Is Silicon Valley ready to get Clean and Cool?

March 30, 2012

 

If you were an investor, wouldn’t you welcome the opportunity to meet 16 of the UKs most innovative CleanTech companies?  I  certainly would.

 

Well, some VCs in Silicon Valley are going to be the lucky recipients of presentations from these British Companies as part of an entrepreneurial trade mission to the US market under the brand, Clean and Cool in the UK.

Among these companies is my client SAVortex (www.savortex.com), a British manufacturer of a revolutionary, highly energy efficient, hand dryer.  We are currently actively working with SAVortex to raise a Series A investment to fund their continued exciting high growth strategy.

The SAVortex story is a great one about British innovation and start up and how to go about creating a potential world beating company. Established four years ago, the company started with only a idea of how to take a completely innovative approach to hand dryer manufacture.  Four years later the company now sells from its London offices, manufactures in my county, Wiltshire and has ambitions to disrupt the global hand dryer market with its technology.

How many more British businesses out there with this potential and ambition?  Well, I for one, hope there are dozens and I am sure there are probably more.

This trade mission has been organised by The Technology Strategy Board, The Long Run Venture and the Co-Sponsoring Agency (www.cosponsorshipagency.com) supported by the UK Trade & Investment (UKTI) and other private sector sponsors.

I do not normally blog about companies in this way but I want to show my support for this initiative which helps to show case great British technology and helps these companies not only get access to potential investors in the US but also gives them a chance to establish relationships and bridgeheads to the US market.

I would hope that these companies can be funded by UK based funds, indeed I am sure most of them have been funded todate in the the UK.  However, the greatest challenge for young companies in the Technology and CleanTechnology sectors is getting access to the capital they need to grow and create jobs and even where Venture Funds are prepared to invest, they make the process complex, time consuming and through machiavellian documentation, often very one sided.  I do not think it is an overstatement to say that one of the most important members of a start up team is not a good CEO but a good lawyer.

The companies, which represent energy storage, agriculture and food, water, renewable energy, transport and energy efficiency technololgies.  They are:

 

The companies departed on 24th March 2012 and return on 31st March 2012.  I wish them all a great deal of good luck on their mission and I look forward to getting a first hand report from SAVortex CEO Syed Ahmed on his return next week.

If you would like to know more about SAVortex, please send me an email at jbdcolley[at]aol.com