Archive for March, 2011

NanoBusiness Interview – Josh Wolfe, Co-founder & Managing Partner Lux Capital Management

Posted on March 14th, 2011 in Uncategorized | No Comments »

In this month’s interview, we talk to Josh Wolfe, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Lux Capital Management. Mr. Wolfe manages Lux’s investments in Nanosys, Cambrios, Siluria and serves on the Board of Directors of Kurion, Silicon Clocks, Crystal IS and Lux Research. Before forming Lux Capital, he worked in Salomon Smith Barney’s Investment Banking group, in capital markets at Merrill Lynch on its Financial Futures & Options/Government Strategy desk and at Prudential Securities in Municipal Finance.

Prior to venturing into the financial world, Mr. Wolfe published cutting-edge AIDS-immunopathology research in Cell Vision and The Journal of Leukocyte Biology, in leading medical-immunology journals. He serves as co-founder and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Coney Island Prep, the first charter school in his native Coney Island, Brooklyn, and has been actively involved with the East Harlem School at Exodus House for over a decade. The son of a public school teacher, Josh is passionate about science, inner-city education and kids having a deep desire to learn and the right heroes.

Josh is a columnist with Forbes, Editor for the Forbes/Wolfe Emerging Tech Report and host of a show on the Forbes Video Network. He has been an invited guest to the White House and Capitol Hill to advise on nanotechnology and emerging technologies, a lecturer at MIT, Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Columbia and NYU, and a frequent guest on CNBC and CNN. Mr. Wolfe graduated from Cornell University with a B.S. in Economics and Finance.

In this interview, we talk to Josh about Lux Capital’s approach to venture capital investing and discuss some of the firm’s investments in nano and other advanced technology. We hope you enjoy the interview. – Steve Waite

SW: It’s great to be speaking with you today, Josh. Thanks for spending some time with us. You mentioned investing in nuclear. Nuclear technology was derided by environmentalists decades ago, but several prominent and outspoken activists have changed their tune. How big is the opportunity in nuclear today?

JW: There’ve been two things holding back nuclear: fear and waste. On the former it’s a remarkable shift. Environmentalists, once vociferous opponents, have become voracious proponents. To favor carbon reduction is to favor nuclear production. It’s the only rational way to have zero-carbon, not just low carbon, but zero-carbon base-load electricity production. 20% of US electricity is from nuclear, 80% of France, 16% globally and rising.

Remarkably, many people don’t know this, but because of a program called Megatons to Megawatts, about half the uranium our domestic reactors consume comes from Russian nuclear warheads. So amazingly, roughly one in every ten electrons you are consuming right now comes from dismantling of Cold War weapons. Anyway, Lux spent a year scouting the entire fuel cycle, from uranium miners to modular reactors to fuel enrichment, and determined that for a variety of reasons, none of them were venture-backable. The single biggest unsolved problem, particularly in the US was nuclear waste.

SW: Dealing with nuclear waste is obviously a major issue. What kinds of solutions exist today to deal with nuclear waste that weren’t available in the past?

JW: The first thing to know is there are two kinds of nuclear waste: spent fuel, which are the rods inside our 104 domestic reactors and the 440 global reactors. What we call waste, France calls fuel because they reprocess the spent fuel rods; 95% of the fuel is still in them, but proliferation is a concern so since Jimmy Carter’s reign, we have a once-through fuel cycle that stores the rods in casks, basically giant caskets waiting for burial in a some geological repository like Yucca Mountain, in Nevada. But for political reasons that will be trapped in purgatory for years or decades. So there really isn’t a market to go after here.

But the other more important and widely unknown market which has an urgent pain is the defense clean up waste. Most people have never heard of a place called Hanford. It’s in the State of Washington, the size of the State of Delaware and has hundreds of millions of gallons of radioactive waste. Just think about that. That’s bigger than the BP oil spill and twice the cost. And what is most surprising: despite all the rhetoric and punditry on ‘cleantech’ and ‘greentech’ from our political leaders and the media, one out of every four dollars, 25% of the entire DOE (Department of Energy) budget is not spent on solar, batteries, or wind – but on nuclear waste cleanup. This is hands-down the single largest economic opportunity in energy and environment that almost nobody knows or talks about. So we recruited veteran all-stars from the nuclear industry, from government, even Patrick Moore, Greenpeace founder and huge nuclear convert and quietly started and funded a company called Kurion, named after Madame Curie who discovered radiation. They went on to lock-up the most important technical breakthroughs and can grab the worst radioactive elements and permanently capture and isolate waste from the environment. If the team is successful, this will be one of the most important things I do in my life and one of the most financially lucrative things I’ve done for our investors.

