10 Favs; 10 Years: Falling Up --The Choices We Make May Be Our Own

Letchworth Gorge by J. Stephen Conn, used by permission
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Back in November 2011 I posted about the need for change in our economy and the way we approach that change. Here is my post "Falling Up -- The Choices We Make May Be Our Own":



When I was 15 years old I was hiking in Letchworth Gorge in upstate New York. (Here is a picture of the gorge, left.) A beautiful place.

Despite the warnings or perhaps because of them -- I was a teenager after all -- I got too close to the edge. And I fell. I fell for what seemed like a long way and a long time, but in reality it was perhaps just a matter of seconds.

Time dragged, however, like a cartoon character falling off a cliff – think of Bugs Bunny falling, eating a carrot, reading War and Peace, and filing his nails. I was remarkably calm, at peace, really. One with the fall, it was a true Buddhist moment.

And then it was over. Somehow there was a branch or root and my arm reached out to grab it – I remember the jerking feeling like a parachute opening…I was safe. I'd fallen but I didn't die. I had a second chance. 

After a few seconds of stunned silence, I climbed back up to the top of the gorge.

That memory has been haunting me lately.  I shared this story in my talk at SXSW last month and again with a group of leaders at a retreat last week.

Why am I reminded of this story now?  Well, as I wrote in an earlier post on this blog, I think our economy is in free-fall and we seriously need to change.  

The latest example of a society in free-fall is the news of a "celebrity marriage" failing after 72 days.  

According to Twitter sources that include some celebrities allegedly close to the situation, the wedding earned the bride $17.9 million.  Really?  $17.9 million for a marriage that lasted 72 days? 

No wonder people like Lawrence Lessig think our society could fall like Rome.

It doesn't have to be this way. We can change the outcome. We can adopt a new game plan. 

But we can't change the world if we aren't first prepared to change within ourselves and live the lives we know we can live, be the people we know we can be, and take the actions we are compelled to take.

The choice is ours, but we must be conscious as we make our choices. We need to stop compromising in our lives, letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. And we need to deliver lasting value, to innovate, and finally, to inspire and be inspired.

When you're free-falling, you have two choices: keep falling to the bottom or grab the first available branch, scamper back up to the top and create a new path forward. Call it "falling up."

Which do you choose? And what are you waiting for?

3rd Annual EY Cleantech CEO Retreat Underway

EY Cleantech CEO Retreat Underway

Today starts the 3rd Annual EY Cleantech CEO Retreat, an event I've managed for the past two years and which we, EY's Global Cleantech Center, hosts at the Carneros Inn in Napa, California.

This two-day Retreat is designed to be an intimate, facilitated dialogue between peers working in all sub-sectors and concentrations from the broad spectrum that is cleantech.

Included are emerging company entrepreneurs focused on energy efficiency, new ways of financing clean energy development, producing alternative fuels and even more efficient ways to use traditional fuels.

Some of the companies attending include Elevance Renewable Sciences, LightSail Energy, OriginOil, Energy Points, and WegoWise.

In addition, we bring into the fold some of the most innovative companies fostering sustainable solutions or investing in the companies and business models for a sustainable future.

Among the corporations are Nike, SunEdison, WiTricity, Tecsis Brazil, and CLP India.

We're excited to be hosting this event again this year and look forward to a couple of days full of stimulating dialogue about the issues facing cleantech companies today -- from capital raising to working with corporations as partners and customers, from helping US government agencies reach their renewable energy targets to seeking opportunities in emerging markets like China and India.

And, of course, we look forward to the good food, wine, and landscape that Napa and the Carneros Inn provides.

We couldn't do it without our sponsors, including Bloomberg New Energy Finance, Goodwin Procter, Heidrick & Struggles, Silicon Valley Bank, and Steelcase, who provided the furniture for our unique event. Additional support came from the Aspen Institute's Energy & Environment Program.

For more on this invitation-only event and other programs and thought leadership from EY's global Cleantech Center, go to ey.com/cleantech.

Cleantech In Da House (Brooklyn's House, That Is)

NYU-Poly's MetroTech Campus

“Brooklyn is in the House” or Cleantech is in Brooklyn's House, I should say.

The New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) and New York University’s Polytechnic Institute (NYU-Poly) announced yesterday they will open a 10,000-square-foot cleantech incubator in 15 MetroTech in downtown Brooklyn.

There’s room for 20 cleantech startups in the incubator, including those focusing on energy efficiency and technologies that enhance New York City’s resilience in the face of climate change.

Last fall’s Superstorm Sandy helped focus the city’s attention on where the gaps are in its own ability to weather such storms, and heightened awareness about technologies that can mitigate such impacts, as well as reduce the causes.

