CleanTech Companies Pitch Investors at Five Star Bank Event

CleanTech Companies Pitch Investors at Five Star Bank Event

Apr 10, 2018

If you hadn’t heard much about Five Star Bank’s “Shark Tank”-style event putting local entrepreneurs in front of investors, that was  by design. The Bank made this an invitation-only event and focused its attention on getting the best of best young, fundable companies in front of several dozen serious investors on March 29.  This made the event very attractive both to the companies and the investors by maximizing the quality of the connections made. CleanStart was pleased to help gather up clean tech companies to take advantage of this opportunity and to participate in coaching and judging the presenters.  Fortunately, among the 24 companies selected to pitch, 3 were members of the clean tech community here–Terzo Power, InspecTools, and California Safe Soil. Only a about third of the companies that applied made the cut, so it was all the more impressive that these three made it. The other sectors represented were health care, IT and apps.

Congratulations to all three on some great presentations.  We hope you generated some serious investor interest.

Thomas Hall

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Gary Simon is the Chair of CleanStarts Board. A seasoned energy executive and entrepreneur with 45 years of experience in business, government, and non-profits.

Storage Meetup Recap

Storage Meetup Recap

Apr 5, 2018

One of the  hottest topics in clean tech is storage.  To date there has been no economically compelling storage solution, but the hope remains that one is on the horizon, and one that will make distributed or customer-site storage installations and electric vehicles even a better choice.  One source put the global market for distributed storage solutions at $2 billion per year now, and able to grow over 33% per year if certain breakthroughs are achieved. That would mean a $10 billion market in 5 years, not even coutning electric vehicles.   We had an awesome discussion of the potentials and perils of this market at our Clean Tech MeetUp on March 29.  The MeetUp was held at Coffee and Coworking, a cool new space on Broadway near the UCD Med Center, hosted by owner Gagan Johal.  Three speakers got the crowd going–Gregg Fishman, SMUD Board Vice President, Deepak Aswani, Senior Engineer from SMUD, and Bob Gregory from Electra Vehicles.  While the CPUC has mandated the investor-owned utilities to contract for over 1300 MW of storage, that mandate did not apply to SMUD. The crowd was glad to hear that SMUD shortly will be opening a process to acquire 9 MW of customer-side storage in the near term, and increasing that to 75 MW if all goes well.  There’s business opportunity locally! Deepak also laid out some trends on how battery costs have been declining, and documented some estimates of how those trends might continue. Steady progress has seen these costs decline every year, but not as rapidly as solar panel costs plunged, nor is such a plunge about to happen. Bob Gregory made a good case for combining supercapacitors and batteries in a single package to bridge the problem that a good storage solution needs to be able to deliver high power quickly but then have lots of energy stored to provide duration and range.  His point was that, while some startups are trying to get batteries that inherently can do both, their problems of heat dissipation and limited life, it is better to use supercapacitors to do what they do best–discharge quickly–and lithium ion batteries to what they do best–provide lots of storage that can be withdrawn slowly.   There were lots of other topics covered–how utility rates may need to change to reflect full value for installed storage, how the peak and off-peak prices are likely to change over time as storage is installed, whether storage could also lead to avoided system expansion costs, among others.   This MeetUp probably had the liveliest Q&A of all such events we have put on so far.   We were glad to hear from some of the attendees that our MeetUps are the best thing going in elevating the visibility and understanding of clean tech and clean tech companies in our region.  If you haven’t taken advantage of one of these sessions, you really should try to join us at one in the future. They really are quite fun–and educational.
Thomas Hall
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Gary Simon is the Chair of CleanStarts Board. A seasoned energy executive and entrepreneur with 45 years of experience in business, government, and non-profits.
Startups Encouraged after engaging with panel of active investors.

Startups Encouraged after engaging with panel of active investors.

Mar 28, 2018

The other night was an amazing workshop for the packed crowd at 801 K Street with incredible insights into building constructive relationships with investors.  So much was covered it is hard to do a summary that does the session justice. The discussion was particularly lively, with lots of questions from the audience.  

