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Yesterday I attended the West Coast Growth Capital Conference aka San
Francisco ACG held at the infamous Fairmont Hotel, which by the way is a
great hotel. The conference was a traditional ACG annual event with a few
light content sessions and several hours of power networking. In fact, I
believe there was more time set aside for networking than for actual
conference sessions. Even with a heavy allotment, most people spent the day
in the hall ways working on deals and relationships.

A couple of highlights:
1) the opening session on alternative energy was dominated by Dan
Shugar, the President and Board Member of PowerLight despite the best
efforts of Severin Borenstein from the Haas School of Business. Dan is very
bullish on solar energy (yes, his company builds solar panels) and he
projects that the cost to install panels in your home will fall by 50% over
the next three years - currently in California, according to Dan, with
subsidies, solar panels will cash flow in year one. In other words, if you
finance the installation into your mortgage the increase in your monthly
mortgage bill is less than the cost savings on your electric bill. A side
benefit is that solar panels are made from glass and silicone, both highly
available, environmentally friendly materials.
2) The infamous Ben Stein entertained and inspired at lunch time. With a
couple of great jokes, a lot of passion for the American military and
"gratitude" for being an American...as expected he covered an incredible
amount of ground and demonstrated his broad knowledge base on the economy,
finance, and simply the way life is.
3) The day concluded with 50 private equity firms and the well known
Capital Connection. I was actually somewhat disappointed by the turn out
considering Seattle last year had a comparable number of firms attend and
Denver is expecting almost as many groups in March. I don't quite understand
why the financial center of the West Coast appears to be lacking in
attracting a strong buyout pool. After hitting the circuit with Tom, we
found that buyout firms are continuing to struggle with differentiation,
chasing after proprietary deals and still trying like mad to put capital to
work.

Overall, the event was well worthwhile and a place to make some great
connections.

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Posted by Brett Suchor at 08:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)