Finding deals is competitive, expensive and difficult, and it is at least half of the job of a venture investor, corporate or financial.
Should you follow the crowd or find your own way? Set up shop in Silicon Valley, Tel Aviv, Munich and Singapore, and elbow your way into the best clean deals? Or get off the beaten track, say goodbye to the family and dog for a couple of weeks, and see what you can find in underexposed clean-tech innovation hot spots like Melbourne or Sao Paolo?
May I suggest another approach: make yourself a cup of tea, sit down at your desk and gently download data on the surprisingly large world of quoted clean-tech small caps and micro-caps – wee fellas with market capitalisations of less than $50m that are currently languishing unloved on the world’s junior exchanges like Aim, Nasdaq and the Toronto Venture Exchange. You might be surprised at the value – financial and strategic – you uncover. Sooner or later, you will have to take a flight to meet these companies, but your travels will at least be more focused.
The rest of this article can be read in our November issue PDF.