Ecopreneurist

The Washington Post brings to light just how big an impact Obama’s pledge will have for renewable energy companies. We’re already seeing high profile interest in funding entrepreneurs in solar, wind and alternative energy; early next year we could see a boom!

President-elect Barack Obama wants the nation to derive 10 percent of its electricity from renewable energy sources by 2012, up from 2 percent today. That comes on top of the global push for green power, making wind and solar power companies a good bet.

It’s been a rocky road for the high flying sector, recently as the credit crunch has reduced investors willingness to capitalize any company, least of all those involved in risky new ventures. But, that hasn’t stopped big names like T. Boone Pickens from investing in wind power and.. Read the rest of this entry »

Many entrepreneurs are starting green businesses now, but a number got their start a few years ago and are already thinking about moving on.

Willem Maas started GreenHomeGuide.com back in 2004 and sold it this summer to the U.S. Green Building Council, developers of the LEED rating system.  I asked Willem to share his experience with Ecopreneurist readers, and the following is my interview with him.

Leah: How did you think about your ultimate exit when you were starting GreenHomeGuide? Did you think about how you would maximize your investment either by sale of the company, long-term operations, etc.?

Willem: I didn’t at all.  I took GreenHomeGuide on as a cause. There was a need out there. I had talked with a lot of people who wanted to remodel green but ran into hard questions, such as which paints are safe, how to find a green contractor, etc.  I didn’t spend a lot of time focused on how it would be a sustainable business.

I figured I’d give it a shot, get a Beta of the site up and running, and learn along the way.  I had just spent nearly a decade in enterprise software, so the home improvement market, web publishing, consumer marketing, etc were all new to me.  I tried but couldn’t forecast a P&L for the business because I didn’t know what the right basis for the forecast would be, so I just plunged ahead.  Today, with a 16-month old son and a daughter on the way, I take financial projections much more seriously.

Regarding an exit, I wouldn’t advise planning for an exit as you start a business.  Focus on creating a valuable business that you enjoy running.  If and when you’ve created sufficient value that someone wants to buy it, great.  Selling a business is non-trivial.  Randy Komisar, he’s a partner at Kleiner Perkins ironically, wrote a great book that touches on this called “The Monk and the Riddle.” Read the rest of this entry »

It’s time to vote for the Forbes.com “Boost Your Business” contest winner. One for recently formed small company (several of which are green startups) will win $100,000 and lots of great PR.  Five finalists have been whittled down from over 1,500 applicants, and it is time to pick the winner.

It is a chance to test your business analysis skills. Which company do you think can generate the
greatest return on that $100,000 investment?  At Forbes.com, you can read the finalists’ condensed business plans and watch videos of the entrepreneurs’ presentations to expert judges–a great source of learning to boost your green business.

Vote for one by November 30th.

Maybe the title should instead read “How to Fail at ‘Greening’ Your Business”. Often times companies seem to approach “green” or eco-friendly as just another product attribute that can simply be added to packaging or website to reach the “green” consumer segment. In the rush to be eco-friendly, and due to the typical structure of many organizations, the marketing team will take the lead of the greening effort and, in the interest of time & energy, they’ll create a brilliant plan to communicate “green” to a target consumer group, but no internal alignment.

The sustainability and marketing strategies of a typical entrepreneur are often times based on the same model – the shotgun approach. Typically, entrepreneurs start to think about marketing after at least 6 months of hitting the pavement, and then sustainability appears as part of a new “marketing plan” or is seen as some kind of charitable giving / community relations campaign. Sustainable business is neither part of a marketing campaign nor a community relations effort. Neither is it about shifting revenue, but rather how revenue is generated.

Read the rest of this entry »

I often have email exchanges with ecopreneurs, non-profits, NGOs and various business folks that don’t necessarily end up as a blog post. Sometimes I start in one direction and end up in another. That’s what happened here when I received an email from Rob Wallace at Keep America Beautiful.

Rob had one of those ironic moments. He sent out an email and press release to us asking:

How can recycling wireless phones support the new administration’s energy policy?  Our recycling partner, ReCellular, is a reuse-oriented recycler of cellular equipment, and we’re confident that their structure and operations support zero-waste wireless recycling.

Great email pitch. Bookmark this page for next time you send out a press release. However, this pitch landed on my screen the day after I wrote this post on 60 Minutes and Executive Recycling. I immediately asked Rob if he’d be interested in commenting on the whole issue of dumping of e-waste in China instead. And he was and here is what he had to say: Read the rest of this entry »

This post is submitted by Paul O’Callaghan, founding CEO of the Clean Tech consultancy, O2 Environmental Inc. and lecturer on Environmental Protection Technology at Kwantlen University.

The prospect of ‘Peak Water’ is stimulating both investment and innovation in the water sector. More and more water technology start-ups are receiving venture capital funding and at the same time, a number of investment groups are offering specific water funds.  So how safe a bet is water?

