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Posts Tagged ‘Investments’

Khosla’s Clean Tech VC Fund Beats the Odds, Raises $1bn

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, boic, Business models, Gerbsman Partners, Intellectual capital, Investments, Market research, Strategy, Venture Capital, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 24, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Here is a possitive article from Green Energy Reporter.

“A widely used catch phrase – or some variation of it – appearing in the media since the official start of the crisis this fall,  goes something like this: “the global economic crisis, has left the [add required sector, in our case clean tech] reeling, unable to tap crucial funding…. ” This generic phrase and its variations have been used over and over to describe a harsh reality, specifically  how the credit crunch has left industries across the board at a standstill, unable tap financing to support their growth.

Then there is Khosla Ventures, the Sand Hill Road clean tech-focused venture fund, which will be announcing sometime this week the closing of two funds totalling $1 billion, all dedicated to supporting early clean tech investments. This is impressive, considering that most don’t expect this sort of capital raising to happen until well into 2010.

But it seems that Khosla Ventures, founded by Silicon Valley veteran Vinod Khosla, can afford shortcuts.  For one,  Khosla is a co-founder of Sun Microsystems and a former partner at Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, two leading Silicon Valley pioneers. Also, back in 2004, when clean tech was an afterthought and social media  à la MySpace was all the rage,  he launched Khosla Ventures, one of the sector’s first clean-tech focused VC fund.

Forbes.com reports Khosla is on the verge of announcing two new funds: a $250 million vehicle for seed-stage investments and a $750 million fund for larger deals dubbed “KVIII.” One fund has closed already, and the other could close soon, Forbes reports, citing people with knowledge of the funds. Khosla himself is expected to invest $150 million of his own money in the new funds. Other reported investors include CalPERS, the pension giant with $179.2 billion in assets.”

Read the full article here.

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Facebook Names Genentech Veteran as CFO – IPO plans may be looming

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, Business models, FaceBook, Investments, Market research, Social Networks, Technology, Venture Capital, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 30, 2009| Leave a Comment »

As Facebook secured some investments earlier this year, and invested it towards international growth, the latest news spark renewed IPO rumors.

Of course, no one knows, but the hiring of a CFO from a larger corporation is nothing you do unless you have greater plans. First and foremost, it costs you a bunch of money, secondly, the demands this person has on you by his experience will force the structure needed upon you.

The biggest challenge remains though – to create profitability.

Here is a quoted article from BusinessWeek.

“In April, when Facebook announced the departure of Chief Financial Officer Gideon Yu, the social network said it would look for a replacement “with public company experience.” Facebook found what it was seeking in David Ebersman, a 15-year veteran of biotech pioneer Genentech (DNA).

“David [Ebersman] worked at one of the most innovative and respected [companies] in the world, so he brings a lot to the table when it comes to our efforts to build a lasting, important company,” Facebook spokesman Larry Yu says of the appointment, announced on June 29.

Ebersman’s appointment keeps alive speculation over whether and how soon the world’s biggest social network is headed for an initial public share sale. “We have no plans to go public,” says spokesman Larry Yu. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was quoted in May saying an IPO remains “a few years out.”

Ebersman, 38, served as Genentech’s CFO for the four years leading up to its $46.8 billion sale to drug giant Roche Holding (ROG) in May. In Facebook’s press release, CEO Mark Zuckerberg noted that under Ebersman, Genentech’s revenue tripled. Zuckerberg envisions high growth for his company as well, saying sales will rise 70% this year. (eMarketer has projected that Facebook’s revenue will grow 20% this year, to $300 million.)”

Read the full article here.

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Major Shift in Cleantech Investment

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 26, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Here come an article written by Mark Scott at BusinessWeek.

“Last week, I was in Geneva attending a cleantech summit that brought together Europe’s top venture capitalists and entrepreneurs looking for investment. One theme kept emerging: VCs are moving their money away from energy generation projects, such as wind-farm and solar-parks. The reason? Funding those types of businesses is just too expensive for investors already struggling from the global downturn.

That message was reinforced on June 23 when consultants New Energy Finance released preliminary results about cleantech investment. Not surprising, they also found VCs were steering clear of energy generation projects. In the first half of 2009, venture capital and private equity firms forked out $3 billion globally for clean energy companies — a 56% drop compared to the same period last year.”

