Showing posts with label People. Show all posts
Showing posts with label People. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Dravis Group LLC, San Francisco

Dravis Group LLC, Consultant

Mr. Dravis's approach to Cleantech is a good one: look for supporting industries that have less technological risk than the high profile start-ups. He currently likes Cosan (CZZ), SQM (SQM), General Cable (BGC), and Power-One (PWER) almost all of which I've had good things to say about in the past, for similar reasons (see here, here, and here). The only one I have not talked about is SQM, which is not green enough for my taste (admittedly a fairly high bar.) That said, I was more impressed by his feel for market timing than his industry knowledge, so much so that I asked him to send me his weekly newsletter, the Dravis Wealth Advisor, which he does not charge for. If you're interested in giving his newsletter a try, send him an email at p a u l at d r a v i s dot n e t. Like me, he's currently quite bearish, so don't rush out to buy his picks unless you're also prepared to hedge them.

CalCEF Angel Fund, San Francisco, CA

CalCEF Angel Fund, San Francisco, CA

Susan Preston and Paul Fox

What is California Clean Energy Fund and what is its interest in early stage investing?
The California Clean Energy Fund (CalCEF) is a nonprofit corporation formed in 2004 to accelerate investment in California’s clean energy ecosystem. Established as a result of the Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) bankruptcy, CalCEF seeks to promote the growth of companies developing a wide range of clean energy technologies that will bring economic and environmental benefits to California. CalCEF has a number of programs in place to provide financial and intellectual capital to promising clean energy companies at various stages of the investment life cycle. Of particular note, CalCEF is currently building a later-stage evergreen clean energy investment portfolio that combines thought leadership and investment capital to produce market-based returns and support California’s world-leading policy objectives. A core element of CalCEF’s mission is to identify and address gaps in the clean energy funding cycle. Given the wide and ever increasing gap in investment funding for seed and start up clean energy companies, the launch of an angel fund is a natural extension of CalCEF’s approach to the clean energy market. CalCEF’s domain expertise, its experience in building a clean energy investment portfolio and its relationships with investment managers and clean energy stakeholders position CalCEF to bring critical resources to the Angel Fund.