Downtown Brooklyn is becoming something of a hub for the tech economy across the river from Manhattan with its Silicon Alley. The area even has a new moniker: “Brooklyn Tech Triangle.”

"Harnessing NYC's leadership in data and information technology, local entrepreneurs are developing new business models and technologies to help solve global urban problems, from energy efficiency to climate adaptation," David Gilford, assistant director of NYCEDC, told me via email.

NYU-Poly and NYCEDC already operate a cleantech incubator, New York City Accelerator for a Clean and Resilient Economy (NYC ACRE), which I’ve written about before on The Green Skeptic.

The new space will have room for more cleantech startups, including those in manufacturing, as well as cleanweb.

"We're really excited about this next phase of our growth, and the opportunity to work with great partners like NYCEDC, NYSERDA, Con Edison, National Grid and others," said NYU-Poly's innovation and entrepreneurship director Micah Kotch. "There are massive challenges to be solved around climate and energy, and we want to empower entrepreneurs to be part of the solution.

The doors of the NYC Clean Technology Entrepreneur Center will open in the fall of 2013.

With Artisan Exchange, Collaborative Economy Meets Specialty Foods Movement

Co-working works well for techies, freelancers, and artists -- why not for small food businesses?

That's what Frank Baldassarre and Artisan Exchange are trying to answer out in their West Chester, PA, manufacturing and distribution center.

Frank, Green Skeptic readers will recall, was the idea man behind e3bank, which wanted to be the first triple bottom line bank in the country.

When e3bank ran straight into the collapsing economy, a market weary of banking, and socially responsible investors without any capital, Frank had to pivot.

Frank Baldassarre's a survivor. As a banker, he's lived through the S&L crisis, the dot-com bubble, and the latest market downturn.

"I've seen these cycles before," he told me last Friday during a tour of his new venture. "And I really believe we're starting to see signs of real recovery."

Frank's wife and brother-in-law run Golden Valley Farms Coffee Roasters, which owned a 27,000-square-foot building where it housed its coffee service products and supplies. (Golden Valley has offices and roasting facilities at one end of the building.)

"Basically, the bulk of our facility was full of paper cups, lids, straws, stirrers, and stuff like that," Frank said. "You have to sell a lot of paper cups that have little or no margin to make enough to cover overhead."

Increasingly, the company focused on its core competency, Frank offered, "importing, roasting and distributing world class Fair Trade, organic coffee and shade-grown coffees."

At first, Frank tried to lease or sell the extra warehouse space, but there wasn't much call for light manufacturing in the region and there were no buyers for such a large space.

Frank and his family like to eat locally, healthy, and well; a combination that had them running around to specialty shop in the region.

Simultaneously, Frank began to wonder how all these food manufacturers with specialty, small batch products were able to survive. Many were working out of their homes, isolated and alone, and didn't have access to the commercial facilities that would make their business scalable.

With the expansion of the slow, local, and organic specialty food market, Frank hit upon an idea. He had an empty space; the market had a need. Why not combine the two?

Thus Artisan Exchange was born.

Dividing the space into 120-square-foot "blocks," Artisan Exchange rents the spaces to small-scale, individual food manufacturers -- from heirloom cakes to hot sauces, from cheese spreads to bake-at-home pizza and gelati -- providing the entrepreneurs access to a centralized, commercial-grade sanitation facility, shared retail space in the form of a year-round weekly market, and the kind of collaborative,"you're not alone" atmosphere that co-working spaces engender.

In addition, Artisan Exchange collectively markets the tenants under their own banner, which helps attract customers to the weekly marketplace at the site and makes advertising more affordable for the individual businesses. Artisan Exchange is exploring cooperative buying for supplies and materials the entrepreneurs need to create their products.

A year ago, Artisan Exchange opened its doors to its first member-tenants. Now, with one of the original tenants, a pasta maker, having outgrown its walls, the space is almost fully subscribed. There are plans for a brewpub, as well as a full commercial kitchen, and that's only the beginning.

Frank Baldassarre solved Golden Valley's real estate problem with an entreprenuerial solution that provides an affordable environment for entrepreneurs committed to producing hand-crafted, sustainable foods.

Now, that's a delicious idea.

For more of the flavor of Artisan Exchange, check out this video from WCTV:

Cleanweb Hackathon Focuses on Killer Apps Built in a Day...or Two

Hackers hacking at Cleanweb Hackathon, NYC.

What if you put a bunch of developers in the room, gave them access to datasets and APIs and set them loose on the planet's resource problems over a weekend?