SW: While we are on the topic of investing in energy, what is your view of prospects for digital power over the next 3-5 years?

JW: This is another critical area and one where like nuclear, Lux had a variant perception, a differing view. Everyone believes in energy efficiency. But I think they’re crazy. Everyone believes if things were more energy efficient we’d use less energy but they have it exactly and completely backwards. I wish I’d discovered the reason why but credit goes back two centuries to Jevon’s Paradox which shows that while individual devices may get more efficient, without any debate, those devices become cheaper and more available. You can do more for the same cost or less. So demand for them goes up and with near certainty, the aggregate energy use goes up. Even Energy Secretary Steven Chu and I have debated this. He hails fridges as energy efficient devices, to which I say amen. But what he misses is that a fridge today while being 75% more efficient than fridges 30 years ago, also are 20% larger and cost 60% of what they did. And the aggregate number of fridges and the aggregate energy demand is way higher. Individual devices get more efficient, aggregate energy goes up. Think of it in Internet terms: if I gave you an efficient T-1 line you’d be doing video conferencing, streaming music, and sending large files. If I put you on a terribly inefficient 56k baud modem you’d pull your hair out!

The secret paradox is that if you want to reduce energy demand: you make things more INEFFICIENT, NOT more efficient. That’s if you believe we should be reducing energy demand, which I am in the minority opposition. Physics and the laws of thermodynamics tell us that life itself is a fight against entropy, disorder – and the only way to prevent entropy is to add energy to a system. The more energy, the more order and the more utility we have. The highly ordered photons in a laser are hugely valuable to society from eye surgery to photonics, whereas the highly entropic photons of a campfire give off heat and nobody will pay much for that. The trick is ordering the photons in a laser requires an enormous amount of energy and a huge amount of waste is chucked over the side.

We have recently announced an investment in Transphorm Inc. that we’re hugely excited about. Transphorm has developed the world’s most energy efficient power conversion technology – eliminating up to 90% of all electric conversion losses. The ability to convert electricity without loss may be to digital power what Intel was to digital logic.

SW: Are there any nano-enabled energy technologies that look attractive to Lux?

JW: The basis of our nuclear waste remediation company, Kurion was born in sophisticated chemistry and material science at the nanoscale. So too our soon to be announced power conversion digital power company coming out of stealth. All of these are based on ever increasing precision control over and ordering of matter at the nanoscale.

SW: I want to go back to your investment process. The second way Lux Capital invests is based on people. Can you give us a few examples of people-driven investments you have made and some insight into the thinking behind them?

JW: Yes, the first is thesis driven. We try to look where others are not looking, seeking out where capital and attention are scarce because that’s usually where valuations are low and future returns high. It’s intellectually gratifying to do these but very risky as we really part from the herd and we have to make sure we do our work and aren’t being contrarian for unfounded reasons. A second way we make our investments is special-situations, finding capital market dislocations where we can invest often times as the last dollars in but lowest average price per share – being a liquidity provider or helping companies when their other investors may be unable to continue financing them. And our third and favorite style is people-driven as you say. As Lux partner Larry Bock says, we bet on two-legged mammals. Darwin was misquoted. It isn’t survival of the fittest, but survival of the most adaptable. So we find the brilliant galvanizing scientist-entrepreneurs-operators, usually some combination of two of those three are embodied in one person. They are the ones that can adapt and turn on a dime, can passionately recruit, can paint a vision on a blank canvas that makes investors want to write checks and employees want to plunge in and take career risk. A phenomenal individual is just that a phenom – a spinning force that pulls people in. The most important thing we can do as a firm is have the good judgment in finding and picking these people and convincing them that Lux is their partner for the next 5 or 10 years. Our investors trust us to allocate their capital and we have to trust these entrepreneurs to do the same for us.

SW: We’ve seen a lot of activity in nanomedicine over the past decade. How does Lux view the potential of nanotech in medicine and health care overall?

