Menu
Our firm’s founders have been investing successfully together in clean energy innovation since the beginning of clean tech in the early 2000’s. Over that time we’ve developed a strong understanding of what creates the potential for a groundbreaking clean energy technology, as well as what is needed to successfully scale that technology and company after we invest.
At Clean Energy Ventures we’re more than just investors. We’re former entrepreneurs and operators who have run our own clean energy businesses and lead within some of the largest energy companies globally. We understand what’s required to become a market disruptor and fundamentally change the way our world produces and consumes energy.
We know the path to successful growth is bumpy, uncertain, and sometimes confusing. That’s why we’ve created a climate tech venture capital firm that focuses specifically on sheparding early-stage climate tech companies across the chasm from early R&D to high rate-of-growth.
Beyond the money we invest, we support our portfolio companies with:
We work with our portfolio companies to transform brilliant technical teams into commercial teams able to address global markets. Our Leadership Advisor contributes as early as our due diligence process and often works regularly with the leadership of our portfolio companies to help them understand what’s needed to manage and lead a growing business.
Message, brand and active marketing are often overlooked by early-stage startups, but can be a critical tool in building traction with new customers, employees, partners, and investors. Our Director of Marketing works directly with our portfolio companies to establish a solid marketing foundation and build the practices that drive strong awareness and understanding of your technology in the market.
We consider ourselves highly-technical. Across our investment team and our Venture Partners we have deep expertise in clean energy and over twenty advanced degrees across business, science and engineering. We often work with our portfolio companies on multi-generational technology planning, IP expansion, market roadmapping, and more.
As is the case with many successful venture capital firms, we’re advocates for our portfolio companies and work to bring them advantages wherever we can. We typically earn a board seat with our investment and provide connections to our deep network of multinational organizations and clean energy industry veterans.
If your technology, product, or service has the potential to grow to scale and substantially reduce greenhouse gases, we want to hear from you. We use the below criteria when evaluating companies looking for investment from Clean Energy Ventures.
We typically lead the first institutional round of investment at valuations appropriate for the stage in order to achieve superior risk-adjusted returns for both investors and entrepreneurs. Factors we consider include the size of the target market, the strength of sustainable competitive advantage, and whether there are strong exit options within a three to six year period.
We prefer investments with intellectual property protection or other sustainable competitive advantages that can provide a unique defensible position for 7+ years and protect the revenue streams the company will develop after our investment.
We typically invest to help promising climate tech startups move from the R&D stage to the Growth stage. As a result, companies we invest in have a clear engineering line-of-sight to a commercially ready product or validated service within 12 to 24 months of our investment.
Companies we invest in should be, comparably, capital-light. They should have the potential to generate a trade sale or reach EBITDA-positive for less than $50M in lifetime equity financing with an efficient capital stack.
