Mitra Ardon from Natural Innovations blogs about the recent Cleantech forum in Australia and links to his article (PDF) in Ethical Investor.

He concludes:

It was noticeable that, apart from a couple of notable mid-stage funders such as Starfish Ventures and CV Sustainable Investments, investors at the conference were asking where the large, low-risk deals were. Yet all ten companies in the ìpitch-festî were looking for less than $10m and with higher risks and better up-sides.

In my opinion, our challenges in Australia, in a time of great opportunity for the cleantech industry are: investors that are focussed only on big, low-risk deals; a bureaucratic government funding system that is inaccessible to start-ups in the process of commercialising new technologies; and that government still thin
our energy future is basically in mining coal or uranium.

It should not be surprising to see more of Australiaís clean technology start-ups head overseas for funding This will of course lead to the very shortage of local later-stage deals that the fund managers complain about.

The positive perspective on this is that for those, here or abroad, willing to look at risky early stage deals,there are bargains in Australia.