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As VentureWire puts it in this article, there’s a new term out there called “the Solyndra Effect,” which describes the sickly feeling that the limited partners of the venture funds that backed Solyndra are feeling right now. The reality is that losses that large can make fund raising really difficult for VCs, particularly in an environment when some funds have struggled to raise money.

Solyndra’s VC and private capital investors include Madrone Capital, RockPort Capital, the George Kaiser Family Foundation, CMEA Capital, Redpoint Ventures, U.S. Venture Partners and Virgin Green Fund. The involvement of the George Kaiser Family Foundation, Solyndra’s biggest backer, is the reason why Republicans are calling foul, as Kaiser has supported the Obama administration.

While Solyndra could still sell its assets for some amount of money, not many solar execs and VCs I’ve talked to think the assets are worth all that much. For the case of solar manufacturer Evergreen Solar, which also filed for bankruptcy recently, its secured debtors are trying to recoup $165 million in notes from an asset fire sale and its unsecured debtors are praying that Evergreen’s assets might exceed that figure, leaving something for them. But as our GigaOM Pro Green IT curator Adam Lesser put it for Evergreen: “Good luck,” getting more than that out.

Another huge loss for VCs was when fiber optic network company Western Integrated Networks (WINfirst) raised $889 million in the broadband build-out era of the late 90′s, and then fell into bankruptcy. WINfirst was able to sell its assets for $12 million.

Solyndra's factory full of panels in April

Solyndra also has reportedly drawn down $527 million of the $535 million loan guaranteed by the Department of Energy. Loan guarantees essentially serve as a promise by the government to make good on a loan if the company can’t, and typically enable better interest rates and lower costs than would otherwise be available to a company for project financing. But Solyndra actually borrowed the loan from the Federal Financing Bank, part of the Treasury Department, so basically the government was acting as a lender to the company directly. So there’s that $527 million to pay back, too, (on top of the $1.1 billion in private funds) if there are any assets out of the Solyndra bankruptcy.

Perhaps you’re wondering how investors could keep funding a company that couldn’t draw enough interest from investors to fulfill its IPO plans back in the Summer of 2010. Beyond the somewhat unexpected change in the economics of the solar industry (panel prices dropped dramatically while Solyndra grew), once investors put money into a company, it can be a difficult decision of when to pull out and when to put in more money.

Say, a fund puts in $50 million in a round, and then Solyndra later says it needs another $50 million to be able to expand production and deliver an economy of scale to reduce manufacturing costs, and some day recoup the fund’s initial investment. Does the fund double down and try to save the initial investment or pull out early on and cut its losses? As recently as March of this year, VentureWire reports that at least three of Solyndra’s backers — Madrone Capital, RockPort Capital and the George Kaiser Family Foundation — put more money into Solyndra in a recapitalization round. When you’re stuck in a hole, sometimes its hard to know if digging is going to help get you out, or send you deeper.

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Gevo’s Luverne retrofit project will be able to produce about 18 million gallons of isobutanol per year, is expected to start operating in the summer of 2012, and according to Gevo, will be the world’s first commercial-scale biobased isobutanol plant. Gevo also says with another $24 million in investment, the retrofit project could scale up to 50 million gallons per year, and for another $40 million to $45 million, the project could scale to 100 million gallons per year.

Gevo’s core intellectual property is what it calls its “Gevo Integrated Fermentation Technology, or GIFT,” which is tech to produce and separate isobutanol. GIFT contains biocatalysts that convert sugars from a feedstock (plant waste, energy crops etc) into isobutanol through fermentation, and a separation unit that separates isobutanol from water during the fermentation process.

The Luverne project is Gevo’s first commercial-scale plant, and until the plant starts producing bio isobutanol, the bulk of Gevo’s revenues will continue to come from selling ethanol (after its acquisition of Agri-Energy). For the quarter ended March 31, 2011, Gevo generated revenues of $15.28 million, and lost $9.28 million. Gevo’s stock fell almost 3 percent to $19.15 in morning trading.