The magazine Inc.com just ran an excellent article called ‘Blue is the New Green’ where they feature 11 entrepeneurs who are looking to create radical change in this space. In what was one of the largest venture capital investments to date in a water start-up, one of the companies featured in the article, Water Standard, secured $250 million in March 2008 to help fund their plans to convert old tankers into floating desalination factories. They see a growing market for this as they can re-fit old single hulled tankers and mobilise to areas that need water urgently. They can do this in far shorter order than it takes to get through planning, design, build and commission a new land based desalination facility.

Water Funds

For those of us who may not have $250M to invest…, but would like to invest in water solutions, the investment group Calvert just launched the ‘Calvert Global Water Fund’ (CFWAX) on Sept 30th 2008. The Fund invests in utility, infrastructure, and technology companies active in managing water resources. The fund is managed by KBC Assett Management who say that they stay on top of the technological issues involved in the water cycle through its ‘outside environmental advisory committee of scientists’. Jens Peers, lead portfolio manager of the Calvert Global Water Fund says ‘we believe that no other water asset management group has set up a comparable committee of unbiased experts.” Read the rest of this entry »

The following is guest post submitted to me by the ecopreneurs over at Grow and Make – The Sustainable Living Store.

Currently, lobbyists working for Chrysler and General Motors are working to encourage the US Congress to direct part of the $170 billion bail-out to help Chrysler and GM merge into a new car company. The bail-out is intended to help the financial industry recover from the current hemorrhaging taking place and to ensure a stable consolidation. The argument the car companies are making to congress is that they are financial businesses due to their large interest in providing loans and financing for car buyers.

As an Ecopreneur I am outraged at the absurd notion that our government should bail-out two broken and dead-end businesses to encourage their intended merger. This bailout would be the closest thing to socialism we will have witnessed from our Federal Government in many years and would be more akin to the type of intervention typical or France or Italy in the past. The only innovation I’ve seen to come out of Detroit in the last twenty years was to focus on becoming finance companies and to then lose sight of their core business of building cars for their customers. As one executive at GM was quoted to say “We’re a finance company which happens to sell cars”.

These car companies could have made decisions to invest in better designs, quality and fuel efficiency years ago, but decided the margins in large SUV and trucks was where their focus should be. Now they want to be “rescued”. What venture fund or corporation would invest in a business, division or startup with this type of short-sightedness. Imagine if you will the outcome of spending the $10 billion they are asking for on small entrepeneurial companies building technologies which enable cleaner burning, fuel efficient, alternative powered transportation. Do you think ten years from now that $10 billion would show a return for tax payers and those who will be seeking jobs during the ensuing time? Read the rest of this entry »

I’m a fan of The Funded, an online community of entrepreneurs to research, rate, and review funding sources worldwide. It’s a great example of a venture that promotes transparency and allows entrepreneurs to help each write business plans, share ideas and ultimately obtain funding.

A recent post discussed what the entrepreneur seeking funding should bring to an investor meeting. Answer: a deck that will take no more than 20-30 minutes to get through and cover the following points:

The ten slides that you need, in my experience, are:

1. Vision: What are you trying to do, and why are you doing it?

2. Market: What is the market you are addressing and the estimated value of this market over the next 5 to 10 years?

3. Team: Who are the key three to five executives (Vision, Operations, Tech, Sales, Marketing), and what are their specific qualifications in the target market?

4. Offering: What is your exact offering? If possible, present a three to five minute pre-recorded video demonstration.

5. Roadmap: Where are you in your offering release cycle and with respect to gaining traction? Read the rest of this entry »

Despite what you may think, times like these are perfect times to reassess your shipping and transportation practices.  High fuel costs, increased freight rates combined with the demand for shorter delivery times and reduced inventories can lead you to a new way of thinking. There are ways to green your transportation and shipping practices by improving fuel and operational efficiencies, which in turn will also save you money.

Fuel prices cannot be controlled, but transportation costs can be cut by eliminating waste.  For example, according to the National Private Truck Council Benchmarking Survey, approximately 25% of trucker miles are driven empty without cargo on return trips instead of being filled with another company’s outbound transport.  Backhauling, using an empty truck’s return route to carry cargo, has long been used by recyclers, for example, since the cost of transportation often outweighs the value of the cargo. There’s no reason why any business cannot use backhauling as a shipping strategy for deliveries that are not very time sensitive.

What else can a small business do? 
Read the rest of this entry »

The recent $700 billion bailout package has extended tax credits to wind and solar energy companies. However since mostly all renewable energy projects depend upon project financing, it is suspected that only large utilities will actually benefit from the tax credits. However, companies such as Carbon Sciences, Inc. (CABN) are proving otherwise.

Transforming CO2 to Fuel

Carbon Sciences, the developer of a breakthrough technology to transform harmful carbon dioxide (CO2) into high value, earth-friendly products such as precipitated calcium carbonate (PCC) is now developing a breakthrough technology to transform CO2 into the basic fuel building blocks required to produce gasoline, diesel fuel, jet fuel and other portable fuels. Read the rest of this entry »