To read the full story, click here.

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The corruption of the financial system

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, Business models, Economy, Gerbsman Partners, Investments, Market research, Strategy, tagged , , , , , on June 24, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Here is a excellent analysis from Willem Buiter´s blog at FT.com.

“The too big to fail problem has been central to the degeneration and corruption of the financial system in the north Atlantic region over the past two decades. The ‘too large to fail’ category is sometimes extended to become the ‘too big to fail’, ‘too interconnected to fail’, ‘too complex to fail’ and ‘too international’ to fail problem, but the real issue is size.  The real issue is size.  Even if a financial business is highly interconnected, that is, if its total exposure to the rest of the world and the exposure of the rest of the world to the financial entity are complex and far-reaching, it can still be allowed to fail if the total amounts involved are small.  A complex but small business is no threat to systemic stability; neither is a highly international but small business.  Size is the core of the problem; the other dimensions (interconnectedness, complexity and international linkages) only matter (and indeed worsen the instability problem) if the institution in question is big.  So how do we prevent banks and other financial businesses from becoming too large to fail?”

Mr Buiter suggests a series of meassures in his article, to read the analogy, please see link below.

  • Become too big to save
  • Restore narrow banking or public utility banking
  • Create mono-product central counterparties and providers of custodial services, central wholesale and securities payment, clearing and settlement platforms
  • Keep a lid on the size of investment banks
  • Tax bank size
  • Use competition policy
  • Restrict limited liability to prevent excessive risk taking and reduce the size of banks
  • Create effective special resolution mechanisms for all systemically important financial institutions

He concludes:

“In banking and most highly leveraged finance, size is a social bad.  Fortunately, there is quite a list of effective instruments for cutting leveraged finance down to size.

  • Legally and institutionally, unbundle narrow banking and investment banking (Glass Steagall-on-steroids).
  • Legally and institutionally prevent all banks (narrow banks and investment banks) from engaging in activities that present manifest potential conflicts of interest. This means no more universal banks and similar financial supermarkets.
  • Limit the size of all banks by making regulatory capital ratios an increasing function of bank size.
  • Enforce competition policy aggressively in the banking sector, by breaking up banks if necessary.
  • Require any remaining systemically important banks to produce a detailed annual bankruptcy contingency plan.
  • Only permit limited liability for narrow banks/public utility banks.
  • Create a highly efficient special resolution regime for all systemically important financial institutions. This SRR will permit an omnipotent Conservator/Administrator to financially restructure the failing institutions (by writing down the claims of the unsecured creditors or mandatorily converting them into equity), without interfering materially with new lending, investment and funding operations.

The Geithner plan for restructuring US regulation is silent on the too big to fail problem.  That alone is sufficient to ensure that it will fail to result in a more stable and safer US banking and financial system.

In the UK, the otherwise enlightened head of the FSA, Adair Turner, does not see a problem with banks of huge size and with a staggering range of unrelated or conflicted activities.  Of all the parties that matter, only the Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, is clear that ‘too big to fail’ is at the heart of the financial crisis we are trying to exit and will be at the heart of the next financial crisis that we are preparing so assiduously.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling takes the cake in the bigger is better stakes.  He appointed “Win” Bischoff, the former chairman of Citigroup (appointed interim CEO for Citigroup in December 2007 after Chuck Prince bit the dust), to co-chair the writing of a report on UK international financial services – the future, published on May 7, 2009.  That’s rather like asking the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to write a report on who won the Iranian presidential election.  It really is the most ridiculous appointment since Caligula appointed his favourite horse a consul.  You will not be surprised to hear that the report does not consider the size of UK banks to be excessive.

International cooperation is necessary if we are to solve the too big to fail problem.  I am not holding my breath.”

To read the full article, click here.

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Billions of dollars to be invested in cleantech R&D

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, boic, Business models, Economy, Gerbsman Partners, Intellectual capital, Investments, Market research, Technology, Venture Capital, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 16, 2009| 1 Comment »

Here is an excellent blog entry from Mind The Bridge.