It will be a long 12 months of investment and construction before Gevo can start booking those new revenues. According to Gevo’s latest quarterly financials:

The Company’s condensed consolidated financial statements have been prepared on a going concern basis, which contemplates the realization of assets and the satisfaction of liabilities in the normal course of business. For the three months ended March 31, 2011, the Company incurred a consolidated net loss of $9,283,000 and had an accumulated deficit of $95,704,000. The Company expects to incur future net losses as it continues to fund the development and commercialization of its product candidates.

But Gevo says it has letters of intent for its bio isobutanol product from customers including chemical company Lanxess, French oil giant Total’s subsidiary Total Petrochemicals USA, plastic maker Toray Industries, airline company United Air Lines and oil industry technology developer CDtech. Gevo also says it has been working with Cargill to develop a future-generation yeast biocatalyst specifically designed to produce isobutanol from cellulosic feedstocks. Gevo CEO Patrick Gruber told Reuters  he expects Gevo to be profitable by 2014.

Gevo went public in February of this year, on a per-share price of $15 — priced at the high end of its range — and raised $95.7 million after offering expenses. Khosla Ventures and Virgin Green Fund backed Gevo early on and did pretty well in the IPO. Gevo plans to use the IPO proceeds to acquire access to ethanol plants through acquisitions and joint ventures, and retrofit those facilities to produce isobutanol.

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Using technology developed at Caltech, the 5-year-old Gevo has been working on engineering enzymes that can convert waste and other cellulosic feedstocks into alternative fuels like isobutanol, which can be used in the existing petroleum supply chain. Like ethanol, isobutanol is an alcohol compound, but with four carbon atoms instead of two; the different chemical structure gives it characteristics that make it more compatible with existing infrastructure. Gevo wants to sell its product as a blend for fuel as well as a blend for plastics, fibers and other polymers.

Like PetroAlgae, Gevo has weak financials. The company is in a pre-commercial stage, and in 2009, generated $660,000 in revenue with a net loss of $19.89 million. Of that loss, Gevo spent $10.51 million on research and development in 2009.

Gevo says in its S-1 that it converts ethanol plants to produce its alternative fuel, which it says is a lower capital way to scale up production. The company is hoping to commercialize its product in the first half of 2012, and says it has “letters of intent” from customers including chemical company Lanxess, Total Petrochemicals USA (an affiliate of oil giant Total) fiber and plastic maker Toray Industries, airline company United Air Lines, and CDtech, a company that makes technology for the oil industry.

Back in February, Lux Research put out a report ranking biofuel startups on their market viability and technology innovations. Here’s what they said about Gevo:

Because their [Gevo and Amyris] products are both drop-in replacements to existing petroleum-based fuels, and since both firms are currently running demonstrationscale facilities, Gevo and Amyris achieve high key metrics and technology/solution value scores, combining to high total technical value ratings. However, what really separates the two firms from the field is their “retrofit” approach to building up scale. . . . Both companies have strong management and multiple high-profile partnerships with low barriers to growth, accruing high marks on business evaluation, as well.

Look for a longer post on their S-1 later today.

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GreenRoad’s system uses sensors, an accelerometor, GPS and customized algorithms to calculate the relative risk of different driving maneuvers, then communicates that to the driver by illuminating either a red, yellow or green light. Installed mainly on commercial fleet vehicles (80 fleets so far), the device can have its algorithm customized according to a customer’s priorities, and it communicates information via cellular networks to GreenRoad’s data center. “The brains are in the vehicle,” GreenRoad marketing chief Eric Weiss told me this week, so even in areas without cellular coverage, drivers “always get real-time feedback.”

Weiss commented that the “preoccupation” with banning texting while driving (an idea that’s gaining momentum in certain states and among U.S. policymakers), and the “legislative approach of cordoning off all the things you can’t do…is not effective for converting wrong to right.”

It also obscures a larger opportunity, he said, to transform driving habits using technology, or more specifically: real-time feedback for drivers (both positive and negative), constant data gathering and an online display showing potential savings and areas for improvement — similar to the energy management tools rolling out that monitor homeowners’ real-time use of electricity, natural gas and water, and present it in web-based portals and in-home displays.

