风投高手：如何识别清洁技术领域的千里马

    • 上市前一年的营收为7,200万美元。如果把SemiLEDs公司和Gevo公司排除在外，那么2007年后上市的公司，其上市前一年的营收最低为3,000万美元左右。这导致上市时的股价营收比处于两位数水平，超过了同类企业（比如，A123系统公司虽然两年来处境艰难，但其市销率仍然达到4倍；而电池生产商Exide公司和Enersys公司则远远低于1倍）。在估值方面，获得成功的清洁技术初创公司更像是高速发展的技术公司，而非他们现在的同行，后者尚未宣布其IPO估值。

    • 上市时未实现盈利。在这18家公司中，只有4家公司在提交上市申请的前一财年实现了营业利润。这4家公司是Q-Cells，REC，Solarfun和Yingli，都属于太阳能企业。这种情况在上市当年也没有发生变化，大多数公司的亏损没有缩小反而扩大了。

    以上的分析告诉我们未来的NBA球员应该是什么样子，但丝毫不能告诉我们他们还是八年级学生的时候是什么样子。要想了解这方面的情况，我们必须做一些基础研究。于是，我尽可能多地与那些熟知这18家公司最初阶段情况的人进行交流。我问了他们一个简单的问题：“在进行种子融资或首轮融资时，你如何评价这家公司的技术、市场和团队，是出色、普通还是糟糕？”

    对于每家初创公司，我都努力做到与至少一位参与了种子融资或首轮融资交易的投资者，以及至少一位见证了该交易及后续发展的投资者进行交流。但对于许多公司，我都无法做到这一点。因此，请容许我强调一下，以下分析存在很大的主观性。我的分析结果是：

    • Went public on $72 million in revenue the prior year. With a couple of outliers (SemiLEDs and Gevo), the revenue floor for an IPO has been around $30 million since 2007. This has led to price-to-revenue valuations at IPO in the double digits, transcending their category comparables (for example, A123Systems is still at 4x P/S today despite two tough years, while incumbent battery-makers Exide and Enersys sit well under 1x). Winning cleantech start-ups get valued like high-growth tech companies, not like their incumbent peers, so the latter haven't informed IPO valuations.

    • Was unprofitable at IPO. Only four out of 18 companies – Q-Cells, REC, Solarfun, and Yingli, all in solar – showed an operating profit in the fiscal year before they filed. That situation remained unchanged in the year of the IPO itself, where most companies' losses widened rather than narrowed.

    This analysis tells us what the NBA draft looked like, but it doesn't say anything about the eighth graders. To learn about them, we need to do some primary research. So I talked to as many people as I could who were familiar with these 18 companies at their earliest stages, and asked them a simple question: "At the time of the seed/Series A fundraise, how would you have rated [company X] on its technology, its market, and its team – great, middling, or unfavorable?"

    For each start-up, I strove to speak with at least one investor who did the seed/Series A deal as well as at least one who saw it and passed; however, for many companies I couldn't pull this off – so let me emphasize that there's a heaping helping of subjectivity here. With that caveat in place, here were my results:

    • 技术与成功无关。在进行早期融资时，这些公司中只有约1/3是真正的技术领袖，拥有强大的差异化技术（想想1994年的Evergreen太阳能公司）。如果在做选择时只看技术，那么这些公司中的大多数都会被排除在外。

    • 市场大小与成功无关。在这18家公司中，有8家公司在成立初期时面向的市场规模狭小，缺乏吸引力。2003年，EnerNOC公司和Comverge公司成立时，市场反应并不热烈；2002年，特斯拉公司（Tesla）成立时，电动汽车只会让人想起EV-1的失败；在第一太阳能公司（First Solar）的前身Glasstech公司成立两年之后，里根总统撤走了白宫的太阳能面板。另有6家公司面向的是普通规模的市场，虽然绝对数量不小，但具有某些致命的特性，比如行业利润较低、起伏较大（化学品，燃料），或者面临来自中国的竞争激烈（电池，LED）等等。在大多数情况下，市场从不受欢迎到受欢迎的巨大转变是受到了法规的推动（比如针对太阳能的保护性电价，旨在刺激市场需求响应的预约容量市场，以及针对生物燃料的可再生燃料标准的补贴等）。