JW: It’s as big as energy. The growing trend from big pharma is continued outsourcing to biotechs, academic institutions and embracing external R&D. And the pace of innovation is remarkable. We’ve spun out companies like Genocea in rapid vaccine discovery from Harvard and Berkeley. From MIT in the case of Cerulean and Visterra, focused respectively on nanotech in cancer and pandemic flu. And from Johns Hopkins in using nanotech to deliver drugs through mucus, with MIT legend Bob Langer and his star protégé Justin Hanes in a new company called Kala – which is Hawaiian for passageway.

SW: Returning to the other piece of Lux’s trilogy investment process, what kinds of special situations have you invested in that you are enthused about?

JW: The most interesting might be Everspin. We were founding investors who approached Freescale Semiconductor, which was previously Motorola Semi. They were struggling with a huge debt load from private equity investors after a buyout. And we made them an offer to spin-out their entire advanced memory division which developed non-volatile memory, instant-on memory and help free up their cash flow. It was a win-win for everyone and the company has been growing at triple-digit percentages.

SW: Nanotech is crucial to the future of semiconductors and electronics. How does Lux Capital go about evaluating technologies and companies in this space?

JW: The key particularly in a cyclical industry like semis is who actually is capturing the value. There’s also a secular component with the rise of Asia, contract manufacturing and fab-less models. The only intelligent thing we felt we could do was to avoid the capital intensive businesses and invest after all the capital was invested at the trough of the cycle. In three of our companies over $100 million was invested by either other investors or a corporate parent and we were able to invest at a valuation that was one-tenth, one-quarter or one-third capital invested – and at a time when product was shipping and tech risk was eliminated. These opportunities are rare but are almost surely to present themselves in energy and healthcare too.

SW: It’s been difficult in the venture capital space given the turmoil in financial markets over the past several years. Do you see the pendulum swinging back in favor of venture capital in the years ahead?

JW: I do. I have a self-serving bias here but VC has been the second worst performing asset class for the past decade, save for the S&P. There has been a flood of capital out of equity capital markets into debt markets, which has driven yields of bonds from governments to munis to corporate low and dividend yields of equities high. What I think you’re likely to see is a reversion of capital flows from debt markets into equities. People and institutions and investment advisors will tire of earning 0.5%, 2.5% or 3.5% respectively on 2,10 or 30 year Treasuries. Municipalities are likely to see serious headwinds and retirees who once thought these were tax advantaged vehicles to preserve capital will see them as capital confiscation and maybe even defaults. My speculation would be capital flows first into large-cap blue-chip high-quality dividend yielding US multi-nationals, almost like a Nifty Fifty of yesteryear. Until that gets overdone. Then investors are likely to seek high-growth unlevered equities and that is exactly what creates a new issue, IPO market. For ten years investors have shunned stakes in high-tech startups. The Facebook, Groupon, Twitter, Zynga phenomena are changing that, with blue-chip institutions clamoring to get allocations. It’s possible, if not probable, this trickles into broad demand for tech companies, which tend to be good inflation hedges as technology is broadly deflationary force with non-commoditized offerings and pricing power. So if Fed printing or debasing our dollars to get out of debt leads to inflation, one could see a resurgence of IPOs. Meanwhile, corporations have restructured balance sheets, refinanced debt, extending maturities and lowering coupons and have record amounts of cash on their balance sheets, ripe for M&A. There is always a five-year investment psychological bias, everyone wants to be invested today where they should’ve been five years ago and I think VC is ripe for five plus years of outperformance.

SW: We’ve seen IPO activity pick up over the past year. Should we expect to see some nanotech IPOs in the near future?

JW: Capital markets are setting themselves up for a reversion of capital flows out of bonds (low yielding sovereigns, munis, corporate in the presence of a non-zero inflationary risk) and into equities. First high-quality multi-national dividend yielding equities, then high-growth, unlevered small and mid-cap tech (also a natural deflationary force against inflation risk from central bank paper printing). It will be an IPO picker’s market: meaning, I’m skeptical we’ll see wholesale sectors see a rising tide of investor demand, but individual companies with either the fundamentals or overwhelming buzz (a la current social media phenomenon of Facebook, Groupon, Twitter, LinkedIn) will see strong demand.

SW: Looking ahead, what are the key investment areas that Lux Capital will be focused on?

JW: Two areas we’re in thesis construction mode are what we call “unmet needs for unmanned systems” and “distributed healthcare.” Both are about emerging technology shaking up both defense and demographic trends in the former and healthcare in the latter.

SW: One last question for you, Josh. What have been the three biggest investment lessons you’ve learned since co-founding Lux Capital.

