Finance

"I want them to think about government service," he says. "Whether you like the government or don't like the government, somehow we need to get more smart people into the government."

"I can't tell you how difficult it's going to be to build businesses in this area."

Lassiter likens clean-tech energy production companies to the biotech firms that were sprouting up in the early 1980s. Their success, too, relied on government policy much more than that of general high-tech firms. He recalls former students who eschewed established company jobs for gigs at flashy biotech start-ups, only to find themselves spending the bulk of their time writing government grant applications. "For most folks who graduated from HBS in the 1980s and who wanted to work in biotech, the place to work wasn't in any of these first-generation start-up companies," he says. "The place to work was the National Institutes of Health or in business development at one of the established big pharma/medical device companies."

To further emphasize the role of government in clean-tech, next month Lassiter will teach a case called U.S. Department of Energy & Recovery Act Funding: Bridging the "Valley of Death." The case discusses the Department of Energy's attempt to bolster the green economy by investing more than $32 billion in clean-energy efforts, including $16.8 million for to energy efficiency and renewable energy companies. The DoE also gave $4 billion to a new loan guarantee program, dubbed "1705," dedicated to renewable energy, smart-grid, and biofuel projects. The grants also included $400 million for the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), a new government agency that provides grants for advanced, albeit financially risky energy research.

There's no question the DoE investments have made an initial impact. For instance, in March 2009, the DoE granted a $535 million valley-bridging loan guarantee to thin-film solar cell maker Solyndra, to support the company's plans to construct a commercial-scale manufacturing plant. In September, in conjunction with breaking ground on the new plant, Solyndra officials announced that the company had received $198 million in private equity since receiving the DoE loan guarantee.

"They've certainly been effective in bringing private money into the game," Lassiter says of the DoE. "It's definitely speeding things up compared with where they would have been without it."
Deals declining

The question is how effective those publicly funded investments will be in the long term, especially in terms of a venture capitalist's idea of company success—that is, going public or getting bought. A few clean-tech start-ups, including Tesla and A123 Systems, have gone public, but many others appear stalled. Solyndra announced plans to file for an IPO in December 2009, but reneged on the filing the following June. Daqo New Energy, Trony Solar, and MiaSolé are among other clean-tech companies that have withdrawn or delayed IPOs.

And despite the boost from Recovery Act funding, VC interest in the space has been waning in the past few months. Following a record first quarter of 2010, when North American companies raised $1.5 billion in clean-tech venture investment—81 percent of the worldwide total that quarter—funding has withered. In the third quarter, according to the Cleantech Group, North American clean-tech companies raised just $928 million, down a whopping 42 percent from the second quarter, and accounting for only 62 percent of third-quarter global investments in the sector.

"I can't tell you how difficult it's going to be to build businesses in this area," Lassiter says. "But, in some sectors, there are real opportunities for entrepreneurs with ideas that can move the needle and not drain the bank."

Finding those breakthrough ideas and entrepreneurs is a tough task for venture capitalists, he says. In his classes, Lassiter teaches the case of Highland Capital: the venture firm evaluated some 400 clean-tech start-ups—and invested in only three of them.