Well, the folks behind Cleanweb Hackathon did just that on Saturday and Sunday in New York City.

The result may just be the start of a revolution in cleanweb solutions. The cleanweb, as defined by the hackathon's organizers, uses information technology, the Internet, and social media to address the issues of energy, transportation, and smart grid.

"Information technology is the most powerful lever we have to address resource constraints," as Sunil Paul of Spring Ventures told the audience at NYU's Tisch Center of the Arts before Sunday's project presentations.

Some of the intriguing projects from this weekend include TripWatchers, which founder Ryan Rzepecki calls the "Weight Watchers for vehicle owners," allows drivers to log their routes, track vehicle-related expenses and receive suggestions for how to reduce the impact of their travel such as potential car pooling and public transportation alternatives.

The audience choice award and best overall hack went to Econofy "E-Star," a web-based rating system of consumer products that allows for visual comparison shopping around energy efficiency.

Another cool hack was NYC BLDG, which tracks the energy use and greenhouse gas emissions of city buildings in real-time and puts them into competition.

Hackers will hack for food.

And building on the "Occupy Rooftops" theme of its community solar day back in November, SolarMosaic created Mosaic Map, a web app that maps solar projects socially and in real-time. The idea is to allow project developers to find financing and generate leads for financiers such as, well, SolarMosaic.

The original Cleanweb Hackathon was held last September in San Francisco and another is planned for later  this year. There's even a Bay Area-based business incubator for the cleanweb called Greenstart.

Dave Graham, founder of Greenstart, said "If Y Combinator had a love child with IDEO at the intersection of energy and IT, it would be Greenstart." Greenstart has invested in nine companies so far, putting them through a 12-week intensive program. Graham noted there is a March 5th deadline for the next round of applicants.

I've long argued for more focus on the killer apps that will make a difference today in the cleantech and energy space. Cleanweb drives us closer to a more capital and energy efficient model. Events like this one may be the start of a cleanweb revolution.

CleanWeb Hackathon Brings Its Disruptive Energy to New York

There's no question that the energy infrastructure is ripe for disruption. Outmoded, inefficient systems and distribution, and an entitlement mindset has ruled the day in the utility industry for decades.

Enter the CleanWeb Hackathon. Its founders propose to apply information technology to resource constraints, building apps and hacks that combine new, sustainable business models and leverage the mobile and social web.

For 24 hours this weekend in New York attendees will tackle utility, transport, and smart grid datasets and see what they can "hack" out of them.

The first CleanWeb Hackathon, held last September in San Francisco, generated such ideas as Dr. Wattson, which helps you sleuth-out energy plan savings, GroMunity, an online community for sharing and trading home garden crops, helping out neighbors, and ridding your community of food waste, and Toxicslayar, a mobile app that shows toxic chemical releases from thousands of US facilities.

Not many of these ideas survived past the weekend incubator, but the concept of applying the innovation of the web and mobile technologies to energy, transportation, and smart grid is a good one.

Sunil Paul of Spring Ventures, the brainchild behind the CleanWeb Hackathon, describes the concept as marrying information technology with green initiatives.

"Information technology is actually going to prove as valuable as the application of new materials and nano-technology and bio-technology have been for the environment," Paul told an audience last year.

It's not just about apps, however. Other examples of CleanWeb innovations include sharing services such as AirBnB, ZipCar, Spride, and even NeighborGoods, which all help reduce an individual's consumption of resources and impact on the planet.

Now CleanWeb comes to New York and taps into the tech ecosystem here -- 24 hours in the city that never sleeps should yield some innovative ideas.

For more information about the CleanWeb Hackathon or to register to attend, go to CleanWeb Hackathon.

My Interview with Ingrid Vanderveldt, Dell's Entrepreneur-in-Residence

While speaking at SXSW ECO back in early October, I was interviewed by Ingrid Vanderveldt, Dell's Entreprenuer-in-Residence. We talked about being a skeptic in a green-enthusiast world and about looking for the killer apps in cleantech that are here today rather than waiting for the game-changing platforms of tomorrow.

Here is the interview:



And here is a link to the interview on YouTube, in case the player doesn't work in your browser: Green Skeptic on EIR at DELL

Falling Up: The Choices We Make May Be Our Own

Letchworth Gorge by J. Stephen Conn, used by permission.

When I was 15 years old I was hiking in Letchworth Gorge in upstate New York. (Here is a picture of the gorge, left.) A beautiful place.

Despite the warnings or perhaps because of them -- I was a teenager after all -- I got too close to the edge. And I fell. I fell for what seemed like a long way and a long time, but in reality it was perhaps just a matter of seconds.

