“I think they have recognized our strategy is viable,” Grosser said about Kleiner Perkins.
Foundation Capital also invested in SunRun, which sells solar power to homeowners. It does not make solar panels, though. Instead, it offers solar power for a monthly fee so homeowners do not have to pay the installation and maintenance costs of rooftop panels.
Foundation Capital’s most successful investment so far is EnerNOC. It monitors energy in office buildings, grocery stores and hospitals and alerts operators to move power to places that need it most from those that need it least.
On a hot summer day, for example, EnerNOC will automatically shut off one-third of an office building’s lights, turn the air-conditioning down 3˚C and stop the fountain in the lobby so the energy can be used elsewhere.
Paul Holland, another Foundation Capital partner, met EnerNOC’s co-founders in 2002 at Dartmouth, where he was talking to business students. EnerNOC’s idea — to regulate energy supply and demand — stuck with him.
Two years later, the founders called him, and Foundation Capital invested US$21 million.
EnerNOC went public in May 2007, five years after its first round of venture capital, and raised US$98 million in its public offering of stock. Its revenue was US$106 million last year, and that is expected to grow 55 percent this year, said Timothy Healy, its chief executive.
“There are a lot of people who went down that path of solar and fuels and wish they didn’t,” Grosser said. “From where we sit, we are very grateful we didn’t put a pile of money down.”
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