Remarkable Growth in Sacramento's Clean Tech Sector Despite Pandemic
SACRAMENTO, Calif., June 9, 2022 (Newswire.com) - CleanStart, the non-profit cleantech business accelerator in the Sacramento Region, today released its latest survey of the status of the regional cleantech core growth companies (download here). It concluded there has been a 96% growth in jobs, and a 29% growth in revenue since the 2019 survey. Since then, the core growth cleantech cluster in the Sacramento region has added 4,850 jobs (for a total of 9,900) and close to $1 billion in revenue (for a total of $4.03 billion). This remarkable growth has occurred regardless of the loss of 20 companies from the sector in the past three years because 47 more companies launched at the same time, more than making up the loss. These figures cover only a core group of 111 growth-oriented scalable companies that are driving innovation that will have impacts well beyond this region. Service-oriented companies, such as installers, are not included.
These latest results also mean that the region's cleantech sector is near to reaching a tipping point when it will become self-sustaining, with new companies born from existing ones, a deep pool of talent, a broad range of attractive open positions that will retain that talent, substantial outside investment and enough capital sources for early-stage companies to launch, survive and thrive. In 2005, CleanStart estimated that point would be reached when the sector represented $5 billion in revenue and 10,000 jobs. At that time, reaching the target required a ten-fold growth in the sector. Now that growth has nearly occurred.
"There were many skeptics that this goal was achievable. Now, we are a whisper away from reaching that critical milestone," said Gary Simon, Chairman and Co-Founder of CleanStart. "We have now seen the first local 'unicorn' cleantech company with a billion-dollar public valuation that started as a spark of an idea two decades ago. That has attracted attention both here and abroad in Europe and Asia." The report notes that in the past two years, close to $2 billion has been raised by young ventures in the area focused on sustainability.
CleanStart is proud to have contributed to this growth over the past three years with 24 graduates of its Clean Tech CEO Crash Courses, over 50 one-on-one coaching sessions, and more than 300 podcasts, videos, blogs, and networking events.
Cleanstart focuses on building companies from the grassroots up. Its goal is to make the Sacramento area a hub for green technology, helping companies succeed and grow in order to contribute to solving the world's sustainability challenges. Founded in 2004, it is a non-profit, public benefit corporation created to provide the training, connections, advice and exposure that will help cleantech companies succeed and thrive in the Sacramento area.
Contact: Gary Simon, Chairman of CleanStart
Email: gary@cleanstart.org
Phone: 530 848 9501
Source: CleanStart, Inc.