Expectation is interesting, isn’t it? It’s truly a self-realizing force.
One way corporations generate capital is to issue debt to investors. Those investors, or creditors, are paid some premium to temporarily give up their cash to these corporations. This is called debt issuance or bond issuance.
The current expectation is that there will be high return on investment in clean technologies. Venture capital funding in clean technologies has almost doubled since the first quarter of this year, from $836 million to $1.9 billion in the current quarter. While this figure doesn’t come close to say, corporate debt issuance, at about $419 billion in the second quarter of this year, what is interesting is the percentage change. Bond issuance hasn’t grown significantly in the last ten years.
So the numbers above would suggest that investors have a relatively mature, stagnant appetite for issuing credit to corporations. But investors have immature, exponential growth in appetite for return on Cleantech. In terms of mice and cheese, the mouse is still chasing the cheese in the world of corporate credit. Whereas, the cheese is chasing the mouse in the Cleantech world.
So go back to the interesting part. The expectation of return creates opportunity, or gaps. For example, gaps in technology, in a skilled workforce, in knowledge and awareness, in social consciousness. The gap was always there. But now we can see it, it becomes defined by the boundaries of what is known. And as the known portion increases, the opportunity becomes more focused and accessible by a smaller number of people. So find your thing. The thing that you are so good at that you are sure you were born to do it. Hang out in the gap.
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