JW: Not sure I can limit it to three, but I’d say that the only certainty is uncertainty – every company is a roller-coaster ride. That being early is the same thing as being wrong. That in tough investments, deal terms can matter more than the price you pay and in great ones, neither really matters. That good investment team processes are as or more important than outcomes. That people not technology are the single most important thing we invest in. That human nature is a constant and greed and fear and all sorts of well catalogued behavioral biases drive people who drive markets and while markets aren’t predictable, group behavior often is. That rational allocation and irrational misallocation of time and capital define all opportunities in investing.

SW: Terrific! Thanks again for your time, Josh. We wish you and your colleagues at Lux Capital all the best in the future.

I have been friends with Josh for 10 years and every time I speak with him I learn about a breakthrough in energy technology. Thank you Josh for your contributions to our Nanotechnology Community and we look forward to seeing you at one of our Conferences in 2011.

Regards,

Vincent Caprio “Serving the Nanotechnology Community for Over a Decade”
Executive Director
NanoBusiness Commercialization Association
203-733-1949
vincent@nanobca.org
www.nanobca.org

NanoBusiness – The Next Decade

Posted on March 8th, 2011 in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Having successfully completed our first decade of servicing the nanotech community, I am writing you with some exciting news that I hope will provide a solid foundation upon which to serve you and other members in the decade ahead. As the researchers at the NSF and NNI note, nanotechnology is evolving into a second foundational phase that will see a ten-fold increase in the value of nano-enabled products and mass use of nanotechnology. Given the evolutionary path of nanotechnology in the decade ahead, the NanoBusiness Alliance (NbA) is changing its name and refocusing its efforts to be of maximum value to the nanotech community.

Our new name is the NanoBusiness Commercialization Association or NanoBCA, for short. We are in the process of launching a new website: www.nanobca.org. The website will be a comprehensive source of everything we do at the NanoBCA and we hope members find it to be an excellent resource in the future.

From the beginning, the NbA has always had business as its main focus. Our membership and community includes some of the finest business minds in the world. The addition of commercialization to our name reflects the new era into which we are moving whereby a decade of intense scientific research gives way to fundamentally new products that will likely change the way we live, work and play. As billions and trillions of dollars of new nano-enabled products enter the marketplace, there will be a growing interest and focus on nanotech innovation and commercialization. The NanoBCA will be positioned to be the voice of nanotech innovation and commercialization in the decade ahead.

One of the new of the new initiatives undertaking by the NanoBCA, through the support and involvement of its members, will involve monitoring and promoting nanotech innovations and commercialization in the private sector. Steve Waite steve@nanobca.org, our new Director of Strategy and Research, will be assisting me with this initiative. We believe it will be important for our members to stay on top of what is expected to be an acceleration and mass proliferation of nanotech innovations in the future. We hope to create a vibrant and interactive community whereby our members can share information with us and where we can help educate and promote their new products to policymakers, researchers, analysts, the financial community and other interested parties.

Our vision for the NanoBusiness Commercialization Association is clear and focused. The Association seeks to ensure that the United States – its companies, universities and people – are global leaders in the burgeoning nanotechnology field. And the Association ventures to ensure the safe, secure and beneficial use of nanotechnology and nanoscience for all people.

Our mission at the NanoBCA in the coming decade is three-fold:

1. Promote the Commercialization of products designed and developed through the Science of Nanotechnology.

2. Advocate continued U.S. spending through the National Nanotechnology Initiative. America must continue the funding of NNI from R&D to commercialization.

3. Inform membership with regard to EHS regulation from Federal (EPA and FDA) and State Governments. Monitor proposed legislation from Federal and State government.

We are proud of the accomplishments of the NbA over the past decade having successfully lobbied for the creation of The National Nanotechnology Initiative in January, 2000. Backed by our supportive members, our efforts have helped produce over $12 billion of funding, which has created a community of about 150,000 contributors in the U.S., along with a flexible R&D infrastructure consisting of about 100 large nanotechnology oriented R&D centers, networks, and user facilities, and an expanding industrial base of about 3,000 companies producing nanotech-enabled products. Despite all this fabulous growth in activity, we are still only in an early stage of development with nanotechnology. There is much work ahead and we know that we cannot do it without the support of our members.

We are very excited to be returning to NYC for our conference being held at the Marriott Marquis Times Square on April 6-7th. The conference begins with an opening reception on the evening of Wednesday, April 6th. We have an entire day of programming on April 7th (details to follow).

