The NYT Sunday magazine had a great cover story about Kleiner’s Greentech push (link to be added). Amidst all the news of financial meltdown and impending recession, it was heartening to see that we may yet witness the commercialization of technologies to help us fight the damage we have been doing to the environment. A firm of Kleiner’s reach and reputation taking a high profile lead will result in many more dollars being invested. For starters, other VC firms want to be in Kleiner deals, making it much easier for their portfolio companies to raise the large sums of money needed to bring many of these technologies to market. In turn, the fact that these companies are raising large sums will make it easier for non-Kleiner companies to do the same (much of what happens in VC deals is driven off comps). Now all we need for things to really start moving are one or two big successes, ideally in the form of IPOs or large value exits. The latter is more likely given the current environment and given that oil companies are flush with cash and may want to start hedging. The ‘invisible hand’ is of course much maligned these days due to the excesses in the financial markets - therefore I am especially excited to see it at its best at the same time.
