It looks like your odds of getting seed funding for your business idea right now is very high, at least if you’ve got some clean energy/technology idea up your sleeve. Recently, the X PRIZE foundation gave $25,000 to two UC Irvine students for their green idea for a idea they submitted through Youtube. They only [...]
What do you do when you’re an Idealab funded startup making controllable mirrors for solar thermal plants? Wish your boss Happy Birthday. Idealab-funded eSolar has this video making the rounds: (eSolar is also backed by Google and Oak Investment Partners, by more than $130M in funding in its latest round).
Greentechmedia, an online media site focused on the clean technology industry, has a good profile of a very, very stealthy Southern California venture capital firm, The Quercus Trust. Apparently, The Quercus Trust is the most active clean technology investor in the nation–more active than Khosla Ventures. Greentech reports that they have 34 clean technology firms [...]
More on how big clean technology has gotten in Southern California: Ernst & Young has run the numbers, and determined that Southern California made up $363.5M in a record setting $1.6B invested in clean technology firms in Q3, ahead of Silicon Valley for the quarter’s clean technology activity. Much of this was driven by later [...]
I had the chance to moderate a panel on sustainable technology Wednesday at Los Angeles Technology Week, and had a great opportunity to ask questions and hear from some experts in the area. On the panel was Rao Surampudi of JPL — who designed the batteries and power systems for the Mars Rover, Gregg Ander [...]
Self plug alert: for anyone interested in clean technology, I’m moderating a panel next Wednesday in Altadena at Los Angeles Technology Week, on Sustainable Energy. Panelists include: Rao Surampudi, PhD, Technical Group Supervisor, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, fuel cell and battery expert; Michael Bissonette, Vice President and General Manager, Energy Technology Center, Aerovironment; Gregg Ander, FAIA, [...]
Speaking of venture capital funding numbers. It’s apparently clean technology funding week here in Southern California. Just in the last couple of days: Sapphire Energy – $50M for its technology for generating petroleum from algae PowerGenix scores $30M for its battery technology SolarReserve pulled in a huge, $140M round for its utility-scale solar power plants [...]
“Don’t be a lemming,” says venture capitalist Maurice Gunderson of CMEA Ventures, saying at the GreenTech 2008 conference Friday that there is a bubble in the energy industry right now. Gunderson, who was keynote at the green energy conference, said that we are currently in an energy bubble, much like the energy bubble of the [...]
Although Tesla Motors–which launched its electric sports car Friday in Santa Monica–may get the attention of Silicon Valley, there seem to be a lot more, Southern California companies at the forefront of the green automobile industry. We have more than a handful of companies looking to tackle the auto industry. We had Tom Taulli look [...]
There was a good interview with Idealab’s Bill Gross on NPR yesterday. Interview starts around 4/5ths through the podcast version. (I talked with Bill Gross last year in an interview here…)
Thoughts and commentary from Benjamin F. Kuo, publisher of socalTECH.com.