Time dragged, however, like a cartoon character falling off a cliff – think of Bugs Bunny falling, eating a carrot, reading War and Peace, and filing his nails. I was remarkably calm, at peace, really. One with the fall, it was a true Buddhist moment.

And then it was over. Somehow there was a branch or root and my arm reached out to grab it – I remember the jerking feeling like a parachute opening…I was safe. I'd fallen but I didn't die. I had a second chance. 

After a few seconds of stunned silence, I climbed back up to the top of the gorge.

That memory has been haunting me lately.  I shared this story in my talk at SXSW last month and again with a group of leaders at a retreat last week.

Why am I reminded of this story now?  Well, as I wrote in an earlier post on this blog, I think our economy is in free-fall and we seriously need to change.  

The latest example of a society in free-fall is the news of a "celebrity marriage" failing after 72 days.  

According to Twitter sources that include some celebrities allegedly close to the situation, the wedding earned the bride $17.9 million.  Really?  $17.9 million for a marriage that lasted 72 days? 

No wonder people like Lawrence Lessig think our society could fall like Rome.

It doesn't have to be this way. We can change the outcome. We can adopt a new game plan. 

But we can't change the world if we aren't first prepared to change within ourselves and live the lives we know we can live, be the people we know we can be, and take the actions we are compelled to take.

The choice is ours, but we must be conscious as we make our choices. We need to stop compromising in our lives, letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. And we need to deliver lasting value, to innovate, and finally, to inspire and be inspired.

When you're free-falling, you have two choices: keep falling to the bottom or grab the first available branch, scamper back up to the top and create a new path forward. Call it "falling up."

Which do you choose? And what are you waiting for?

Michele Beschen, Steve Jobs and The Creative Life

I was scanning channels last night when I happened upon one of those DIY shows where a woman demonstrated how to make handmade paper from shredded recycled paper and natural elements.

Craft shows are not usually the kind of thing that grabs my attention. But there I was, mesmerized by this woman's creative act and the fact that she was sharing it intentionally, re-purposing old things to make something new and beautiful.

Turns out the woman was Michele Beschen, the brainchild behind "b.organic," which bills itself as "an educational how-to television program that embraces all things creative while keeping a conscious mind," and founder of her own multimedia company, Simply Michele, Inc, with a "mission to empower people to explore, express and exchange fresh ideas through rousing content platforms built around originality and grassroots efforts."

Very cool.

I've been thinking a lot about creativity lately. Part of my talk at SXSW ECO was about how we need to reconnect with the creative parts of ourselves and get back to making things. Michele Beschen embodies that.

So did Steve Jobs. In his famous 2005 commencement speech, Jobs told the Stanford graduates that "much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on."

Jobs talked about connecting the dots. In his case, one dot was stumbling into a calligraphy class at Reed College after he dropped out that later resulted in his creating multiple fonts for the Mac. He never could have known the influence that class would have.

"If I had never dropped in on that single course in college," Jobs noted. "The Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts."

Jobs knew that "you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something -- your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life."

Great work is about being creative, making things, and generating value.

"And the only way to do great work is to love what you do," Jobs told the Stanford grads. "If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle."

Jill Sylvia, Untitled (Month2), 2008

,

Then I saw poet Christian Bok's tweet: "They cut apart ledger papers into artwork-(very envious of this level of intensity...)." He linked to artist Jill Sylvia's web site. She does indeed cut ledger papers into things of quiet beauty. People do amazing things when they let their creativity loose on the world.

In Hugh McLeod's book, Evil Plans: Having Fun on the Road to World Domination (which I reviewed here) he has a chapter titled,

"The 'Creative Life' Is No Longer One of Many Economic Options; It's Now the Only Option We've Got."

That's it. The whole chapter. There is nothing more to say.

What are you creating?

Global Cleantech Cluster Association's Top 30 Companies Announced

As readers of The Green Skeptic know, I co-founded the Cleantech Alliance Mid-Atlantic, a business network for cleantech professionals working from New York to Northern Virgina.

Earlier this year, we joined the Global Cleantech Cluster Assocication (GCCA), which is comprised of 30 cleantech clusters and networks around the globe from Switzerland to Singapore and San Diego to Syracuse.

Together the GCCA members represent 4,000 Cleantech Companies Worldwide.  And now the GCCA has an award to recognize some of the best of the best of those companies, nominated by its member organizations.

A Global Top 30 semi-finalists for the 2011 award were announced today and will now be judged by 28 cleantech venture capitalists, investors and serial entrepreneurs who collectively manage $3.5 billion in clean technology investments.

