Coskata Co-Founder Todd Kimmel Joins Mayfield
Big personnel move in the cleantech VC world, as Todd Kimmel has left Advanced Technology Ventures to become a partner with Mayfield Fund. For the uninitiated, Kimmel originally joined ATV in 2003 at just 27 years old, and invested in companies like Great Point Energy and CaliSolar. He then transitioned to an entrepreneur-in-residence role in 2006, and co-founded cellulosic ethanol company Coskata (yeah, the one that just got money from Blackstone). Early last year he returned fulltime to ATV, but now is moving on. Last Friday I spoke to Kimmel, who said the move was largely due to Mayfield’s global platform. “Every company I invested in with ATV needed to address going outside the U.S.,” Kimmel explains. “GreatPoint has been in conversations with a Chinese power company about building a factory, CaliSolar built a facility in Germany because it got support from the German government and so on.” He added that it was difficult to leave ATV, because “they gave me my first VC opportunity.” Kimmel has transferred
