John
Doerr, famed partner at venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield
& Byers asked his family how they felt about the problem of global
warming as they sat around the dinner table one night. It was his
16-year-old daughter’s response that hit him in the gut.
“‘Dad, I’m scared and I’m angry. Your generation created this problem and you better fix it,’” she said.
Mr.
Doerr told this story Saturday to a crowd of about 900 Chinese
entrepreneurs, investors, and others at the Innovation and Leadership
2006 conference at the Santa Clara Hyatt Regency. The two-day event was
organized by the Hua Yuan Science and Technology Association (HYSTA)
which promotes professional networking among Chinese Silicon Valley
professionals.
In his two and half decades at KPCB, Mr. Doerr has backed high-tech’s greatest success stories, including Google
and Amazon—making himself into one of the world’s richest men in the
process. Now, he’s touting what he calls “greentech” as the next big
thing.
A
friend of Al Gore, he’s joining an increasingly large chorus of venture
capitalists who see both financial and moral gain in backing
technologies that fight global warming (see VCs Push for Oil Tax).
No Coincidence
Mr. Doerr’s choice of subject matter for this particular conference was no coincidence, he said. China
faces immense growth in its cities—building the equivalent of eight
Manhattans a year, he said. Urbanization at this magnitude poses a
significant environment threat due to the pollution it generates.
On
the flip side, the country is at the forefront of some the greatest
advances in environmental technology with the potential to stem the
tide of global warming, he said.
“Clean
tech,” as many past efforts at environmentally friendly industry have
been called, hasn’t panned out from an investment standpoint, said Mr.
Doerr, but “greentech” will.
The
difference? The word “green” means money is to be made, he said. It’s
about advances in areas such as nanotechnology and alternative fuels
that mean that companies will succeed in the future where past efforts
have failed. In 10 years, he said, carbon reduction will be as
important as cash because it will be redeemable for government
subsidies of all kinds.
Promoting Initiatives
Meanwhile,
he has thrown his weight behind initiatives on the state level that
promote such technological breakthroughs: he strongly advocated for California