Based in Redwood Shores, Calif., with offices in the U.S., UK and Israel, Greenroad is not alone in trying to seize that opportunity. A number of smartphone apps and after-market vehicle retrofits have emerged in an effort to meet demand for the real-time and cumulative data about fuel efficiency that hypermilers have come to love in the Toyota Prius display.

And more automakers are starting build these tools right into the vehicle. Ford, for example, has developed an instrument cluster that, as Grist put it recently, tells “the driver (nicely) whether to ditch the lead foot or keep the good times rollin’.”

For GreenRoad, backed by Virgin Green Fund and Benchmark Capital, among others, one of its main selling points to fleet operators is that the real-time risk assessments of different driving maneuvers help to improve safety, reduce wear and tear on vehicles and slash the number of accidents. But Weiss said that the company’s system has been installed in “two of the country’s largest truck fleets, primarily because of fuel saving.”

We’d like to see bigger cuts in fuel consumption than the 10 percent noted on GreenRoad’s web site, and the up to 15 percent that Weiss said the system can deliver (depending on the route, vehicle and driver). But the system represents one tool that’s relatively easy to implement and, in combination with other technologies, could help to reduce emissions from the transportation sector — the fastest-growing source of greenhouse gas emissions in the country since 1990, and also one of the largest.

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Basically, it’s a Space Invader clone wherein when you kill an alien, a file in your home folder is deleted. It looks like it’s evil — and designed to perform such a task without the knowledge of the Mac owner on which the program resides. But it isn’t. It’s an art project that clearly advertises its purpose and nature to all who would wish to use it.

The game, dubbed Lose/Lose, is the brainchild of Zach Gage, who created the program as part of an online art installation and released it for public download in September. It’s intended purpose is not to dupe unsuspecting gamers, but to pose questions about the relationship between killing in video games and real-life moral issues. Gage says as much in a statement on his web site:

By way of exploring what it means to kill in a video-game, Lose/Lose broaches bigger questions. As technology grows, our understanding of it diminishes, yet, at the same time, it becomes increasingly important in our lives.

Even if a user were to download the game from a different, less well-intentioned place, the game itself warns users right when it opens, stating that “Killing in Lose/Lose will likely result in files on your hard drive being deleted. You have been warned.” Of course, that doesn’t mean that an intelligent programmer couldn’t remove or change said message, and redistribute the game themselves with the intent of causing harm.

That’s what Symantec’s worried about, and why the firm decided to issue its warning about the so-called Trojan. Of course, the company took the opportunity to recommend installing security software as a means to protect against this kind of dangerous artistic expression, seeing as that’s the business it’s in.

Should you worry about this game or threats derived from it? Not unless you are one of the slim few whose retro Mac gaming addiction is so acute that you feel the need to hunt around the digital frontier in suspicious and shady locations looking for independent games of questionable quality and without any sort of legit distribution channels. Or if you happen to be a devoted patron of the arts, and therefore can’t resist the urge to download software you know full well will harm your computer and destroy your files, all for the sake of the artistic effect it has. In either case, anti-virus software won’t help.

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The down rounds — venture-capital rounds in which a company is valued lower than it was worth in previous rounds — can be low enough to essentially wash out companies’ first two rounds, Jacob said. They are causing exiting investors to tighten their belts and get pickier about their investments. For companies looking for their third rounds or higher, Virgin Green Fund is only funding deals with companies that expect the current round to be their last, and also is looking for valuations that are tied to earnings in some way, Jacob said.

Down rounds “force you to have conviction around the things you believe should get funding,” Jacob told us. But it also raises the stakes for companies. “I think there’s a lot of undergrowth in the forest that is going to be cleared out here,” he said. “A lot of companies are just not going to survive.”

So far, we have seen some — but not many — venture capital-backed startups shut down in the recession. Brian Goncher, director of the cleantech practice at Deloitte, said that of the approximately 115 venture-backed companies in Silicon Valley, he’s only heard of two situations in which the boards collectively have decided not to reinvest. “That’s pretty good for a CEO of one of these companies if you realize the [low] likeliness of not getting support from at least some of your syndicate,” he said. However, he expects to see more of these situations before the economy turns back up.

