Emily Kirsch dropped Powerhouse's incubator model and built a $7M cleantech fund instead

Emily Kirsch founded Powerhouse in Oakland in 2013 as an incubator and accelerator for energy and mobility startups, after working on solar financing for nonprofits during the Obama administration's clean-energy push. At its peak, Powerhouse housed 125 entrepreneurs across 25 companies on the Oakland waterfront.

Kirsch grew tired of being a landlord to her tenant companies. About three years before a 2021 profile of the firm, she shifted Powerhouse into what she called an 'innovation firm,' connecting large corporations such as Google, Enel and Schneider Electric with startups working on decarbonization, in exchange for client fees rather than rent.

Those matchmaking meetings routinely led to partnerships, acquisitions and investments, so Kirsch launched Powerhouse Ventures to invest directly. The fund closed oversubscribed at $7 million, wrote average checks of $130,000, and aimed to put a quarter of its capital into startups founded by underrepresented minorities.

An oversubscribed $7M fund made 17 investments (25 by year-end) with 2.4x average valuation appreciation on follow-on rounds.

Kirsch recognized her real value was the relationships and clean-energy expertise she'd built, not the physical incubator space itself.

Positioning Powerhouse between large corporations and startups let it monetize introductions twice — first as consulting fees, then as investment returns.

Being an all-female-led fund in cleantech became an asset for sourcing deals, not a constraint, according to Kirsch.

When a business model's original format becomes a chore, the underlying relationships built through it can be repackaged into a more scalable one.

By the account given roughly two years after the fund's close, half its portfolio companies had raised follow-on rounds at an average 2.4x valuation step-up, and Kirsch was expanding into media with a podcast produced with Greentech Media.