In our earbuds: Venture capital and electric buses

The lat­est episode of the Experts Only pod­cast from Clean­Cap­i­tal is an inter­est­ing chat with Nan­cy Pfund, a vet­er­an investor in clean ener­gy companies.

The big pic­ture: The inter­view ranges from her back­ground in the indus­try to oppor­tu­ni­ties for apply­ing advanced grid tech­nolo­gies in Africa.

At one point, Pfund, a founder of DBL Part­ners, mus­es about the inter­sec­tion of clean ener­gy star­tups and U.S. policy:

• “Most entre­pre­neurs, espe­cial­ly 10 years ago, weren’t real­ly inter­est­ed in pol­i­cy. In fact, many of them don’t like it. They are entre­pre­neurs for a rea­son — to be unfet­tered, and go after that mar­ket­place opportunity.”
• “How­ev­er, what I have seen and been encour­aged by is that the smart entre­pre­neurs, as soon as they real­ize that, oh, there is a pub­lic util­i­ty com­mis­sion or there is the invest­ment tax cred­it that gets vot­ed on in Wash­ing­ton, they are quick learners.”
• “Even though many of them still don’t like it, the best of them embraced it, or hired peo­ple that would embrace it, and so it has been an edu­ca­tion for many, and for all of us real­ly. We had no idea how politi­cized this field would become.”