Venture capital (VC) has had a profound impact on the U.S and world economies. The landmarks of venture capitalism are the formation of the venture capital fund ARD in 1946 and the establishment of small business investment companies by the U.S. Small Business Administration in 1958. After a...

We studied the financial returns of 52 venture-capital-backed cleantech companies that had IPOs between 2000 and 2010. The median IRR for the first round of venture capital was 26.1% with a range from -10.4% to 140.0%. The median IRR on the third round was 24.5% with a range from 8.1% to 184.6%....