GE’s Kevin Skillern and Khosla Ventures’ Vinod Khosla get drilled by Techcrunch’s Erick Schonfeld on stage at this week’s Techcrunch Disrupt in San Francisco.
Both are known as green visionaries in the venture space, so Erick and the Techcrunch audience were all keen to know where they saw future trends going and, more importantly, billion dollar industries in the energy sector.
As for hot sectors in green technology today, Vinod says, “disruption is just a fun game, but it can occur everywhere. Everything can be reinvented in any area. If people say it can’t, then it’s just a failure of imagination.”
While it may take ten years to liquidate a company in this sector, he reminds the crowd that there are many technology start-ups that take that long as well.
Kevin, who runs venture investing for GE Energy, talks about GE’s role in the industry and its importance.
A third of the world’s power is run on GE’s equipment, so clearly they’re essential to the future of the energy industry. He said that when they started looking into the billion dollar markets in energy, they came up with 20 or 30 areas. In other words, there is no shortage of opportunities to be capitalized on.
So, what are the top five markets each of them are focused on?
“Clearly there’s something around fuels,” said Kevin. “When you get to a recessionary environment, a lot of things kick in, and biofuels is a big one. Electrifying vehicles is another, and if people start living on a smart grid technology system, they should be able to get a 20% oil reduction,” he adds.
Vinod adds a little perspective about companies looking to innovate in this area and how they should choose an investor. “You need to look at the individual at the firm who will be helping you,” he says.
“Ask yourself, how many billion dollar companies have they created? Can they help you through the hurdles along the way and creating a new market when the chips are down? There are lots of good VCs and good angels and lots of bad ones. Pick one who is passionate.”
As for the most disruptive companies in their portfolio?
Kevin talks about their investment in a company from North Carolina called Consert that uses 3 and 4G networks to essentially turn a home into something that resembles a power plant. If you have a distributed network, you can manage the grid efficiently. There are big chunks of the world that don’t have the grid reliability, so apparently this is a no brainer for emerging countries.
Transportation and lighting are also huge. Vinod talks about solutions that can create crude oil. Calera is one company that Vinod brings up. It makes coal and natural gas power plants and cement plants cheaper and cleaner than solar and wind by reducing carbon by more than 100% in a scalable and economic way.
“Isn’t the goal to get off carbon fuels?” asks Erick.
“That’s conventional linear thinking,” says Vinod. He thinks environmentalists are doing more damage to their goals because they’re prescribing solutions without having a clue of how expensive they are. Below is an overview of some of the industry sectors and companies that Khosla Ventures is investing in today.
Kevin talks about missing incentives. He says, “if utility incentives were properly set up, and on the team, we could save a lot of energy. But it’s currently not set up that way. Our objectives should be clean, but also include tax benefits, among other things. They need to be incentivized as well.”
Vinod pipes in, “if you stop believing the environmentalists, and start believing the scientists and the innovators, we’ll move forward. Owning a Prius is more expensive than a lot of other things we can do to save energy. You can reduce more carbon by painting your roof white. One costs $100 and one costs an additional $5K over what a regular car costs.”
Renee Blodgett is the founder of We Blog the World. The site combines the magic of an online culture and travel magazine with a global blog network and has contributors from every continent in the world. Having lived in 10 countries and explored nearly 80, she is an avid traveler, and a lover, observer and participant in cultural diversity.
She is also the CEO and founder of Magic Sauce Media, a new media services consultancy focused on viral marketing, social media, branding, events and PR. For over 20 years, she has helped companies from 12 countries get traction in the market. Known for her global and organic approach to product and corporate launches, Renee practices what she pitches and as an active user of social media, she helps clients navigate digital waters from around the world. Renee has been blogging for over 16 years and regularly writes on her personal blog Down the Avenue, Huffington Post, BlogHer, We Blog the World and other sites. She was ranked #12 Social Media Influencer by Forbes Magazine and is listed as a new media influencer and game changer on various sites and books on the new media revolution. In 2013, she was listed as the 6th most influential woman in social media by Forbes Magazine on a Top 20 List.
Her passion for art, storytelling and photography led to the launch of Magic Sauce Photography, which is a visual extension of her writing, the result of which has led to producing six photo books: Galapagos Islands, London, South Africa, Rome, Urbanization and Ecuador.
Renee is also the co-founder of Traveling Geeks, an initiative that brings entrepreneurs, thought leaders, bloggers, creators, curators and influencers to other countries to share and learn from peers, governments, corporations, and the general public in order to educate, share, evaluate, and promote innovative technologies.