From this group ten winners will be picked in each of ten categories.  The award winners will be announced on November 14th in Dublin, Ireland, at the Dublin Cleantech Forum and GCCA Later Stage Awards.

Co-hosted by An iSli Ghlas – The Green Way, Ireland’s cleantech cluster, the full-day event will feature CEO presentations and high-level discussions on the most critical topics for emerging clean technology companies and investment opportunities.

The Global Top 30 Companies are:

Category	Companies	Clusters
Biofuels	Imperative Energy	An tSlí Ghlas – The Green Way, Ireland
	Chempolis	Finnish Cleantech Cluster
	Synthezyme	NYC Acre
Energy Efficiency/ Green Buildings	Omnio	swisscleantech
	Albeo	Colorado Cleantech IA
	PearlLED	Chicago Clean Energy Alliance
New Materials	Genomatica	CleanTech San Diego
	Beneq	Finnish Cleantech Cluster
	OPX Biotechnologies	Colorado Cleantech IA
Other renewables	AWS Ocean Energy	ecoConnect, U.K
	Open Hydro	An tSlí Ghlas – The Green Way, Ireland
	NovaThermal Energy	Cleantech Alliance Mid-Atlantic, U.S.A.
Solar	Alencon Systems	Cleantech Alliance Mid-Atlantic, U.S.A.
	PrismSolar	Clean Technology & Sustainable Industries U.S.A.
	Solaris	Chicago Clean Energy
Storage/Smart Grid	PowerGenics	CleanTech San Diego
	HydroGenics	MaRS Discovery District, Toronto, CA
	ICE Energy	Colorado Cleantech IA
Transportation	Achates Power	CleanTech San Diego
	Rapid Electric Vehicles	Green Tech Exchange, Canada
	SAM Group	swisscleantech
Water	Trunz	swisscleantech
	Rentricity	NYC Acre
	PortaPure	Chicago Clean Energy
Waste	EcoATM	CleanTech San Diego
	Newalta	EcoTech Quebec
	Akkuser	Finnish Cleantech Cluster
Wind	Moventas	Finnish Cleantech Cluster
	STEP	EcoWorld Styria, Austria
	Acrosoma	Flanders Cleantech Association

For more information about the Global Cleantech Cluster Association, go to their website: GlobalCleantech.org  

How a Cleantech Failure Can Be More Valuable Than Success | The Energy Collective

How a Cleantech Failure Can Be More Valuable Than Success

Failure is tough. Many businesses fail, including some very viable ones. They fail all the time. In fact, according to the Small Business Administration (SBA), 50 percent of all new businesses fail during the first year and 95 percent during the first five years. Some fail fast, some die a slow, painful death.

The question is not whether failure is good or bad, it's what you learn from it that counts...

Read More

My latest post for The Energy Collective.

We Need More Crazy-Smart Women Leaders in Cleantech

Lucinda Bromwyn Duncalfe

My friend Lucinda Bromwyn Duncalfe always makes me think.

She's "crazy-smart," as she likes to say of others.  One of the smartest people I know.  So I pay attention to what she says or what she writes about.

Lucinda is a serial CEO.  Her gift is to see the potential in a company or its product and take it to the next level.

More often than not, this results in a sale of the company and Lucinda moving on to her next thing.

Lucinda's two posts on women in tech got me thinking this morning.

Specifically, her thoughts on the lack of women in number one positions in tech companies.  She posted her thoughts about Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg on her great new blog here and linked to this story about Google's Marissa Mayer here.

Women in tech is not my usual subject, but I couldn't help drawing parallels with the cleantech world.

Of the cleantech companies I've worked with or advised in the Philadelphia area, two have women CEOs: Emily Landsburg of BlackGold BioFuels and Elinor Haider of NovaThermal Energy.  They are two of the best CEOs I know -- women or men -- and they possess, as Lucinda describes, "all the normal super-powers: crazy-smart, hard working, clearly emotionally intelligent."

In this old (2007) list of Top 10 Women in Cleantech, only one is identified as a CEO, and a couple are listed as Founders or Managing Directors.  The Women in Cleantech and Green Industry group on LinkedIn has 424 members and, while it is managed by a woman, Catherine Bowers, it appears to be owned by a man, Robert Hokin, founder of UK-based ecoConnect.

Ann Goodman, founder of the Women's Network for a Sustainable Future, profiled one cleantech CEO, former undersecretary of energy Kristina Johnson, of hydropower startup Enduring Energy, in her post on GreenBiz.com this past April, How to Grow Women's Potential in Cleantech and the Economy.

Few cleantech companies have women on their boards.  According to an article in VentureBeat in March, Cleantech's sausagefest: 25 companies with all-male boards," the majority of the top 10 cleantech companies as ranked this year by the Wall Street Journal have no female board directors."

