VCs speak out: Cleantech is the #1 trend

Red Herring's annual panel of five top VCs predicting 2006's "top 10 tech trends" came out, with "More investment in green startups" at #1. VCs participating on the panel included John Doerr, Steve Jurvetson, Roger McNamee, Joe Schoendorf, and Ann Winblad. The panelists also suggested that biological sciences would start to attract a lot more college student interest going forward, given their applicability for both biotech and green technologies. Jurvetson even went so far as to state his opinion that:

“All the breakthrough development in science and technology will increasingly come from bio-derived or bio-inspired origins.”

All this attention, of course, is bringing yet more attention to the space. Business Week, for example, mentions that Doerr's Kleiner Perkins and/or Vinod Khosla are already invested in a few "stealth" cleantech startups (See: Ion America, Miasole, EEStor, Methanotech). Doerr appears to have mentioned that there's a fifth such investment as well...