A friend of mine was helping me just now prepare for a webinar. “So part of the presentation is a few business plans you like. OK, how would you summarize this? I mean, is there one central point that they all have in common?”
“No,” I told him. “It depends on the business. If you’re a solar or wind farm, you need to be able to sell the power, preferably with a power-purchase agreement that’s already in place. If you’re a biomass project, you need take-off contracts as well, but more important is an ironclad source of feedstock. If you’re an EV manufacturer, you need a boutique market niche that won’t generate competition from the big boys. There are tons of different business types, each with its own requirements.”
“Come on, Craig; think about it,” he implored. “There must be some common denominator to the dozen-or-so plans that turn you on, versus the several hundred that leave you cold.”
“Ah, we’ll here’s something I can say. Some people say they just want to hit singles: nothing transformative or disruptive. But the problem is that this simply doesn’t work today like it did a few decades ago. You think you’re going to raise money to build a business that does something marginally faster, better, or cheaper? That may be OK if you’re a local dry-cleaner or pizzeria. But in cleantech, forget it. The whole world’s doing that every day – whether you’re there or not. Me-too technology companies were always a snooze. Now they’re a disaster.”
“And how would you say that in a sentence?” he asked.
”I would put it like this: If you don’t have a really good idea, you have a bad idea.”
1 comment
Investors are about as complex as the business plan they prefer or like. A plan is just that –a plan (as appose to an action committee). Let’s face it, unless there are aliens among us, most ideas will be based on something better not something new. Looking for transforming or disruptive technology or ideas? The numbers are pretty small when compared to the ocean of investors out there. Which means that somewhere investors are either sitting on money or jumping on some gravy train to nowhere. I do think that me-to companies do contribute somewhat to the demand side of things though I do agree with you that having everyone doing solar, wind, smart meters, biofuels, and so on can get redundant as to investor options. There will always be one or two Googles or facebooks out there and there will always be a ton of potentially competitive options that, with the right funds, could topple the few giants.
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