Lindsey Riddell, writing in the San Francisco Business Times last year, offered a hopeful outlook for woman leading cleantech and social media companies.

"There is a lot of hope that unlike the semiconductor, telecom and other technology fields, cleantech and social media will become sectors where more women advance to the top, even if that isn’t necessarily the case today, said Caroline Simard, vice president of research and executive programs at the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology in Palo Alto."

So, while the future may be bright for women CEOs in cleantech and social media, there's still a long way to go.

As Lucinda concluded her post this morning, she finds Sandberg an interesting model, "Yet it pisses me off that she’s the newest girl tech darling. Why?  Because she’s a #2.  She may be the best #2 in history, but I wish we had #1 role models."

Lucinda just sold her latest venture, Click Equations, where she was CEO.  I know she'll be #1 again in her next venture.  I hope she finds something in the cleantech space where I think she could have a real impact.

We need more crazy-smart leaders like her.

Andy Swan's Finding Your Niche

My pal Andy Swan is brilliant when it comes to making things simple.

Just look at his bio on AndySwan.com:  "I've started and sold two companies. I have investments in some others. I love helping passionate people create wealth."

You'll recall Andy was the mastermind behind the Six Slide Challenge to entrepreneurs last summer. And the Elite Eight for Entrepreneurship.

His latest, posted yesterday, is a Venn diagram for Finding Your Niche.  Love it.

Green Skeptic Friday LinkFest - 08/13/10

(photo Erika Nortemann/TNC)

It's a special Friday the 13th edition of The Green Skeptic Friday LinkFest!

Some spooky news this week:

A quartet of earnings reports came out this week in cleantech: SunPower, Cree, and A123, LDK: Earnings
 
While there was some good news for Solazyme, which netted $52M for its algae fuel biz: Green with Algae

Not so scary is my old pal Sanjayan from TNC who is profiled in Outside Magazine. The guy is "Mr. Nature" on cable TV these days and looks pretty hot in a tee shirt (look out Anderson Cooper): Sanjayan
 
TechCrunch covered Philly-Based Incubator DreamIt Ventures as 14 Startups were graduated from the Summer 2010 program: DreamIt

Meanwhile, Philly VCs are keeping a close eye on Massachusetts. Technically Philly explains why: Philly VCs

Rapidly becoming one of my favorite greentech reporters Katie Fehrenbacher reported on the joint efforts of  Google and Vinod Khosla to save California's greentech market.
 
Razor sharp insights from Lucy Marcus on why companies need active, engaged, independent, and interested board members: Non-Exec Boards
 
My pal Andy Swan pointed me to this article that explains why cash is the ultimate vote. Do you have a list of people that will BUY what you are selling? 10 Buyers
 
And in case you missed it, here's a link to my appearance on FOX Business with Varney & Co this week, talking about $BP oil spill: Wheres the Oil in the Gulf?

Have a great weekend everybody!

(Disclosure: I hold long positions in $CREE and $AONE. This post is for informational purposes only and is neither intended to be investment advice nor an offer, or the solicitation of any offer, to buy or sell any securities.)

 

San Diego's Cleantech "Collaboratory"

San Diego has a lot going for it: beautiful weather all year round, a great coast, and...well, the new StockTwits HQ on Coronado.

And now, after several years of investment, hard work, and a smart Republican mayor, Jerry Sanders, who saw and seized the opportunity, San Diego has an emerging cleantech community.

"We're here to serve as a catalyst," says Holly Lepre, vice president of CleanTech San Diego, a non-profit formed a few years ago to promote San Diego as a world leader in the cleantech economy. "We're trying to stimulate the demand that drives and attracts new companies."

When I visited in May, CleanTech San Diego was about to announce that the region has reached 700 cleantech companies.  Earlier in the year the organization ranked number seven in the Cleantech Network's global "Top 10 Cleantech Cluster Organizations for 2010."

San Diego is also fast becoming a hub for next generation biofuels.

In June, the California Department of Labor granted $4 million to the region to develop a job training initiative for the emerging biofuels industry in both San Diego and the Imperial Valley

And earlier this month, the San Diego Center for Algae Biotechnology, received a large part of a three-year, $9 million federal Department of Energy grant, and a consortium of seven companies, including San Diego-based Sapphire Energy, General Atomics, and Sempra Energy, are providing an additional $3 million to finance research and development.

Sapphire is developing what it calls "green crude," a 91-octane gasoline made from CO2, sunlight, and photosynthetic microorganisms. Last year, Sapphire attracted BP's former head of global refining, Cynthia Warner, to be its president. Warner saw the writing on the wall and decided "it was a lot better to create the key to the future than to nurse along the dying past."