“The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, passed last February 2009, pours over $65 billion into renewable energy, energy efficiency and greentech financing of which 6.5 billion for R&D. It is a real “Green New Deal”: The most significant effort in public spending in science and technology after the launch of the Apollo Program. And «it only costs the equivalent of a couple of months in Irak» as a blogger commented on the New York Times website. A big part of these dollars is already profiting Silicon Valley start-ups and research centers, which are leading the way through future technological development.”

It continues…

“The most important incentives deployed by the Stimulus Package are the following:

  • A large sum for energy efficiency, including $5 billion for low-income weatherization programs; over $6 billion in grants for state and local governments; and several billion to modernize federal buildings, with a particular emphasis on energy efficiency.
  • $11 billion for “smart grid” investments.
  • $3.4 billion for carbon capture and sequestration demonstration projects (also known as “clean coal”).
  • $2 billion for research into batteries for electric cars.
  • $500 million to help workers train for “green jobs.”
  • A three-year extension of the “production tax credit” for wind energy (as well as a tax credit extension for biomass, geothermal, landfill gas and some hydropower projects).
  • The option, available to many developers, of turning their tax credits into direct cash, with the government underwriting 30 percent of a project’s cost.

For more details, I found the DSIRE database very useful to navigate the complex space of federal and state incentives for renewables and efficiency.”

In Silicon Valley, the following companies are eyeing these funds.

“Renewable Power Generation : Thin Film Solar photovoltaic
Solyndra is the first company to receive an offer for a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) loan guarantee within the Stimulus Package. Solyndra, a Fremont, California-based manufacturer of innovative cylindrical photovoltaic systems using thin film technology, will use the proceeds of a $535 million loan from the U.S. Treasury’s Federal Financing Bank to expand its solar panel manufacturing capacity in California. Also in the thin-film sector, Heliovolt is looking into the Stimulus Package for the development of its technology and production capacity. It is a CIGS thin-film PV panel manufacturer that uses a fraction of semiconductor material used in traditional silicon cells, significantly slicing costs while at the same time achieving performances comparable to traditional silicon cells.

Transportation: Electric Cars and Biofuels
Tesla Motors, Inc. is awaiting word on a $350 million loan application to the Department of Energy that would allow the electric carmaker to build the Model S sedan, which is expected to cost $57,400. Tesla is a Silicon Valley automobile startup company focusing on the production of high performance, consumer-oriented battery electric vehicles. In the biodiesel space, Aurora Biofuels uses proprietary technology developed at the University of California at Berkeley, to produce biodiesel feedstock from microalgae. Based in Alameda, California, Aurora’s technology achieves yields that are 100 times higher and at significant lower costs than traditional bioethanol production methods.

Energy Efficiency:
Serious Materials, a leading sustainable building materials company based in Sunnyvale, CA, announced that it fully supports the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act energy efficiency provisions. “We are already opening plants to meet the Recovery Act demand and hiring what may be hundreds of workers this year.” The company’s products such as SeriousWindows and SeriousGlass can reduce heating and cooling energy costs by up to 50%. Under the Recovery Act, homeowners can receive federal tax credits for “qualified energy-efficient improvements,” which include windows, doors and skylights. The new tax credits are for 30% of the cost of eligible products up to a limit of $1,500.

Efficiency of Infrastructures: Smart Grid Management Systems
Lumenergi, Inc., a Newark, CA based start-up is emerging rapidly in a space populated by large corporations. Lumenergi manufactures advanced and price-competitive dimming electronic ballast for fluorescent lighting that, combined with a proprietary lighting control system, is able to achieve energy savings in the order of 70%. In addition, Lumenergi’s system is Demend Response ready, allowing utilities to save energy at peak loads. This provides a huge opportunity as lighting accounts for 23 percent of all electricity consumption in the U.S. and 50 percent of electricity used in high-rise buildings. Coupled with rebates and grants that are increasingly being offered by utilities or state energy offices, Lumenergi estimates that a customer could get a return on their investment in only two years.

With billions of dollars from the Recovery Act flowing into smart grid investments, pushing utilities towards efficiency, and funding energy efficiency retrofits of commercial and governmental building, Lumenergi and other technology start-ups in Silicon Valley are getting organized to make the most out of federal and state funding.”

Click here to read the full article.

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