Word: techs
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...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...
...single venture capitalist may be more responsible for that shift than Khosla, who formed Khosla Ventures in 2004 in part because his Kleiner Perkins partners were still hesitant to dive into clean tech. Khosla had no such fears, and he has emerged as a clean-tech evangelist. "By 2000, I felt that software and other businesses were reaching a dead end," he says. "But energy was an area where there were large markets that could benefit from innovation." Khosla hasn't held back - in the first nine months of 2007, Khosla Ventures participated in 14 deals worth nearly $70 million...
Still, the dotcom bust casts a shadow, with fears that once again too much money is chasing too few good ideas. The drive to go green, so strong today, could rapidly lose momentum if oil prices were to drop significantly, and it hasn't escaped notice that clean tech has yet to produce a bank-breaking success like Netscape, which made Kleiner Perkins a fortune. "Everybody with a dollar thinks they're a clean-tech investor now," says Foundation Capital's Grosser. "A ton of people could lose a lot of money on solar or biofuels." But defenders point...
...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...
Prophets of profits That's a message much of the rest of the world has already absorbed. Though the U.S. is easily the biggest player in green venture capital, Europe may be ahead on clean tech itself, thanks largely to the kind of generous government subsidies that have yet to be enacted in Washington. The enormous capital expenditure required to compete in the energy market makes government support all the more important. Many of the world's top solar and wind companies - like Germany's Q-Cells and Spain's Iberdrola - are based in the E.U., and with the region...