Sapphire is not alone among next generation biofuels companies attracting dinosaur industry interest.   J. Craig Venter's La Jolla-based Synthetic Genomics recently launched a new greenhouse facility as a part of a multi-year partnership with Exxon Mobil Corporation.

But it's not just biofuels in sunny southern California. There are, according to Cleantech San Diego's Lepre, 176 solar companies in the region, including Spanish turnkey solar manufacturer Siliken, which has its US headquarters here, and Envision Solar, whose "solar trees" are starting to sprout up in around the country.

Envision is based in the Kearny Mesa district and housed in EcoHub, the area's first cleantech incubator. Yves Perez, founder of the Eco Investment Club, formed a partnership with Mark Mandell of property management company Square One Development, to start the incubator in a 12,000-square foot office plaza.

"We're in a secret race for the cleantech capital of the world," says Perez. "Win this secret race and we could double the number of San Diego-based cleantech companies and startups, and 700 becomes 1400 or more."

Bob Noble, president of Envision Solar explained why his company became one of the first in the EcoHub, "We wanted to be in a space where the building owners not only understood our mission but wanted to be part of it. Being surrounded by like minded-professionals opens up new avenues for collaboration and partnership."

That collaborative spirit is a key to San Diego's success, according to Lepre. "San Diego is a natural setting for a clean tech 'collaboratory.'"

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• Cleantech Becoming 'Third Leg' of VC Investing Stool - But Just How Big is That Leg? (xconomy.com)
• San Diego Region Awarded $4 Million Workforce Development Grant To Support Expanding Biofuels Industry (bioresearchonline.com)
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NYC ACRE and Varick Street Incubator Turn One Year Old

The New York City Accelerator for a Clean and Renewable Economy (NYC ACRE) turns one year old this month.

NYC ACRE is part of the business incubator at 160 Varick Street in SoHo, which is a joint venture between the New York City Economic Development Corporation, NYU-Poly, and Trinity Real Estate.

"This initiative was built on the strength of our tenants, the support of NYU Poly and NYSERDA, and the desire of the community to grow," says Micah Kotch, operations director for NYC ACRE. "The credibility of our partners -- the City, the NYC Investment Fund, Columbia University, Pratt, and NYU -- has been instrumental in our success."

Among the first tenants was Ecological LLC, which helps the commercial real estate sector reduce costs through improved efficiency. The firm has been one of the most successful ACRE companies, growing from 5 to 14 full-time staff in a year and raising nearly $3 million in funding. Kotch says the firm will soon be graduating to a larger office space.

Of the 35 companies in the Varick Street incubator, nine are cleantech related; the others range from financial services to social media and cybersecurity. Together, Kotch calculates, NYC ACRE and the NYCEDC sponsored incubator have created 125 jobs and attracted $15 million in capital.

In addition to office space, tenants have access to mentors and other technical and strategic advisors, including advisory committee members from SJF Ventures, Braemer Energy Ventures, and Expansion Capital, as well as programming designed to help tenants attract funding and strategic partners. NYC ACRE also runs a Cleantech Executive program to help fill the leadership talent gap in the sector.

One ACRE tenant, M.J. Beck, an economic and strategic consulting firm, recently became the on-demand energy consultant for the City of New York, while another, Wind Products, Inc (formerly AeroCity), will soon install the city's first building mounted wind turbine using their technology.

Two other ACRE companies have been making headlines as well as progress. ThinkEco's product, the "modlet" (or modern electric outlet) was a finalist at the 2009 CEA-sponsored "i-stage" competition and the company recently closed an angel round.

Brooklyn-based SyntheZyme, an early stage green chemistry company commercializing natural biosurfactants developed by Dr. Richard A. Gross at NYU-Poly, is hoping to provide alternatives to toxic methods of cleaning up the Gulf oil spill.

In year two, Kotch hopes to continue to create new jobs, build sustainable companies, and help them get funding. But, as with most things in the cleantech sector, Kotch says, "We need long-term price signals that will allow the sector to grow."

Meanwhile, as Ecological and a few other tenants graduate, there are over 100 applicants waiting in the wings for space at the site. While not all of them are cleantech companies, the success of NYC ACRE tenants speaks to a good start for cleantech at the incubator.

Even New York City Mayor Bloomburg is pleased with the results of the incubator effort. "I'm already impressed by the ideas developed by the entrepreneurs based there," he wrote in a letter about the incubators to John Sexton, president of NYU, and Jerry Hultin, president of NYU-Poly. "The number of companies at the incubator, the additional jobs created by them, and the sense of community on the floor are all testimonies to your outstanding work so far."

