????? 上市前一年的營收為7,200萬美元。如果把SemiLEDs公司和Gevo公司排除在外，那么2007年后上市的公司，其上市前一年的營收最低為3,000萬美元左右。這導致上市時的股價營收比處于兩位數水平，超過了同類企業（比如，A123系統公司雖然兩年來處境艱難，但其市銷率仍然達到4倍；而電池生產商Exide公司和Enersys公司則遠遠低于1倍）。在估值方面，獲得成功的清潔技術初創公司更像是高速發展的技術公司，而非他們現在的同行，后者尚未宣布其IPO估值。

????? 上市時未實現盈利。在這18家公司中，只有4家公司在提交上市申請的前一財年實現了營業利潤。這4家公司是Q-Cells，REC，Solarfun和Yingli，都屬于太陽能企業。這種情況在上市當年也沒有發生變化，大多數公司的虧損沒有縮小反而擴大了。

????以上的分析告訴我們未來的NBA球員應該是什么樣子，但絲毫不能告訴我們他們還是八年級學生的時候是什么樣子。要想了解這方面的情況，我們必須做一些基礎研究。于是，我盡可能多地與那些熟知這18家公司最初階段情況的人進行交流。我問了他們一個簡單的問題：“在進行種子融資或首輪融資時，你如何評價這家公司的技術、市場和團隊，是出色、普通還是糟糕？”

????對于每家初創公司，我都努力做到與至少一位參與了種子融資或首輪融資交易的投資者，以及至少一位見證了該交易及后續發展的投資者進行交流。但對于許多公司，我都無法做到這一點。因此，請容許我強調一下，以下分析存在很大的主觀性。我的分析結果是：

????? 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:

????? 技術與成功無關。在進行早期融資時，這些公司中只有約1/3是真正的技術領袖，擁有強大的差異化技術（想想1994年的Evergreen太陽能公司）。如果在做選擇時只看技術，那么這些公司中的大多數都會被排除在外。

????? 市場大小與成功無關。在這18家公司中，有8家公司在成立初期時面向的市場規模狹小，缺乏吸引力。2003年，EnerNOC公司和Comverge公司成立時，市場反應并不熱烈；2002年，特斯拉公司（Tesla）成立時，電動汽車只會讓人想起EV-1的失??；在第一太陽能公司（First Solar）的前身Glasstech公司成立兩年之后，里根總統撤走了白宮的太陽能面板。另有6家公司面向的是普通規模的市場，雖然絕對數量不小，但具有某些致命的特性，比如行業利潤較低、起伏較大（化學品，燃料），或者面臨來自中國的競爭激烈（電池，LED）等等。在大多數情況下，市場從不受歡迎到受歡迎的巨大轉變是受到了法規的推動（比如針對太陽能的保護性電價，旨在刺激市場需求響應的預約容量市場，以及針對生物燃料的可再生燃料標準的補貼等）。

????? 團隊最重要。優秀的團隊是這些公司將會取得成功的最重要征兆。這些公司中的大多數企業從一開始就擁有這種優勢（從我的訪談來看，在這18家公司中，只有1家公司遭遇了“我們會投資，但前提是必須換掉CEO”的情況）。我觀察到的最重要現象就是，在大多數時候，創始人CEO就是那位在幾年后敲響股票交易所鐘聲的人。在這18家公司中，有11家公司從未換過CEO，有2家公司在開始時并沒有CEO，而是后來增補的（這兩家公司的創始人一直留守），只有5家公司在中途換過領導。我常常聽能源風險投資領域里的同行說，這個行業缺乏管理人才，因此換CEO是理所當然的事。但事實并不支持這種觀點。

????那么，眼下有哪些清潔技術初創公司能在8年后獲得成功？面對這個艱巨的預測任務，我會著眼于何處呢？

????我看重的是一支優秀的團隊——他們必須不懼艱難險阻，并且用行動而不是用語言來說明，他們將如何按照自己的意愿來塑造這個世界。當然，隨著時間的推移，還需要其他的因素才能獲得成功，對此我表示認同。但此刻站在我眼前的人必須首先令我相信，他們能夠在目前的職位上創造出豐碩的成果。我不在乎他們現在所面對的市場有多大，但他們必須使我相信，未來將出現某些變化，可以使市場在投資期內變得更有吸引力（這種變化的推動力或許來自于法規方面）。

????最后，無論技術是多么地令人叫絕，我都不會在人的問題上妥協（但反過來我可能會）。

????以上只是我的個人看法。我清楚地知道，本文的分析存在許多錯漏之處，但如果你認同以上的任何結論，那么你會由此而斷定，清潔技術投資者最應該做的事情就是吸引最聰明的人才，投身這個領域。這也應該是清潔技術初創公司在創新和合作方面最應該關注的重點。

????Matthew Nordan是文羅克公司（Venrock）能源領域的風險投資家。Nordan曾與他人共同創建并領導了能源技術分析機構盧克斯研究公司（Lux Research），并在弗瑞斯特研究公司（Forrester）從事技術未來走勢的預測工作。更多內容請查看mnordan.com。

????譯者：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.