Cleantech Friday by Steve Guengerich
“Any week now.” That’s been the buzz for 6 months about HelioVolt, the hottest early stage cleantech company in Central Texas. The “any week” is referring to the long-awaited funding event for the solar start-up, expected to be one of the largest that Central Texas has seen in a long time. $60 million, $80 million, $100 million…whatever the final number is, the company will definitely be the beneficiary of at least 3 factors: first, an uplift that cleantech deals are getting that is greater than any other sector for venture investing at the moment – a product of the voracious global appetite for power, times the extra push that “An Inconvenient Truth” has given to all things green in the past 18-24 months.
Second, solar is a technology that has “legs.” While many a jab has been taken at solar recently, some with good reason (“it costs too much” “it doesn’t scale well” “it has limited use and reach”), the fact is that most studies show it will be an increasing percentage of the future power generation capacity worldwide – the question is, will it be big, or REALLY big? And HelioVolt’s more efficient (higher yielding) chemistry is one of several that are in a race to get to scale fastest. The winner (or winners) stand to be the ExxonMobil of solar.
Third, as so frequently is the case, the HelioVolt team is one that has gotten stronger as time has gone by. I remember when BJ Stanberry (son of commercial real estate local legend, Bill Stanberry) was still getting comfortable in his skin as the CEO of an early stage company. It’s not easy to go from deep academia to rapid “start-up-ia,” but I’ve been impressed watching BJ’s growth as a business leader. Early on, he knew the value of an investment in the local cleantech “eco-system,” somewhat sheepishly making a modest but powerful symbolic show of support by contributing the honorarium that HelioVolt received at an NREL venture competition to the Austin Clean Energy Initiative’s fund-raising efforts promoting the clean energy sector in Central Texas.
Five years later, BJ is a polished speaker, holding his own with Wall Street Journal reporters and in forum’s like a recent Lux Research nationwide conference call led by Matthew Nordan and some of the sharpest minds in cleantech investment trends around. Surrounding BJ are people like venture partners and advisors like Jimmy Treybig and Arno Penzias on the one side, and deeply experienced, hands-on operators like Larry Peruffo and David Bowen on the other side, who recently joined the HVC team. So, the stage is set, the actors are in place, and the audience is seated…we’re all just “waiting for the big one” – the funding event that will put Austin’s solar cleantech sector on the map.
