So you think you’ve come up with the next game-changing greentech idea and now you just need to score some funding to get your new firm off the ground? Well, if you were eying the greentech bigwigs at Kleiner Perkins to back your fledgling startup, maybe you should rethink your strategy. In a presentation from Kleiner Perkins partner and Sun co-founder Bill Joy at the University of Michigan last month, (hat tip Paul Kedrosky) Kleiner’s greentech practice has gone through about 5,000 pitches, and backed about 50 of them. So those odds are 1 percent.
While all venture capitalists are highly selective — if they aren’t, they aren’t doing their job — Kleiner’s high profile means the firm tends to get a lot more pitches than lesser known firms. I chatted with Kleiner partner Trae Vassallo at the Dow Jones Energy conference last week and we were comparing notes on the home energy management firms out there, and clearly most of them had come across her desk at one point or another. For startups, Kleiner has more than capital to offer. Its high profile partners — from Joy, to John Doerr, to former Vice President Al Gore — can help startups make very valuable connections, particularly given that the greentech biz is so dependent on the regulatory environment these days.
The KP folks are also one of the most active investors in greentech. In the most recent quarter they were the second most active greentech fund, following Intel Capital, with five investments, including Amyris Biotechnologies, Applied Process Technology, Hara, iControl Networks, and Solasta. And the firm tries to maintain its approachability — last week at GreenBeat John Doerr gave a presentation about the firms strategy and the smart grid and welcomed entrepreneurs to pitch him by writing out his email address on a white board during his presentation. At the end of the day, if your company has a truly differentiated, bleeding-edge greentech idea (which I’m sure you think it does), why not give it a try?
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