Just as entrepreneurialism can function as a more general subjectivity and orientation to the world that extends beyond the specific individuals at the helm of new businesses, the same is true of venture capital. Venture investors have their own set of disciplinary obligations, or fiduciary responsibilities, whose influence extends far beyond specific investors and agreements, generating a general, pervasive and commonsense understanding of what projects, what futures, and, ultimately, what natures are possible to produce in the first place. In backstage venues such as the Funders Forum, even though there were not always a lot of investors present or money to be invested, there was no shortage of money’s “smarts.” A wide array of strategic consultants took on, experimented with and rehearsed the very distinct intelligence that it takes to be a venture investor. Venture investors were exalted as ‘smart money’ in the context of strategic consultants proving to entrepreneurs, investors, and themselves that they could exhibit these same smarts – that they were smart-without-money. These scripts of smart money portray capital’s abstract and abstracting logic as an unquestionable intelligence, ultimately demanding that all cleantech innovations accept the market’s gravitational force, which works to tether the green spirit to capital.
