Sunday, January 06, 2008

News and notes - Cleantech VC conversation, wind M&A, marketing

Few things I came across this weekend.

Earth2Tech Video: Cleantech Investing With Draper Fisher Jurvetson: Informative and insightful interview with two prominent cleantech VCs. Their thoughts on the cleantech "bubble" (about the 9 minute mark) are especially interesting, and they spend a good deal of time in the latter half of the interview talking about specific companies.

Scottish and Southern Energy to Acquire Airtricity for EUR 1 Billion: a couple weeks ago, I wrote the following in this post:

We should see continued consolidation in the wind power industry over the next few years, and those companies with the capacity to go public or raise private capital will do so soon....Those companies with available capital and market leadership should be best positioned to take advantage of this maturing sector.
I will be keeping track of this deals for future reference, as I expect we'll be seeing many more, especially if several planned wind IPOs come to fruition.

Truth in Advertising: more "something to watch" at this stage, but the FTC's decision to move up the review of its Green Guide (last updated in 1998) doesn't come a moment too soon. Many of the year-end posts that I linked to here focused on the trend of corporate environmental initiatives, and greenwashing. Perhaps the single most important aspect of marketing is "authenticity". Be it tweens, 18-34 men, housewives or NASCAR fans - know your audience and be real to them. The same of course applies for companies trying to reach consumers interested in the environmental practices, perhaps some of the toughest critics around.

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