First: Several folks asked if I could post
my little Christmas Eve twitter poem. Well, Walt Frick was kind enough to do so
here. So enjoy,power inverter typos and all! And my thanks to Walt...
It's that time of year again! Time for some
prognostications of questionable accuracy, as we head into the new year. 2012
was hard for cleantech investors. Will 2013 be a rebound year? This time next
year will we be looking back and smiling broadly at our good fortune?
Unfortunately, that's not what I'm
expecting.
Our sector is at a pretty low point right
now, and while I do personally believe cleantech is just in the "Trough of
Disillusionment" and will eventually rebound, there aren't a lot of
factors primed to trigger any upswing in the coming months. So 2013 seems like
a "go-sideways" year, off of an already low starting point.
In fact, I think the term
"cleantech" will continue to become unfashionable, although some
(including myself) will continue to use it in very generic ways. But this will
be a year where the cleantech sector gets a lot broader, in terms of where the
(limited) activity is and who's interested in it, so that'll probably mean a
lot of rebranding and proliferation of other terms as everyone tries to figure
out their own renewed take on things.
But my track record on these things isn't
very good, so don't get either too discouraged or encouraged by the following
predictions:
1. U.S.
Both venture dollars and deal counts were
down in the first three quarters of 2012 (note: link opens pdf) and Q4 doesn't
feel poised to surprise on the upside. Even follow-on funding has been down,
but mostly it's the initial investments (Series A, etc) that have fallen by the
wayside. This is driven by the significant withdrawal of generalists from the
sector, and the reality that specialist VC firms are low on capital reserves.
More on this below, but it doesn't seem like LPs will suddenly start demanding
VCs invest in cleantech or start making big commitments to the sector, at least
in the next few months, and there's a lag time between such shifts at the LP
level and how deal volumes flow down through the GP level anyway.
That said, with 2012 levels already pretty
low, I don't expect a major decline from these depressed levels either. So I
expect a flat year for deal counts. I do think the shift toward smaller
follow-ons and more capital efficient first rounds will continue, however,grid tie inverter so
even with deal counts staying the same I expect dollar amounts to continue to
decline. Remember: I always say to look more at deal counts as an indicator of
VC interest in a sector than the dollar amounts.
Note that I'm not making any prediction
about international venture activity in cleantech. That's because I find the
deal tracking outside of North America to be
pretty squirrelly still, and I also cannot guess what's going to happen in some
of those other markets. Generally speaking, Europe
will continue to be an economic mess, BRICs will continue to grow and thus
drive demand for "all of the above", and MENA will continue to
diversify. To what extent, and to what effect on cleantech? I have no idea.
2. Agriculture-related investments will be
the next "new new thing" area for venture investments.
I don't quite know how to quantitatively
define this, but I think 2013 will be a big year for venture investments in the
agriculture / food sector, generally speaking. Most VCs I speak with now talk
about this as being one of the sectors they're spending a lot of time looking
at, and that often results in significant visible dealflow months later.
It would have been easier to forecast a big
year for cleantech-related IT and web investments. But while I do think we'll
see a lot of noise out of the "Cleanweb" sector in 2013, everyone can
already see that coming. I didn't want to just be the 20th person to suggest
2013 will be "The Year of Cleanweb/ Cleantech IT". Whereas I do think
Ag/Food might surprise some folks, so I'm highlighting that sector instead.
Interestingly, not all cleantech deal
tallies include agriculture in their tracking, so it may or may not show up
depending upon which analyst report you're looking at. And for many readers,
they may not even consider agriculture and food to be "cleantech" in
the first place, except for where it overlaps with biofuels. But regardless of
how it's categorized and regardless of what label it receives, this seems like
an area where there will be a visible uptick in venture activity -- and
probably including a few deals that will make you stop and go "huh?"
-- the sure sign of a hot sector.
3. There will be a wave of consolidation
and shake-out in solar panel financing.
The consolidation wave and shake-out in
upstream solar panel (panels, wafers,
etc) is now obvious to all, and will continue. But downstream, installations
are booming and solar panel financing is
taking off, perhaps best illustrated by Solar panel City's (SCTY) IPO this past
month.
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