Over the past 16 years, I have been involved in 5 successful startup companies ranging from an energy company, to several .com companies. Now I am focusing all of my attention on creating the tipping point in the sustainability movement by pushing initiatives in government, business and the broader social landscape. 
Many people are curious, what I am doing since I left Powerset. Well, the short story is that I have decided to dedicate myself to what I call the new Green Economy and I am working on several initiatives with other leaders in government and businesses that all fall under the responsibility of non-profit that I am founding called SF Green. 
Solel continues the trend of huge investments rounds, by tapping into $105 million dollars. But what makes this interesting is who Solel got its money from and who is signing deals with them. Average Round Sizes are Much Bigger than the .com Era. This whopping $105 million investment certainly puts Solel in the top 10 investments since 2006, which stengthens the evidence that Green investing is unlike the .com era investing. Remember Google only raised $25 million from VCs and then $5 million from Yahoo! to become the multi-billion dollar company it is today. Solel provides further evidence that it takes a lot more money in GreenTech due to the incredible CapX requirements of these companies.
When the Rounds Get This Big, Traditional VCs aren't Play
ers. Another really interesting piece of Solel's investment strategy is that is raised the money, not from traditional VCs, but from a private equity firm called Ecofin.
Ecofin is a private equity firm that specializes in global utility and infrastructure industries - in other words, they are a private investment facility that invests in very large projects and they don't tell us where their moeny comes from. If you look on their website they say:
"Ecofin in an independent firm which is owned by its principals and private investors. The firm’s principal operating company, Ecofin Limited, is an English company which is authorised and regulated by the U.K. Financial Services Authority (FSA) and is registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as an Investment Adviser. Ecofin, Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Ecofin Limited, is incorporated in Delaware with offices in New York City. EFM Limited is an associated company with offices in Jersey, Channel Islands, Geneva and Hong Kong."
So they are a UK company who is owned by Ecofin Limited, which is a US based company and they have offices worldwide. This is incredibly important because it shows a continuing trend of more investment dollars comming from less transparent companies with huge assets behind them and less comming from the traditional venture capital market. The question is, what role will the old guard traditional VCs play in the new Green Economy where only big money can play in the game?
Each Customer Can Make or Break a Company like Solel. If you look at who Solel is partnering with on the business development front and who it has signed deals with, it becomes clear very quickly that the averae business development deal is huge in comparison to Internet startups. For example, Solel signed a deal to poiwer three plants in the US and the deal size was valued at $890 million. On another note Solel has also signed a huge 530 MW deal with PG&E to build a solar power plan in California. What if one of those deals goes sour? What if new technology comes along making the existing billion dollar investments obsolete?
The US is Not Dominating in the New Green Economy. Solel is an Isreali company and services customers world-wide. Why is this interesting. Well, one of the most important aspects of the Green Economy is going to be Green Collar jobs. Solel, who employs about 300 people, isn't General Moters or Wal-Mart, but the fact that many of the leading Green companies are not US based brings up an interesting question. If other countries lead the way in the Green Economy, which by the way is predicted to potentially be the biggest portions of GDP in 20 years, where does that leave the US? Are we being left behind?