Lars Aikala Of Valoya
Back in November we visited the Lahti Cleantech Venture Day where we had a chance to see a lot of different companies and people. One of the most interesting was Valoya. Valoya is a company working in an industry that most people wouldn't consider especially sexy. They are developing professional lights for greenhouses with LED technologies. While this may sound boring to the average man on the street, take a minute to think about how your vegetables are grown these days. The business is huge and about one third of the costs of producing vegetables go into electricity.
Richard Youngman: Why Copenhagen Does Not Matter For Cleantech Startups
We visited Lahti Cleantech Venture Day a few weeks ago and were able to talk to Richard Youngman of Cleantech Group. Richard is based in Cleantech Group’s office in London and is responsible for the company’s global membership offering – its industry-leading data, research, and conferences – as well as driving the growth of the group’s activities in Europe, India and the Middle East.
In the first video we discussed what will happen in 2010 in cleantech and whether Youngman believes the cleantech market in India is finally catching fire.
We also talked in length why he believes Copenhagen does not matter. As we all know, the 15th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP15) is going on in Copenhagen, Denmark right now. Businesses have already a long time argued for a clear road map what kinds of policies governments will implement, what will be taxed, what will be supported and so on. The missing clarity will inhibit or at least defer all the investment decision to the new technology, which in turn influences the number and the amount of investments, trade sales and even IPOs in the sector, when nobody knows what horse to bet on. Youngman argued it's not quite as what is seems. See the videos below for more.
Richard Youngman Of Cleantech Group On Where The Innovation Is Coming From
We visited Lahti Cleantech Venture Day a few weeks ago and were able to talk to Richard Youngman of Cleantech Group. Richard is based in Cleantech Group's office in London and is responsible for the company's global membership offering - its industry-leading data, research, and conferences - as well as driving the growth of the group's activities in Europe, India and the Middle East.
We discussed Cleantech Group's offering and what they do in particular, how does the clean tech space currently look like and where the innovation is coming from.
In the second video Youngman told us how he sees the Nordic space and what are the hot areas to follow. Similarly he addressed whether he sees clean tech continuing to attract the most venture capital going forward, just as it did in Q3 this year.
Full Steam Ahead With GreenSteam
Daniel Jacobsen, CEO of Decision 3 came from the Faroe Islands to attend the Lahti Cleantech Day 09 to tell about his company's product, GreenSteam. Fuel efficiency and optimization of existing ships is their business, and as the maritime sector is looking for ways to drive down emissions and costs GreenSteam is coming out right on time with their technology.
Seafaring is getting under a lot of pressure to minimize CO2 emissions, 15% till 2015 is what the International Maritime Organization demands, and with 6% of global CO2 emissions by 2020 being emitted by the sector its high time to look for ways to optimize. Given that fuel costs are often half of a seafaring company's expenses, looking for ways to optimize should come natural.
AleLion Makes Customer-Driven Batteries
I had a chat with Torbjörn Sundström, CEO of AleLion Batteries at the Lahti Cleantech Day '09 and he told me about their customer-driven business.
Based in Gothenburg, AleLion was founded in 2006 and currently employs 30 people. The company will have a turnover of €2m in 2009. Investors have invested less than €1m into the company, and while the company does not really need capital urgently, Torbjörn told me that they might go looking for further capital in order to grow faster and go past the European borders.
Entrepreneurial And Management Skills A Must
Reporting live from the Lahti Cleantech Venture Day '09. The first impression is that there are lot of VCs around, which are looking to invest in Finland, and Scandinavia in general.
German, Dutch, and UK venture capitalists are present and willing to finance tickets between €1M up to €5M for first round investments. One VC on the panel commented that the economic crisis has created a lot of risk, which makes investing lucrative again - big risks, big pay-offs. The economic downturn has also made the cleantech sector more prominent and serious for investors. When you run out of money, it's finally time to think!
While some governments have gone forward and created policies to support innovations in cleantech - feed-in tariffs and subsidies -the general feeling is that more needs to be done if the industry should remain attractive for investors and help start-ups to succeed in a market that, especially in the case of energy, is still dominated by a few big players.
While Finland and Scandinavia remain an interesting breeding ground for clean technologies, it's generally agreed here that the cleantech sector is global. So while start-ups get going close to home, they realize that they need to get the money to go international quickly. VCs remarked that winners in the area have not materialized yet, or are being created right now. Both camps have one demand in common: entrepreneurial and management skills need to be present in the start-up -it's not enough to just have a great product!
