Investments
Money talks - the right investor for your cleantech business
Economic growth implies financial resources: there’s nothing new to it. Nowaday’s challenges however are bigger than ever. Climate change and growing resource shortages threaten our traditional way of thinking about health, wealth and economic growth. They imply structural changes calling for approaches and technologies of a different kind: clean technologies. Fostering such game changing technologies require new and innovative cross-sectoral cooperation and venture models. Such as Corporations investing directly in promising ideas of Cleantech SMEs or via their Corporate Venture Funds, Venture Capitalists specialised in Cleantech taking different approaches when considering projects, and Private Equity investments reconsidering growth expectations. Also crowd funding and the public sector take up a different role in the financial mix levering the new dynamics striving for more sustainable production. And can we engage pension funds in driving sustainable growth?
Conclusions
FCA companies hold impressive pitches in the i-SUP2014 Investment track
Smart money for your Cleantech business
Economic growth implies financial resources: there’s nothing new to it. Nowadays challenges however are bigger than ever. Climate change and growing resource shortages threaten our traditional way of thinking about health, wealth and economic growth. They imply structural changes calling for approaches and technologies of a different kind: clean technologies. Fostering such game changing technologies require new and innovative cross-sectorial cooperation and venture models. Does the money still flow to young, promising SMEs in such a risk adverse environment? See here the scene of i-SUP2014’s Investment track.
A first session, chaired by Jos Peeters of Capricorn Venture Partners, got kicked off by a keynote of Peter Adriaens of Keystone Compact Group, and introduced the Keystone Compact method as a quantifiable means to assess the investability of a company and to indicate what type of money would best suit a certain type of business. The concept got illustrated by 4 cases in which both investor and investee gave their views and by doing so explained to the audience:
- What investors look for when considering a participation in a promising SME
- How the investee experiences the different game and how an external VC can lead to further professionalisation.
Also the cases itself were taken from a smart mix:
- How to grow a young material start-up into a world-class manufacturer (Bort & Finindus)
- How to attract US technology to Flanders and what role plays the Flemish investor (FRX Polymers & Capricorn)
- How emerging markets play a role in cleantech investments (Punch Power Train & GIMV)
- How the baseline dominates: high productivity and low cost (NovoPolymers & Capital-E)
In a second session, chaired by John Verzeele of Flanders Investment & Trade, Richard Youngman of Cleantech Group shed a light on the changed environment of cleantech and the complex partnering between innovative SMEs and Corporates: can elephants dance with fleas … ? Bekaert Venturing explained how early-stage investments form an integral part of Bekaert’s growth strategy, and GDF Suez New Ventures explained why they wanted to team up with SME-teams and what they get in return.
In a third session, the 7x7 Entrepreneurial Pitches, 7 entrepreneurs pitched 7 minutes about their game changing cleantech offer, in search of business partners or venture capitalists. A warm applause to AppliTek, Hadda International Group, Hydrogenics, LayerWise, NuReSys, The Sniffers, Typhoon and Voxdale.