Mayor Bloomberg recently announced the NYC Media Lab, a partnership between NYCEDC, NYU Poly, Columbia, and NYC.gov, and NYCEDC has several other incubators up and running, including one for fashion designers in the garment district and a "kitchen incubator" at La Marquetta in East Harlem.

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The Six Slide Challenge

I have an outline for a pitch deck that I recommend to clients of VerdeStrategy. It calls for 11 slides (10 if they can, but no more than 11) and goes more or less like this:

1. Company name/logo/tag, full contact info
2. What Do You Do? Core Value Proposition
3. Team (Management/Advisory)
4. What Pain are you Solving?
5. How? What's Your Solution/Benefits
6. Secret Sauce/IP/Differentiation
7. Go-to-Market Strategy
8. Competition/True Size of Market/Opportunity
9. Business Model/Stage
10. Plausible Financials (Projections for 3-5 years)
11. The Ask/Milestones/Summary

There's some variation therein, obviously, depending upon the business model or the intended audience. I've gleaned a lot from experts ranging from Garr Reynolds, Guy Kawasaki, and Bill Reichert, among others. As a template, it works pretty well.

A couple of weeks ago, Fred Wilson published a post on investor pitches in which he recommended only six slides. "You can explain your business in mind numbing detail or you can inspire an investor and let them imagine," Fred suggested. "Guess what works better?"

But it was my pal Andy Swan's comments on Fred's post that really got me thinking. He outlined the following six slides:

1. Imagine a world where....
2. Here's how we get there...
3. Known obstacles to overcome
4. The pot of gold
5. Why our team is awesome
6. Routing number for investment

I decided to play around with it on Friday afternoon and try to describe VerdeStrategy, my consulting and advisory firm focused on the cleantech, energy, and environment sectors.

Could I describe VerdeStrategy in six slides using the "Swanified" outline? Could I further get across the essential value proposition we offer in, as Fred stipulated, "six slides that will inspire and leave something for the imagination"? It was a challenge I couldn't resist.

Here is my first take. Let me know what you think:

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Video: Cleantech Alliance Mid-Atlantic 2nd Annual Investor Forum

The video of our 2nd Annual Investor Forum is available now:



Here is a link, in case you can't see the player: http://bit.ly/cVKmR3

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Your Long-Suffering Audience

The title of this post could be "The companies weren't bad, but their presentations weren't any better."

But I'll go easy. (Hell, I've been guilty too...)

It's not that the presentations were bad, necessarily; well, okay, they were. Yet some had useful information either about the company, the sector, the pain they were addressing, or the solution they proposed. Some even had realistic projections and maybe even a pithy quotable line or two.

Really, I suspect none of the presenters spent sufficient time on their presentations; especially on cutting them. (Wasn't it Pascal who said, he "made this [letter] longer, because I have not had the time to make it shorter"?)

Or thinking through their audiences.

Oh, speaking of audiences: If you're doing a keynote, especially first thing in the morning or just after lunch, do something different. Use your OWN knowledge of the topic to craft your points and don't really on someone's data points or best-selling book to get your message across.

And don't assume that the audience either knows too little or too much about your topic. (Especially after you've ask them who they are. If you're going to ask, you need to adjust accordingly.)

Paul Kedrosky posted some good tips for better presentations (or at least quirkier ones), which has my vote: paulkedrosky.com

And, of course, there is always something worth reading at Presentation Zen.

Before you commit a presentation misdemeanor, consider the alternatives. And respect your audience.

Broadcast Your Pitch with Cleantech Investor NEXUS

Here's an interesting concept for cleantech companies that want exposure to potential investors outside their immediate region.

Cleantech Investor, a UK-based publisher of finance, investment and business information for the cleantech space, is offering cleantech companies the opportunity to communicate with potential investors in London and around the world.

At Cleantech Investor NEXUS events, companies give 30 minute presentations to a select investor audience. Simultaneously, the presentation is streamed live on the web to investor audiences around the world. The videos remain available for one year after the event on 3B NEXUS and on Cleantech Investor TV. Companies may also post the video on their web sites.

Presenting companies will also receive a professional profile, crafted by a Cleantech Investor analyst, which is printed in the event brochure and posted on the Cleantech Investor website.  The companies also get to use the piece as part of its fund raising.

Information for companies wishing to present: Cleantech Investor NEXUS (PDF)

I'm not sure this is the most effective way to fundraise, considering that most investors like to keep their investing close to home, but I like the concept of this and other "pitch portals," such as Vator.tv

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