Still, the odds of making it in cleantech might be tougher than other areas of tech.
Asia Cleantech worked with government agencies to bring the first electric vehicles to Singapore.
And most VCs dedicated to cleantech collectively shifted their focus to more capital-efficient deals, Woodward said.
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Today I spoke with Tim Woodward, a managing director at cleantech venture firm Nth Power.
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Richard Martin is the editorial director of Pike Research, the leading cleantech market intelligence firm.
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Nattering nabobs of negativity have filled the press and punditry surrounding cleantech in 2012.
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"Cleantech investing is mostly large in scale, large in risk and large in potential rewards, " Dolezalek says.
The Cleantech Group itself recently announced a partnership with the National Venture Capital Association, an Arlington, Va.
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Most of the sectors tracked by the Cleantech Group saw fewer deals in 2012 than in 2011.
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The number of early-stage deals has dropped to the lowest level since 2008, according to Cleantech Group.
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According to the Cleantech Group, only 2% of global institutional venture capital was focused on smart water investments.
"You certainly can't take somebody who was an Internet investor and go after all of cleantech, " he says.
Its portfolio companies are leaders in industries ranging from cleantech (Nanosys) to electronics (Cambrios) to life sciences (Biovex).
In fact, 798 cleantech patents were granted in Q3 of 2012, 25% more than in the prior year.
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Cleantech investing reached critical mass this year, based on the dollars dumped into such companies by venture capital investors.
Tewari: Health care, cleantech, semiconductor and other hardware, and even on-premise software.
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"I don't think you're going to see as many successful companies in cleantech compared with Internet and software, " Dolezalek says.
The program is focused on medical device and cleantech startups that can actually benefit from sharing production and prototyping equipment.
Everyone knows cleantech is a hot investment category in the U.S. But what about in such emerging markets as India?
In fact, I recently returned from a Water Innovation Summit in Berkley that was hosted by the Cleantech Group.
"The financial instruments for the high-tech market cycle don't work as well in cleantech, " says Cleantech Group Managing Partner John Balbach.
The relative flood of money flowing into cleantech has also drawn investors and executives from diverse high-tech fields looking for opportunities.
And this was in 2011, the year that scores of politicians used Solyndra to tell the public that cleantech was dead.
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These startups are proving that cleantech enterprises can make money, scale in size and do social good at the same time.
The payout for cleantech investments so far have been stock market pops.
CleanTech Open 2011 Global Forum is a featured event at the Global Entrepreneurship Week, November 15 and 16 in San Jose, California.
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