Sir Richard Branson is chairing the jury of this year’s Postcode Lottery Green Challenge. The seventh edition of the annual competition for green business plans opens today to sustainable startups all over the world. The winner will receive € 500.000,- to carry out his or her plan. An additional € 200.000,- (more…)

A team of student entrepreneurs from India called Greenway Grameen Infra has won the Grand Prize earlier this month at the 8th Annual Intel Global Challenge at UC Berkeley. The global business plan competition rewards student entrepreneurs who tackle some of the world’s most pressing issues with innovative ideas. (more…)

Anyone can look up at the sky and make a guess at tomorrow’s weather. But having actual data informs your opinion and makes your guess a little more accurate.

Which is why, as a managing director of a leading cleantech data provider and responsible for the presentation of its quarterly global cleantech data, I (more…)

Eric McAfee is an entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and philanthropist, founding and funding companies in renewable energy, oil and gas, agriculture, networking devices and enterprise software. Given that level of success, I tried to absorb every word of his talk at last week’s Renewable Energy Finance Forum. (more…)

After decades of venture capital investment, growth and exit, the traditional focus areas of venture capital (such as IT, web and software) have developed strong entrepreneurial ecosystems. A high percentage of start-ups in these traditional areas come to market with one or more experienced entrepreneurs or (more…)

While many cleantech companies require very large amounts of capital in order to get to market, there is a quiet group of cleantech companies bucking that trend.

Companies like Heartland Biocomposites (green building materials), RealTech (water testing) and TerraLUX (LED lighting) all built significant and growing businesses with compelling intellectual property and did so initially without multimillions in capital from venture funds (let alone tens or hundreds of millions). Because TerraLUX is one of our portfolio companies and I therefore know them best, their story is one I am able to share.

TerraLUX boasts customers like Cooper Lighting, Phillips, GE Healthcare, Snap-On Tools and many others.  It has six awarded patents and eight more filed. Dr. Anthony Catalano founded the company in 2003 and, with exceptional technology smarts, creative boot-strapping and some of his own capital, he built a business with significant revenues, exciting gross margins and deep intellectual property — all without a penny of outside investment capital.   And now, only after all those accomplishments, has TerraLUX closed a $5.6M financing from Emerald Technology Ventures and Access Venture Partners.

How did TerraLUX pull this off?  (more…)

(Reuters) – A Web application that alerts wine grape farmers when their vines are thirsty has won first place in a competition to spur entrepreneurs in the investment-starved water sector, organizers said on Monday.

Fruition Sciences, which operates in both California and France, came first among 50 teams in Imagine H2O’s global competition aimed at building a “Silicon Valley” for water.

Water is a $500 billion business worldwide, but draws a mere 0.5 to 1.0 percent of venture capital and only a handful of investments per year despite growing demand for solutions to widespread water shortages. (more…)

A “plucky little” country is how the late Princess Diana once described Israel to Shimon Peres. About the size of New Jersey, Israel has a disproportionate number of clean tech companies and investment in clean technology compared to its size.

And now U.S. businessman and investor David Anthony from 21Ventures (at left) is about to reveal his trade secrets and insider information about clean tech investing in Israel.

If you are itching to become a clean tech entrepreneur in Israel, this is must-read information. If you’d like to know more about what makes the industry tick, read on.

Unlike Silicon Valley and the high-tech industry, the clean tech market today has no center of excellence, Anthony tells Green Prophet. In the last 50 years of venture capital investing there has been a saying, “Never fly over your company,” meaning one shouldn’t invest in a company that isn’t within a 60 mile radius of the office.

(more…)