Matt van Leeuwen set the stage with a soup-to-nuts review of what investor are interested in during a fund raise and what terms they may seek in a Term Sheet and the final documents.  He gave a good perspective on what is negotiable–and what is not. He also warned about terms that can turn out very unfavorably for startups.

Matt discussed different types of financing options for companies, terms startups might hear,  standard terminology and special types of agreements that you might here. The Q&A led to an attendee to announce he had just been saved a great deal of time and stress in the near future.

Next from the panel lead by Chris Chediak we got to hear perspectives form a star-studded panel.  The panelists were Elizabeth Dodson, Co-founder of HomeZada, John Peters, the Board chair of the Sacramento Angels, and Roger Akers, Co-founder & Partner of Akers Capital. All of them emphasized communication with investors and industry stakeholders.  Entrepreneurs should realize good investors are there because they believe in the Company and the team. Good communication with investors helps with everything from fundraising, to growing your company, and even building a successful team — be forthright, respond quickly, answer directly, build a reputation that investors and advisors can trust.  

They discussed how much equity of options you should give up to advisers, what you can ask of investors, and the best ways to leverage those relationships. Based on the enthusiasm of the crowd, we are likely to do a second round of this workshop with new panelists and presenters.  It is a big and very important topic.

“The stronger the relationship with you and your investors is, the more you can leverage it for more opportunities.” –   Roger Akers

 

Cleantech Grants Power California Entrepreneurs

Cleantech Grants Power California Entrepreneurs

Feb 22, 2018

With CleanStart’s up and coming Leveraging Grant Class we wanted to look at why grant’s and public funds are important in the cleantech space. With bootstrapping only able to take a company so far, and venture capital funding difficult to obtain, where else can you look for support? Grant funding is another viable option for working capital to boost your company’s growth.

VC’s are hesitant to look at cleantech solutions and self-funding  a clean tech startup is difficult.  This is related to the economics of building hardware solutions, competing with mature solutions, and research and design.  The demand for sustainable solutions hasn’t slowed, just the ROI equation is not conducive for VC’s to invest early.  

California recognizes this problem and is investing aggressively in sustainability, offering grants through the California Energy Commision (CEC) and California Air Resources Board (CARB). Opportunities range from research and development to implementation. Many companies are intimidated by grants but they shouldn’t be. Grants may come with more scrutiny but they also afford greater support and later flexibility.  Take Terzo Power Systems, winner of 4 million in CEC grants.  While they have to work within the grant framework, they don’t have to leverage personal finances or give up portions of their company.

Opportunities like these continue to grow in California. CARB  is charged with protecting the public from the harmful effects of air pollution and developing programs and actions to fight climate change.  The Global Warming Solutions Act, AB 32, requires CARB  to develop and implement measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. One of these measures, the Cap and Trade program, generates revenue that must be used on projects to further reduce GHGs. At this event you will hear more about the California Climate Investments program, the Triennial Investment Plan, the application process, and how to have input into the type of projects to be funded over the next 3 years. Although the Legislature makes the final decision, CARB actively engages California businesses and communities to have a voice in how this money is spent.  Getting involved now supports future development in the state.

There are also grants like the recent CalSEED for CalCEF. Up to 600,000 dollar grants, these help with getting entrepreneur ideas from concept to reality and provide acceleration and incubation options. Sacramento based company Lucent Optics is a recipient of last years CalSEED Grant and has leveraged it to develop a new solution for lighting. The 2018 CalSEED Grants are selecting 25% of recipients from each CEC Innovations Cluster Region, and by doing so are attempting to put all regions on equal footing. The Sacramento area is included in the BlueTech Valley Cluster.  

Check out the CleanStart Grant Talk on March 1st with Mike Terzo, founder of Terzo Power, Ethan Hanohano of Grant Farm, and Ryan Huft of CARB.

Check out the "Leveraging Grants" on March 1st
Thomas Hall

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Thomas is the Executive Director of CleanStart. Thomas has a strong background in supporting small businesses, leadership, financial management and is proficient in working with nonprofits. He has a BS in Finance and a BA in Economics from California State University, Chico. Thomas has a passion for sustainability and a commitment to supporting non-profits in the region.

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