5 Questions for David Lincoln of Element Partners
Element Partners, a cleantech-focused venture capital firm with offices in Pennsylvania and Silicon Valley, tomorrow will announce that it has closed its second fund with $486 million in capital commitments. So we've got 5 Questions for David Lincoln, the firm's managing partner: 1. Element Partners originally focused on both early-stage and later-stage investing, but this fund will drop the early-stage component. Why? Lincoln: We'd always had a mixed-stage focus, but the initial impression was that we were primarily early-stage, because of our association with Draper Fisher Jurvetson. In fact, we continue to get a ton of early-stage dealflow, but not as much in the growth or expansion-stages -- even though that's the area where we focused 80% of our attention. So we thought it was good to formalize and emphasize our growth-stage and expansion-stage strategy with this fund and fund announcement. Also, for this moment in the economy, we think there are better cleantech opportunities later.
