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Climate change and a shift in global policy favoring renewables has yielded widespread venture capital investment in the cleantech sector. Over the past 2-3 years, it seems that most VC firms have naturally evolved and now have a “cleantech portfolio” on their Websites. These firms have combed through the scientists and Ph.Ds at the world’s premier learning institutions, appointing the best and brightest to their cleantech advisory boards to round out intelligent investing with deep industry knowledge. Allotment of money, especially in the energy efficiency space, is now mainstream. It appears that all the tools are in place, yet VCs are still getting knocked when it comes to cleantech investing.

Two of the hottest areas now in VC investing are smart grid and energy efficiency, a clear advancement from ten years ago, before the term “cleantech” was even coined, when risk-taking individuals or large corporations gambled on unproven science projects. Could it be that the people doing the investing have not developed as quickly as the technology has? That might be part of it, but an explanation that I heard at a recent conference is much simpler: Cleantech investment “rules” are counter-intuitive to what VCs know.

Traditionally, a venture capitalist will search for or get pitched with a new idea or technology, thoroughly research the markets and become an expert on the innovation that they hope will spawn returns ten times that of what they put in. Investments in the Internet, enterprise technology or IT move very fast, as do advancements in those areas. Cleantech, especially energy efficiency, doesn’t have the same rule book. Energy is colossal—it’s bigger than any other area VCs have invested in before. Two-thirds of the planet uses it. It’s also slow, with R&D moving at an intense yet more measured pace than other technologies that VCs are accustomed to. Policy also plays a large part in cleantech investing, something that has not been a big issue in other types of tech.

Fortunately, investing in the cleantech space still has a lot of room to grow. I think that the success it promises to yield needs a more appropriate measuring stick as expectations are adjusted. Cleantech is still a fairly new game to VCs, and I think it will take time for the returns to roll in the same way they have in the traditional sectors that VCs are very experienced with.

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Cleantech companies are particularly prone to intellectual-property paranoia. Caution is reasonably called for: do get those patents filed before gabbing.

Industrial innovators burn a lot of capital before reaching healthy revenues. Some directors cut cost corners by keeping portfolio companies in stealth mode for years. A small executive team is expected to reach key customers and get sites installed with little more marketing than a cursory website. Supposedly, this not only saves money but also hides their brilliant innovation from imitators.

Companies may be lingering too long in the shadows, simply because their leaders don’t understand the power of the strategic communications sword. How many VCs or board members do you know who have a strong marketing background? Yet history shows the best technology does not always win. The good-enough solution that is fastest to penetrate the market and relentlessly defends its leadership will win the lion’s share.

Even in situations where staying under the radar might give an edge versus competitors, it also brings a downside: it hides the company from customers, potential talent and the investors needed for each new round. A company that does show market momentum also has a better shot at winning approval for its ARRA application. Smart PR accelerates all those initiatives. So, what is not invested in public relations may instead be lost on a longer sales cycle, larger sales force, costlier executive-recruiter effort, more expensive capital and far more CEO time spent courting reluctant investors.

Shut off from a real market response, a company can get trapped in a self-referential box. Unable to outgrow its anti-marketing culture, it may be on its way to cleantech Betamax, to being Novell instead of Microsoft.

The transition from hiding your light under a basket to being able to dazzle your customers is as difficult for a company as puberty is for a teenager. Luckily, unlike puberty, you can hire people to help you through it.

With the likes of Oprah, the NBA and CNN all pushing Twitter to the masses, the greatest fear of every tech elite and early adopter is being realized: the mainstream is starting to catch onto the Twitter phenomenon.  Paradoxically, recent research by Nielsen Online found that more than 60% of Twitter users have stopped using the micro-blogging service after one month.  I believe the reason is two-fold: these users didn’t have friends on the service (yet) so they were tweeting into an echo chamber and most important, they weren’t able to fully understand or derive any utility from the service.

Twitter asks a simple question: What are you doing?  Yet this seemingly simple question becomes complex when we try to derive utility from it.  Does it matter what my friend, coworker or stranger is having for lunch or thinks of some movie?  On the surface, the answer is no.  But just below is where all the magic happens.  What makes Twitter so unique amongst its social media compatriots is its ability to allow anyone to seek out conversations they find interesting and relevant and engage in them.  In no other platform do they have this type of immediate access to experts, pundits and knowledgeable individuals on any topic imaginable.

So the next time your friend asks what Twitter’s all about, tell them to think of it as a blank canvas, where they get to paint their own masterpiece.  Or as my mom used to say, “you get out only that which you put in.”