Solyndra: A Venture Capitalist's View

Andrew Chung shares his views on the Post Solyndra Era. Will the failure of Solyndra have a significant impact on private sector cleantech investment? How does Chung respond to critics who say that cleantech investment is a disaster?
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Yesterday in D.C., Steven Chu defended his department's handling of the DoE loan guarantee to Solyndra. But here in Silicon Valley, what's the impact of Solyndra's failure on the venture capital industry? In this exclusive Fresh Dialogues interview, Andrew Chung, the newest member of the Khosla Ventures investment team, shares his views on the Post Solyndra Era. Will the failure of Solyndra have a significant impact on private sector cleantech investment? How does Chung respond to critics who say that cleantech investment is a disaster?

The downside
"Downstream, there are other investors who are a bit more skittish about investing in following rounds..."

The upside
"In the past twelve months, we have three companies that have gone public and generated over $1.1B in profits for the firm. ...It's possible to make money in cleantech and drive a lot of change and drive significant returns."

The future
"It's still relatively early... we are in the second inning of an extra inning game, in the development of this industry."

"(At Khosla Ventures) we continue to be incredibly excited about the cleantech opportunity... we just raised a $1.1B fund, half of it is going to be in cleantech."

Check back soon for more highlights from our interview with Chung:

On America's comparative advantage vis a vis China

On what we can learn from China's cleantech policies

On Chung's motivations for investing in cleantech

The interview was recorded at the Cleantech Open in Silicon Valley, November 15, 2011

Read more, see transcripts, photos and check out other exclusive interviews with Tom Friedman, Paul Krugman, Vinod Khosla and many other experts at Fresh Dialogues Archives and join the conversation at the Fresh Dialogues Facebook Page

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