Three venture capital firms, including one centered on university technologies, have been named the first winners of a competitive bid to work within a newly established U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Entrepreneur in Residence program. The program is designed to speed the technology transfer process from three DOE labs into the global marketplace by linking VCs with entrepreneurs and giving them access to DOE cleantech innovations. Chicago-based ARCH Venture Partners, the university-focused VC, will work with Sandia National Laboratory. California-based firms Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers and Foundation Capital will work with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, respectively. Each firm will select an entrepreneur to work for a year in the labs to identify promising clean technologies and develop commercialization plans. These entrepreneurs in residence and their VC sponsors will select a technology for commercialization and negotiate a license with the DOE. They’ll be using a standard agreement introduced by the department that is based on successful university start-up licenses, featuring an equity stake as full or partial consideration for the license. Both DOE and the VCs will put in $100K as seed money. At the end of the year, the firms will have to reapply for consideration. Other national labs are expected to sign up for the program as part of a rolling introduction. Announcing the program at the Cleantech Forum in San Francisco, Alexander Karsner, the DOE’s Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, said “we want more of the entrepreneurs in our laboratories.” Go to: Cleantech, and The Deal

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