Chrysalix Energy Venture Capital …“This Changes Everything™”

Company Profile

Chrysalix is a venture capital firm investing in technologies that will drive the new-energy economy. The firm provides early-stage financing, hands-on assistance and strategic connections to innovative companies confronting the world’s most important energy and environmental issues. In the past few years, Chrysalix has consistently ranked among the top most active clean-energy-technology venture capital firms in the world. In 2010, it was listed as the most active Cleantech VC by the Cleantech Group. The firm is backed by a strong group of international blue-chip industrial and financial partners, and is headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Since 2001, Chrysalix has invested in and supported game-changing technology that is helping to build— the new-energy economy—what they like to call the “green elephants” of the future. Chysalix invests in earlystage companies with exceptional teams that create sustainable and environmentally friendly solutions.

Wal Van Leirop, CEO of Chrysalix

I recently conducted an interview with Chrysalix’s President & CEO Wal Van Leirop to discuss the company’s involvement in New Energy and Cleantech. When asked where the idea to start Chrysalix came from, Dr. Van Leirop says that while working in the energy business, he realized that like any other company, energy companies are looking for innovation. He saw that oil prices in particular may be volatile, but overall they were trending up, and that meant energy companies had to innovate if they wanted to sustain their positions as leading players in the industry.

When Chrysalix was formed, the management team decided they would scout for leading-edge technologies, with which they could bring Cleantech into major corporations all over the world. And they have done just that.

Chrysalix’s four areas of investment are Energy Generation, Transmission Control & Storage, Energy Use and Resource Management.

Requirements for Investing

If you have an innovative product and are interested in working with Chrysalix, what do you need to know? When I asked Dr. Van Leirop what the requirements were for investing in a company, this is what he said, “You need to have ground-breaking technology. It must make a major impact, and it has to be something that can be rolled out over and over again. The technology needs to be protectable, and you need a good management team. An excellent technology with an OK management team will likely fail, whereas a good technology with a terrific management team will probably succeed.”

The Chrysalix Portfolio

Dr. Van Leirop says that Chrysalix has a very good feeling about their current portfolio – they are working on building the “green elephants” of the future. Those are either existing companies that know how to find significant profits in Cleantech, or they are breakout firms, ready to change the face of the industry.

Chrysalix has invested in some high-profile companies with very innovative technologies. Agilyx is one of those – a company that takes waste plastic and turns it into crude oil. They are the only company in the world that can to do it sucessfully, according to Dr. Van Leirop.

Dr. Van Leirop also shared his enthusiasm about his firm’s investment in General Fusion, a company developing fusion technology to generate affordable, safe and plentiful energy without greenhouse gas emissions, pollution, or radioactive waste.

Five-Year Vision

Over the next five years, Dr. Van Leirop predicts that more and more large companies will jump onto the clean-energy bandwagon, and that Cleantech will become part of the core-business strategy for many large companies. Cleantech will become more mainstream. In the short term, Chrysalix is looking forward to finding developments in the following areas:

• Energy efficiency – whether it’s in energy generation or in industrial processes, there are so many opportunities for technologies that significantly reduce energy inputs or reuse waste heat in the production process.
• Water – especially waste water treatment, recycling, and desalination. • waste management and converting waste to energy.
• Innovation in electricity grids – the creation of so-called “Smart Grid infrastructure” including the necessary storage solutions.
• Technology for converting C02 back to energy.

These are the categories Chrysalix is working on and the leading technologies in each of these areas will help fundamentally change our world for the better.