    • 团队最重要。优秀的团队是这些公司将会取得成功的最重要征兆。这些公司中的大多数企业从一开始就拥有这种优势（从我的访谈来看，在这18家公司中，只有1家公司遭遇了“我们会投资，但前提是必须换掉CEO”的情况）。我观察到的最重要现象就是，在大多数时候，创始人CEO就是那位在几年后敲响股票交易所钟声的人。在这18家公司中，有11家公司从未换过CEO，有2家公司在开始时并没有CEO，而是后来增补的（这两家公司的创始人一直留守），只有5家公司在中途换过领导。我常常听能源风险投资领域里的同行说，这个行业缺乏管理人才，因此换CEO是理所当然的事。但事实并不支持这种观点。

    那么，眼下有哪些清洁技术初创公司能在8年后获得成功？面对这个艰巨的预测任务，我会着眼于何处呢？

    我看重的是一支优秀的团队——他们必须不惧艰难险阻，并且用行动而不是用语言来说明，他们将如何按照自己的意愿来塑造这个世界。当然，随着时间的推移，还需要其他的因素才能获得成功，对此我表示认同。但此刻站在我眼前的人必须首先令我相信，他们能够在目前的职位上创造出丰硕的成果。我不在乎他们现在所面对的市场有多大，但他们必须使我相信，未来将出现某些变化，可以使市场在投资期内变得更有吸引力（这种变化的推动力或许来自于法规方面）。

    最后，无论技术是多么地令人叫绝，我都不会在人的问题上妥协（但反过来我可能会）。

    以上只是我的个人看法。我清楚地知道，本文的分析存在许多错漏之处，但如果你认同以上的任何结论，那么你会由此而断定，清洁技术投资者最应该做的事情就是吸引最聪明的人才，投身这个领域。这也应该是清洁技术初创公司在创新和合作方面最应该关注的重点。

    Matthew Nordan是文罗克公司（Venrock）能源领域的风险投资家。Nordan曾与他人共同创建并领导了能源技术分析机构卢克斯研究公司（Lux Research），并在弗瑞斯特研究公司（Forrester）从事技术未来走势的预测工作。更多内容请查看mnordan.com。

    译者：千牛絮

    • Technology doesn't correlate with success. At the timing of early-stage financing, only about one-third of these companies were real technology leaders with strong, differentiated IP (think Evergreen Solar in 1994). If you made picks based on technology alone, you'd have ruled out most of these companies.

    • Market attractiveness was anti-correlated. Eight of these 18 firms faced unattractively small markets early on: Demand response was hardly a hot category when EnerNOC and Comverge formed in 2003, electric vehicles evoked little more than the EV-1's failure at Tesla's 2002 founding, and Reagan took the solar panels off the White House two years after First Solar's predecessor Glasstech started up. Another six firms faced middling markets that were large in absolute terms but exhibited some deal-killing attribute, like low/volatile category margins (chemicals, fuels) or ruthless Chinese competition (batteries, LEDs). In most cases, the bit-flip from an unattractive market to an attractive one was driven by regulation (feed-in tariffs for solar, forward capacity markets etc. for demand response, and subsidies like the Renewable Fuels Standard for biofuels).

    • Team matters most. The best predictor of success for this group was a killer team, present from the outset in a majority of these companies. (From my interviews, only one of the 18 was a "we'll fund if the CEO gets replaced" situation.) The most important observation for me is that, most of the time, the founding CEO was the same one who rang the stock exchange bell years later: Eleven out of 18 never changed CEOs, two started life without any CEO and added one along the way (in both cases the founders stayed on), and only five changed leadership midstream. I frequently hear some of my energy VC peers say that there's so little executive talent in this sector, replacement CEOs must be recruited as a matter of course; the facts don't support that view.

    So – faced with the daunting task of predicting cleantech's NBA draft eight years hence – what am I looking for?

    I'm looking for a great team – people who can defy intimidating odds and who show, rather than tell, how they will shape the world to match their will. I accept that additions will be made over time, but I have to believe that the people in front of me can drive a very large outcome in the roles they're in now. I don't care whether the market they're selling into is big today, but I need to be compelled by their vision of what will change to make it attractive during the period of investment. (That forcing function is probably regulatory.)

    Finally, no matter how impressive the technology is, I won't compromise on the people (although I'm likely to accept a tradeoff in the opposite direction).

    That's just my take, and I'm fully aware that the error bars around this analysis are huge. But if you agree with any of it, it follows that the best thing cleantech investors can do is attract the brightest minds to this domain. This should be the greatest creative and collaborative focus of our fledgling community.

    Matthew Nordan (@matthewnordan) is an energy VC investor at Venrock. Earlier, he co-founded and led the energy tech analyst firm Lux Research and forecasted technology futures at Forrester. There's more where this came from at mnordan.com.