Long before it came to describe all things good for the environment, the term "green" was just shorthand for cold, hard cash. Now, as the legendary venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers focuses increasingly on "green" investments over those in the Internet sector that made it famous a decade ago, there's reason to question whether it's trying to do something good for the Earth or just seeking out ways to make more money.
This Fortune Magazine profile on Kleiner Perkins reports that there's nothing at all green, at least in the environmental sense of the word, about one of the firm's most promising energy investments, Terralliance Technologies, which started out as a maker of software to make it easier to locate and extract oil and natural gas, but has evolved into a more traditional oil drilling company. Kleiner Perkins has not exactly broadcast this portfolio company, though Fortune quotes sources pegging Kleiner's investment in Terralliance at $1 billion.
"It would be ironic, to say the least," Fortune notes, "if Kleiner's first 'green' jackpot turns out to be a company that actually drills for oil."
The Deal has previously reported that all investor crazes, from nanotechnology to dot-com to anything green, inevitably become magnets for opportunistic schemes to cash in on the excitement by slapping a new label on old, unremarkable technologies. It may be particularly easy for VC firms to do this, since they have so much latitude in what they disclose to the public and what they keep private. As Fortune notes, Kleiner Perkins doesn't have to publicly disclose its returns, and it can tout the partners as well as the portfolio companies that look the most Earth-friendly while conveniently keeping companies like Terralliance in stealth mode. - Andrea Orr
See May 1 post from on Kleiner Perkins' green investing from Tech Confidential
See July 8 story on Kleiner Perkins from Fortune.com
See October 2007 story on Greenwash from TheDeal.com
See November 2007 post on Al Gore joining Kleiner Perkins from Tech Confidential
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