The Green Frog from Silicon Valley

Green capital confident despite public market

Fortune Magazine's Brainstorm: Green is one of the better conferences ahead of Earth Day. After attending a few times in Southen California, I decided to enjoy their virtual conference portal from the comfort of my home and avoid flying down to Los Angeles. The reticence of public markets to value cleantech companies was on everybody's mind and almost palpable through the screen.

Fred Krupp, the President of the Environment Defense Fund, cut to the chase today in a one-on-one conversation with Jeremy Grantham from GMO by saying the cleantech sector needs to accept that natural gas is going to take center stage. It should focus on making it cleaner until renewable energies can scale. The panel yesterday on "Follow the Green Money" was particularly useful to understand how the solar and wind sectors got in the situation they are today, and why they are still good bets.

Australian untapped pool of innovation

Today is World Water Day and it does not get as much attention as Earth Day. Water is arguably the biggest challenge that we are facing ahead and it is tightly connected to climate change. The decrease in fresh water reserves and the rise of population has shifted the balance from abundance to scarcity. The end of abundance has far reaching implications around the world and across industries.

It is an opportunity for Australia to shine on the international scene. When it comes to water scarcity, the country down under has experienced droughts for decades that other countries are only experiencing now. Provinces like Victoria have smartly engaged the public opinion and everybody feels concerned, from consumers at home to researchers in their lab. The spur in water innovation has, however, not translated yet in many investment deals. Why investors are not tapping down more into this pool of opportunities?

Angels to women: do you know Brigitte Baumann and Stephanie Hanbury-Brown?

Despite the rise of women executives at the head of some of the largest US corporations and most powerful foreign countries, there are still few women entrepreneurs in high-tech. There are even fewer women investing in early-stage companies. Not that they lack the smarts or the courage to start a business; we all have experienced these qualities in many women in our lives. The difficult choices needed to balance family life and a career, as well as the limited vocations in the scientific field, are the most common explanations.

For the International Day of Women, we decided to talk to two women who started a business angel network. Brigitte Baumann is the founder of Go Beyond in Geneva, and she is the President of the Board of EBAN, the European trade association for Business Angels and Seed Funds. Stephanie Hanbury-Brown has been a Managing Director at Golden Seeds since its inception in the New York City in 2004. They accepted to share their experience, and allowed us to go beyond stereotypes. They are, in the true sense of the word, angels to other women.