Decreased valuations are causing a lot of anxiety among companies that are waiting to find out which of their investors are in or out. It’s also a big decision time for investors, Goncher said. Down rounds are good for new investors, who can get good deals, and for some current investors who decide to reinvest, Goncher said. Of course, existing investors don’t like down rounds because they devalue their initial investments. But they also provide opportunities for investors, who previously thought a company was worth more money, to snap up a higher percentage of the company at a lower price. And investors who drop out lose money.

In general, most down rounds won’t have much of a long-term impact on the companies or investors, as practically no exits are happening now anyway, Goncher said. “Nobody is in a selling mood right now,” he said, adding that he expects initial public offerings and acquisitions will pick up later this year, boosting valuations. “[A down round] doesn’t change the outcome.” Overall, the lower valuations might be leading to a healthier market, he said, calling this “a minor correction” of a bubble of some too-high valuations in the past and “a good thing.”

Mark Kalpin, a partner in the emerging energy technology group at law firm WilmerHale, compared the situation to what happened to telecom investments several years ago. “There’s an initial exuberance in investing, and then it’s tempered by business realities about what the future looks like for these companies,” he said. “I think we’re just seeing normal skittishness of people to invest in these times as well. People are just being more cautious than they were two years ago.”

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(via neowin)

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The company’s three tech news shows are five-minute roundups along the lines of Webb Alert and Rocketboom but in localized Spanish, English and French editions. In March, Mobuzz also launched separate Spanish gossip and news shows, bringing its total production run to 100 shows a month.

While advertising revenue is growing — €250,000 so far this year, up from €80,000 in 2006 — founder Anil De Mello said, it doesn’t cover salaries for the 16 staff or the company’s distribution, hosting and content delivery budgets. De Mello, who has largely bootstrapped Mobuzz with the help of angel funding and advertising revenue, said an investment round that appeared set to go ahead in September fell through because of the financial crisis. The economic downturn also prompted Mobuzz’s original investor to pull out.

At four years old, the videoblog is a grandaddy, and with several major industry awards under its belt it has definitely already found its feet. There are about 2 million downloads of Spanish content each month from the Mobuzz site, 1.5 million downloads of the English show and 300,000 of its French counterpart, according to De Mello. The YouTube editions of the shows get around 500,000 total views a month, he said.

The call for help is a clever pitch to a loyal audience, and a purely user-generated revenue stream isn’t a new idea. But during our conversation De Mello also said the company could, with new funding, be profitable by early 2009, and that it’s already talking to potential investors, including a major media company in Spain (he wouldn’t give specifics). That promise of new funding suggests user support will be more of a vital stopgap measure for an old hand, rather than a new revenue model for a stripling show.

That said, the outpouring of donations — around 14 percent of the target amount within a day — has had De Mello reconsidering a subscription-based revenue model. He said he’s been surprised by the outpouring of support — Europeans aren’t typically as culturally predisposed to charitable giving as Americans are, he noted.

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The design wraps the photovoltaic copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) compound around a series of tubes until they resemble a row of black, fluorescent lights. Each module is curved to catch the maximum amount of light from any direction, so the panels don’t need to be carefully angled and laboriously secured like traditional PV panels. Check out the manufacturing and installation video after the jump to see how it all works.

Given the promise of such substantial cost cuts, the technology already has a line of customers — even though the three-year-old company has been in stealth this whole time. Solyndra says it has $1.2 billion in multiyear customer contracts on which it is just starting to deliver. The next step is to ramp up manufacturing. The plan, Solyndra tells us, is to expand total production capacity up to 420 megawatts annually. The company currently operates a 110-megawatt-per-year fabrication facility at its headquarters.

Solyndra filled its coffers with big investments from a number well-known info tech-cum-cleantech VCs including Redpoint Ventures, RockPort Capital, Argonaut, CMEA Ventures and U.S. Venture Partners. The startup also has several especially well-heeled backerss like the Walton family fund Madrone Capital, Abu Dubai’s MASDAR and Richard Branson’s Virgin Green Fund.

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