Whats New? covering whats new in tech, this week visits a Mass High Tech news editor Rodney Brown interview with Bill Joy, partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byer about cleantech investing, the New England science scene, and the Kurzweil-Joy debate.

Q: A number of VC firms seem to have backed out of cleantech investing. What is Kleiner Perkins’ view on investing in cleantech?

A: We have a lot of partners working in it and I think our approach is different. Historically, the best returns have been in IT and waves of the Internet and semiconductors. We don’t have Moores Law and we don’t have Metcalfe’s Law - we don’t the positive return economics like we have in the friction-free world of the Internet, of social media. But could there be some sort of economic phenomenon we could find that would let us have the kinds of legendary venture class returns in greentech? We have a thesis - it’s not proven yet in that we haven’t had enough liquidity to justify the approach - but we feel pretty good about the way were doing at least the portion of our greentech portfolio that is trying to hit these grand slams.

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