REGISTRATION $400
To register, please complete the attached form 2011 NanoBCA NYC Reg Form and fax to 480-275-3662

HOTEL INFORMATION
New York Marriott Marquis Times Square
212-398-1900
http://www.marriott.com/hotels/travel/nycmq-new-york-marriott-marquis/
$269 per night
Room block code: NYBA

We appreciate your continued support and look forward to working with and serving our members in what promises to be an exciting decade ahead for nanotechnology and the nanotech community. It has been a pleasure representing the collective voice of the nanotechnology community. I look forward to serving you in the next exciting decade.

Here’s to much success in the Nano Decade ahead!

Regards,

Vincent Caprio “Serving the Nanotechnology Community for Over a Decade”
Executive Director
NanoBusiness Commercialization Association
203-733-1949
vincent@nanobca.org
www.nanobca.org
www.vincentcaprio.org

NanoBusiness Endorses Introduction to Safe Handling of Nanomaterials – Mar. 28th Anaheim, CA

Posted on March 8th, 2011 in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Many of you in the nanotechnology community are familiar with our good friend Kristen Kulinowski, Ph.D. Kristen has been one of our leaders in providing information in regard to the safe handling of nanomaterials. Kristen and her team’s website http://goodnanoguide.org/tiki-index.php?page=HomePage is one of my favorites. Today I would like to share with you an opportunity for you to participate in a unique program called, “Introduction to Safe Handling of Nanomaterials in the Workplace” presented by the American Chemical Society (ACS) http://www.proed.acs.org/.

This course will cover aspects of occupational health and safety as they relate to handling nanomaterials. The emphasis is on controlling human exposure. The course begins with an introduction to nanomaterials and the physicochemical properties of the major classes. Major developments in the toxicology and environmental impacts literature will be summarized along with their implications for occupational practice. The next topic is strengths and weaknesses of existing tools for assessing and controlling exposure. Principles of risk management for nanomaterials will be introduced, including emerging topics such as control banding. Major activity in the regulatory and standards arenas will be summarized. The course will conclude with an introduction to essential resources that attendees can consult after the course is over.

MONDAY, MARCH 28, 2011
Check-in opens at 7:30am on the day of the course. Course runs from 8:30am to 5:00pm

REGISTER TODAY $695
The course fee includes a course binder and a continental breakfast each day.

Five for Four! Register five people for one course, one person for five courses, or any combination in between and your fifth registration is free. Note: This discount is only available if you register by fax or mail and mention this discount. May not be combined with any other offer.

Register online for this class in Anaheim, CA
Course Code: NANO
http://www.regonline.com/Register/Checkin.aspx?EventID=916169

Register with form via mail or fax
Course Code: NANO
http://www.proed.acs.org/courses/registration.pdf

KEY TOPICS
– Introduction to nanomaterials
– Toxicology of nanomaterials: research review
– Environmental impact of nanomaterials: research review
– Assessing and controlling exposure to nanomaterials: strengths/weaknesses of existing technologies
– Risk managements approaches: key elements, control banding
– Regulations and Standards: key regulatory agencies’ activities and standards on nanomaterials
– Information management in the nanotech workplace: essential resources for further education

COURSE INSTRUCTOR(S)
Kristen Kulinowski http://chemistry.rice.edu/FacultyDetail.aspx?RiceID=1200 is a Ph.D. Chemist and director of International Council on Nanotechnology as well as executive director of NSF Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology.

Bruce Lippy http://mysite.verizon.net/bruce.lippy/html/team.html is a certified industrial hygienist, a certified safety professional and holds a Ph.D. in policy from the University of Maryland.

EVENT LOCATION
Hilton Anaheim http://www.hiltonanaheimhotel.com/
777 Convention Way

Anaheim, CA 92802

HOTEL RESERVATIONS
Discount room reservations can be made through the ACS Housing Connection.
https://resweb.passkey.com/Resweb.do?mode=welcome_ei_new&eventID=3092081

Direct questions about the course to:
Phone: 202-872-4508, Email: shortcourses@acs.org

This is a subject that is vital to our nanotechnology community. Please continue to educate yourself on this topic.

Regards,

Vincent Caprio
Executive Director
NanoBusiness Alliance
203-733-1949
vincentcaprio@nynanobusiness.org
www.nynanobusiness.org
www.vincentcaprio.org