The angel fund is a for-profit venture that the Clean Energy Fund, a nonprofit founded with $30 million from the Pacific Gas and Electric Company bankruptcy, launched last April. Susan Preston, the angel fund’s general manager, said the fund raising is taking longer than expected because of the recession. “We’re working very hard at it, but it’s a struggle right now, no question about it,” she said. “We’re talking to lots of people all over the place, and everyone is saying, ‘We’re sorry, we agree with what you’re doing, but we just don’t have money right now.’”

The dramatic economic downturn has been such a shock that investors have become “like deer in the headlights,” Preston says. “You know you should move, but just can’t see how — that’s the best analogy I can think of for how people are feeling right now. If we can get them to move away from the headlights,” there will be a much more prosperous time ahead, she said.

Preston argues that early-stage startups are a good investment in the downturn because of their countercyclical nature. In other words, because companies are a few years away from an IPO or an acquisition, they could be well-poised to take advantage of an economic recovery down the road. “When you have a very early-stage company, you can have greater flexibility about when you decide to pull the trigger on a liquidity event,” she says, adding that startups are a good deal right now. “We can take advantage of valuations … and continue to organically grow these companies until we’re ready and the market’s ready for them.”

She thinks a time of cleantech acquisitions — read “exits” — is coming. “As cleantech becomes an increasingly important part of the economy, many companies will be looking for ways to expand in the market, and one very easy way for them to do that is through acquisition,” she says. “I actually think it’s a great time to be having investment activities. But it’s tough getting people to see that right now.”

The fund is looking at energy-efficiency technologies, such as lighting and energy-management software and components, she said. It also is considering technologies that could take advantage of anticipated new policies, such as technologies that calculate companies’ carbon footprints, which could work with a carbon cap-and-trade program. The fund in October announced investments in efficient-lighting startup HID Labs, biofuels company Allopartis Biotechnologies and an undisclosed solar company.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Key technologies for the smart city
• How energy data will impact the smart grid
• Building energy management systems: overview and forecast

The fund says it has also raised additional funding towards its $20 million goal, inching toward $10 million — up from $7 million in September. It has also added limited partners, including PCG Clean Energy & Technology Fund (PCG).

Founded in April 2008, the CalCEF Angel Fund took some of the money from an original nonprofit CalCEF fund, which was established in 2004 with $30 million from a PG&E bankruptcy case. But that fund was mainly being invested in later stage companies. This new CalCEF Angel Fund is very much for-profit and is looking to invest some $300,000 to $500,000 into 15 or so deals, and move technology from the lab to the early stages of commercialization.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• The fourth quarter of 2012 in cleantech
• Cleantech and investment in 2013
• The next generation of battery technology

He says:

“The world is about to change, and change in profoundly interesting ways.”

“The enterprise itself hasn’t figured out how to embrace cloud computing; users are figuring it out very quickly.”

When PCs first came in, and even when computers first came in, the first thing we did was task automation. The whole rise of enterprise software has really been around process automation. But at the end of the day, we’ve omitted the social aspect. We’ve solved the CEOs problem; what we haven’t solved is the individual sales person, who is trying to figure out “who do I know who can get me in the door of some company?” They are the poster child of the social revolution, because their job is inherently social.

In mobile, last year, we shipped 1.6 billion units. Growth 20 percent in a bad year. Average life cycle of a cell phone is 21 months. Massive opportunity to create significant leapfrogs in technology. iPhone innovation. Finally here in States broke carrier in monopoly. Dominant platform in emerging worlds will be mobile. That’s an incredible business opportunity, and the question is, how are we going to support this?

EaaS — Everything as a Service.
(from the slide)
- software/applications
- storage
- content — music/video, data

What we ultimately want is software and services independent of devices we’re carrying.

How are we going to pay for it?

All these news stories about social networking failing to be monetized are missing the point. The value is peers. I don’t want banner ads in my social network. What do I really want in a social context and why is that interesting? Least valuable form of communication is company-owned channels. Next-most valued is experts and journalists. Most likely to believe peers, people most like me. That’s where this whole notion of how I believe we’re going to monetize social networks. Facebook Beacon was a ham-handed approach to doing that. Perhaps Facebook was actually brilliant. Zuckerberg might have been “Let’s do something that’s way overboard, then take three steps back, then get ahead of what we wanted in the first place.” It’s going to grow the pot because it’s more effective. Social capabilities are so powerful.

Kids coming out of college will not go to a company that blocks Facebook. Equally importantly, it’s ineffective. It’s all about the user and we’re not going to stop them.

We talk all about Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0. It’s time to start thinking about User 2.0 and the attitudinal differences these new users bring to the equation. Now ad-hoc, socially oriented, enterprise agnostic. Users will take wisdom of clouds anywhere, they have no loyalty to company.

New enterprise reality:
- You can’t stop it
- We now have more computing power on personal devices than enterprise devices. Savvy corporations know they should exploit this.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Flash analysis: lessons from Solyndra’s fall
• Survey: How apps can solve photo management
• Social networks will displace business processes, not socialize them