Posts Tagged by investment capital
Explaining Clean Energy’s Tough Realities to Entrepreneurs
| February 5, 2012 | Posted by Craig Shields under Renewables - Business |
I spoke at the Mark Taper Auditorium in downtown Los Angeles (pictured here) yesterday, introducing 2GreenEnergy to an audience of entrepreneurs, each of whom came with an idea, looking for investment capital. It’s always exciting to get behind a microphone and belt out the message:
• Figuring out where we’re going vis-à-vis energy is fascinating, but it’s not easy. We face tough realities in terms of the technology, the economics, and the politics.
• I’ll do everything I can to take good ideas forward, presenting solid business plans to an ever-growing set of investors, each hungry for exposure into clean energy and electric transportation.
This went really well; I got a lot of compliments on the talk, and met some terrific people on some fantastically important missions.
Cleantech Entrepreneurs’ Challenge: Commodity Price Stability
| March 25, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Renewables - Business |
I wrote earlier that I continue to refine my role in helping entrepreneurs find investment capital, and that, for several reasons, this is a very interesting challenge.
Another thing that gets in the way (again, hardly a surprise) is oil and natural gas prices. The senior manager in the private equity company I just spoke with rejected my compressed air energy storage project because it’s an attempt to monetize the differential between peak and off-peak electricity prices. And what’s a huge factor in determining that price difference? The prices of natural gas (which is used to deal with peak loads). No stability = no deal.
Helping Cleantech Entrepreneurs Find Investment Capital: Watch Out for Circles
| March 25, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Renewables - Business |
I continue to refine my role in helping entrepreneurs find investment capital. The flow of deals, of course, takes care of itself; I get dozens each month. The investor side, understandably, takes more work. Some find us through the site, but in most cases I’ve developed relationships proactively, reaching out to friends of friends of friends…; in several cases I’m already three or four generations deep – and still going.
I find this whole thing a very interesting challenge, for reasons that have been obvious to everyone for thousands of years: mainly, that investors want lots of reward with a minimum of risk. It’s the old truism: banks happily lend money to those who can prove that they don’t need it. Read More
Raising Investment Capital for Clean Energy Businesses
| January 13, 2010 | Posted by Craig Shields under Renewables - Business |
I’m in Manhattan this week for several purposes — one of which is to drum up support for an idea that is so obvious to me that I can’t understand why some people in this business regard it as novel. Just like mutual fund managers and venture capitalist hedge their bets with a wide range of portfolio companies, I’m working with a 130-year-old investment banking firm here to set up the first in a series of “unit trusts” — raising a total of about $100 million to launch 15 – 20 of what I believe to be the best start-up companies I’ve come across recently, based on business plan submissions.
I want to take a position in the fund myself. I know this sounds immodest, but I’ve always liked to bet on myself. I know that my focus is limited, in that my viewpoint of renewable energy is, by design, so broad that I don’t have the bandwidth to become an expert in any one discipline. But I like to think that I can weed out ideas — and I see plenty of them — that have little or no merit, and focus on a few select business concepts that truly have something to offer.
I guess we’ll see. If you see a “Make a Donation to Craig” link on the site, I suppose you can infer that I wasn’t as wise as I thought I was.
Global Warming – Hot Topic for Cocktail Parties
| December 25, 2009 | Posted by Craig Shields under Renewables - Business |
Merry Christmas everyone!
Had a great time at a friend’s “Stop By For a Glass of Chrismas Cheer” party last night; it was an opportunity to meet many wonderful people. It’s always amusing to get people’s reactions when I’m asked what I do in life. In almost all cases, people instantly relate to it, perhaps insofar as it touches almost everyone’s political beliefs: global warming is a leftist scam, it’s the apocalypse caused by unbridled capitalism and greed — and everything in between. “I’m just a reporter,” I assure them.
In any case, I was delighted that one guy said, “Oh I have to talk to you about investments.” When I asked him what he meant, he explained that many people are shut out from investing in the migration to renewables, since so many cutting-edge clean energy companies are private. I told him I would speak with some of my investment banker/broker-dealer friends about establishing a private placement memorandum to raise money for a group of carefully chosen private companies in need of capital across a range of relevant technologies.
It’s amazing the ideas you come across with a cup of hot mulled wine in your hand.
