(if you don’t make it to the end of this article and just want to know where the party is, it’s March 18th-20th in San Francisco, you can register here)
It is quite fashionable these days, especially amongst those in and around Silicon Valley, to talk about the demise of cleantech. This discussion has always seemed silly to me.
There are only two groups fascinated by this dialogue: (a) US investors who were burned in deals that they likely should not have touched in the first place and (b) industry pundits & consultants with too much time on their hands. Both of these groups are frustrated and vocal, so they create substantial noise, but far less signal.
As Khosla Venture’s Andrew Chung recently said, in a thoughtful piece by Katie Fehrenbacher covering the “cleantech is dead” meme, “venture is a highly cyclical business”. You could say that again. Andrew continued, “we expect sustainability investments to experience a renaissance as today’s breakthrough companies successfully commercialize and have massive impact on society’s infrastructure.”
Call it sustainability investments, energy tech, resource tech, cleantech, or greentech. Call it whatever else you want to call it, just don’t call it …
