Piper Jaffray to guide its rapidly growing alternative-energy portfolio. "You see so many good companies and entrepreneurs entering this space," says Quam. "This is the biggest business opportunity for this country...
That pressing need for innovation is the ultimate challenge for everyone involved in the green sector, including the venture capitalists funding it. Some environmentalists like to say that we already have the technology we need to defeat global warming. This is not true. Creating the advances needed to rapidly decarbonize our energy supply - at a price the developing world can afford - will require the investment of countless billions of dollars for research and development. At the moment, we're not even close to victory, but many of the best, smartest and richest investors around have now joined the battle...
...indices: protected offerings, for example, that track an index but give a minimum guaranteed return, or leveraged offerings that amplify gains and losses. They can be used to hedge risks presented by global warming, or simply to bet on the likelihood that cash will continue to cascade into the sector...