Clean & Cool Mission offers UK startups chance to tap up US investors

The government-backed Technology Strategy Board (TSB) yesterday launched a competition designed to help the UK's most promising clean tech startups attract funding from Silicon Valley's top venture capitalists.

The Clean & Cool Mission is being organised by a coalition of trade and clean tech experts including the TSB, research firm Polecat, consultancy Volans and the Enterprise UK campaign.

The group's aim is to organise a trade mission to San Francisco for 20 of the UK's most promising clean tech firms, which will take place from 20-26 February next year and allow the companies to pitch to leading US venture capital firms and meet with US-based green businesses.

Speaking to BusinessGreen.com, Bronwyn Kunhardt, who is organising the mission, said the group was seeking applications from startups with innovative technologies that have been up and running for at least two years and are interested in accessing the US market.

"The Valley tends to prefer to invest in slightly more established startups, so we are looking for companies that have passed the early idea stage and are preferably revenue-making," she explained. "We also want a good cross section of different technologies, such as wind, wave, fuel cell and smart grid, which is generating a lot of interest from VCs at the moment."

The selected companies will be asked to provide £1,200 towards the cost of the mission, but Kunhardt insisted that this represented a good use of budget, arguing that companies would get more "bang for their buck" as part of a trade mission than they would trying to attract investor interest alone.

She added that previous missions run for UK web startups had proved successful, with three of the 20 companies that travelled to the US last year securing funding and many of the others continuing to prosper.

David Bott, director of innovation programmes at the TSB, rejected the suggestion that the need to travel to the US to attract clean tech investment was an indictment of the UK venture capital market, arguing that the UK economy would ultimately benefit from foreign investment. "These are UK companies, so even if they end up using US money, it will still help to create UK jobs and innovation," he said.