Cleantech’s “Netscape moment” coming next year

Venture titan John Doerr: Cleantech’s “Netscape moment” coming next year.

Cleantech investing may have fallen by 30 percent in the past few months, but legendary venture capitalist John Doerr said that he’s still optimistic about backing startups in this field.

Doerr, whose investments include Internet giants like Google and Amazon, said that looking at the amount of money invested doesn't indicate the quality of companies after all, during the periods of peak venture investment, many "inconsequential" Web startups got funded. On cleantech in particularly, Doerr said the industry is waiting for its “Netscape moment”. In other words, the industry needs a big, successful initial public offering that will “capture the imaginations of investors and consumers alike.”

“I think we’re very likely to see that next year,” Doerr said. (Some cleantech companies, namely Tesla and A123Systems, have already had successful IPOs, but their stock price subsequently dropped.)

Doerr was speaking at VentureBeat’s GreenBeat conference on the Stanford campus. In the past few years, Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers (where Doerr is a partner) was largely seen as refocusing on cleantech, but it made headlines in the past few months around its mobile and social investments. Still, Kleiner is definitely “open for business” in cleantech, Doerr said, and it invested in six clean energy companies during the past year.