Ken Alston, Investment Manager at CalCEF invited CleanStart to the Investor Pitch Day hosted by CalCEF and Bay Angels. The event was packed with professionals coming from VCs, accelerator/incubators, academia, state government, and cleantech startups across entire California.  

David Hoschschild, Commissioner of California Energy Commission lighted up the event with a great keynote laying out the remarkable achievement of renewable energy in California and reiterating our state government’s goal to achieve a 33% of the energy source as renewable energy by 2020 and 50% by 2030. Shortly, five brilliant entrepreneurs presented for each of their companies including;

  • MOEV – an LA startup that develops smart solutions utilizing AI and cloud-hosted platform for managing electric vehicle energy usage within microgrids  
  • Sepion Technologies that offers a platform suite of highly-tunable nanoscale membranes enabling next-gen EV batteries, grid-storage of renewable energy, and cost-effective water treatment
  • Opcondys who is developing ultra-high efficiency energy controls using light for manufacturers of high voltage equipment
  • Glint Photonics – pioneering new technologies for indoor lighting using configurable optics to provide new functionality in solar concentration and illumination
  • Sunvapor utilizing highly concentrated photovoltaics without solar panels to generate steam at 4x less expensive and 4x more efficient for industrial customers

Each company showed their unique attraction and highlighted industry demands for increased efficiency through sustainability.   

This further shows the need to demonstrate to California and the World what is in the Sacramento Region.  Companies like Grid Rabbit and V2 work with energy management and provide unique solutions similar MOEV.  Lucent Optics has unique lighting solutions and Tenkiv’s water solution is revolutionary, both need to be recognized and supported in growing in Sacramento.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Qidong is a CleanStart Associate who follows new technologies that can connect with his passion for sustainability, education and economic empowerment. Helping CleanStart and clean tech startups in the Sacramento Region, he is looking to help positively impact the world. He recently graduated from UC San Diego and has a B.S. in Managerial Economics. His multicultural background helps companies approach problems from new perspective.in the region.