I've been trying to figure out how to express this.. so just going to try.. long rant apologies in advance. The last waves of 'cleantech' investing were primarily about reducing the cost of what were then VERY expensive technologies - solar, batteries, wind turbines, EVs - and then opening up new markets for them, with companies like Tesla, SolarCity, Sunrun, SunEdison, etc Guess what? - it worked. Not because of venture capital (although I would argue it played a crucial role), but because of the massive scale-up of manufacturing, driven by China. These things are all now really, really cheap and getting cheaper. Markets have been opened. We won. The majority of new electrical generation capacity being built globally is renewable. EVs have become mainstream. People are putting batteries on their home. Grids are putting batteries on... their grids. We won and continue to win. But, I don't think all investors in the sector have gotten the message. I see so many companies being funded to try and further lower the cost of these already cheap commodity technologies. Which is absolutely a worthwhile goal. But, I don't think that's where the money and impact is going to be made this time around. Just like it was not where VC made their money last time around. The world has 1 TW of solar panel manufacturing capacity, and 2 TWh of battery manufacturing capacity - both growing fast. Almost all using the 'basic' technology - silicon and lithium-ion. How do you enter a market like that if you are not at GW scale? You may be able to partner with an incumbent manufacturer... but man - that is going to be difficult, going up against 100s of other tech innovations vying for their attention, along with their own internal R&D. And getting them to change their massive production lines? It's that - or raise a billion dollars of at-risk capital. I was sitting in a pitch from a battery materials startup who is developing a new anode material that they said was a 'drop-in' replacement and would reduce battery costs by 30%. That morning, CATL had announced they were dropping their prices by 50% (and they since have). So - now what? Startup still has many years getting from the lab into production. What will CATL costs look like then? And startups often confuse cost and price. Nobody really knows what the costs of these giant Chinese companies are, or will be in 5 years. The real question to ask is - now that we have cheap solar, wind, batteries, EVs, etc - what else can we do with them? What new technologies and processes and businesses can we enable with $0.01/kWh solar electricity and $50/kWh energy storage, available at TW scale? That's what @EnergyVentures is looking for.. I'm less interested in competing with these incumbents than I am in leveraging their capital and scale to create new products and services, built on dirt cheap clean energy and storage. And all of the other cool businesses that you need to surround these core technologies to get them to their full potential. Whew. The end.