Jack and Gary Discuss CleanTech
Jack Crawford, General Partner at Impact Venture Capital, talks with Gary Simon about the future of CleanTech, Sacramento and Fundraising.
Jack Crawford, General Partner at Impact Venture Capital, talks with Gary Simon about the future of CleanTech, Sacramento and Fundraising.
With our established track record of success in classes and events in 2017, we have been making some plans to expand our offerings in 2018.
New for 2018 will be our “Cleantech MeetUps”, eventually on a monthly schedule. CleanStart, in collaboration with the Sac State College of Engineering and Computer Science and other sponsors soon, is starting a series of these meetings. Each of these will feature 2-3 companies that are already in operation making presentations and answering your questions. The first will be on January 25 starting at 5:30 pm, with details still being arranged. The focus of this first one will be on energy management in the home. Others are being planned around batteries, electric vehicles, solar, and biofuels. You will be surprised at how clever our local companies are. The January 25 MeetUp is free and very informal, so plan to attend. Over the course of these MeetUps, you will get to hear from the majority of our local “Cleantech 100”. They will enjoy getting your feedback and appreciate getting better known.
Last year, over 150 people attended our classes and gave them rave reviews. We are continuing these classes on advanced topics this year, and planning sessions already on crowdfunding ( a follow-up to our highly successful first session in 2017), best practices in dealing with your investors, understanding how to apply for funding from the ARB and CEC, how best to manage your intellectual property, and what the bitcoin opportunity may mean for clean tech [See blog].
We are also looking for other ways to showcase our companies and to connect them to investors. We will be helping companies get well-prepared to participate in pitchfests being organized by other groups in the area and doing our own coaching and bootcamp sessions.
If you have suggestions for us, let us know. We are more than halfway to our goal of $5 billion in revenue and 10,000 jobs in the core cleantech sector. We want to be sure we get there as fast as we can.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Gary Simon is the Chair of CleanStarts Board. A seasoned energy executive and entrepreneur with 45 years of experience in business, government, and non-profits.
Someone the other day asked what the bitcoin revolution would mean for cleantech. That’s a great question. Bitcoin is certainly is getting a lot of attention. Little wonder since bitcoin prices themselves were up 2000% in 2017 (creating a $275 billion total value) and its less well-known cousins had the same pattern — Litecoin up 7000% ($15 billion market value) and Ethereum up 8400% ($5 billion market value). And the larger question is what the whole blockchain technique would mean for cleantech.
This is not the place to explain what blockchain and “cryptocurrency” is all about. For that, try this article. The volatility in prices and the oversupply of cryptocurrencies (over 1000 have been created, but only a few have gotten any traction), should be warning signs. However, it seems like several applications could be possible.
SolarCoin is one of those. If you have solar panels on your roof, you most likely are creating credits that either are not being used, or are being sold by the company that installed and owns the panels. SolarCoin is a way for more people to cash in on this value. It does not supersede the formal credits, but in the words of the promoter, it is like “frequent flyer miles for solar”. Clever idea. It currently covers the output from only 200 megawatts of solar, but is growing. The Coins trade on the Lykke Exchange in Switzerland and have a value of 20 cents. The goal is to get that to $30. SolarCoin has one other beneficial feature in that they are created by actual electricity production rather than the hugely energy-intensive “mining” done to create bitcoins and its imitators. Bitcoin actually has a substantial carbon footprint. SolarCoins have a smaller, but nonzero, footprint. Check here for more on Solar Coin.
Power Ledger in Australia created POWR tokens to trade renewable energy credits, and raised $24 million in an “Initial Coin Offering” or ICO to fund the company. See this link.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Gary Simon is the Chair of CleanStarts Board. A seasoned energy executive and entrepreneur with 45 years of experience in business, government, and non-profits.
Congratulations to Integrated Comfort Inc. (ICI) for being acquired by Seeley international! Seeley international is Australia’s largest air conditioning manufacturer and a global leader in developing ingenious, energy-efficient cooling and heating products.
Lead by Dick Bourne’s (CEO) technical expertise and Steve Short (CFO) ICI has successfully grown and garnered international attention to the HVAC retrofit. With Seeley’s purchase they will continue their their growth scheduled for 2018. Steve believes the acquisition will provide ICI a significant potential to scale in the long run given Seeley’s in-depth HVAC experience and international experience and ICI will be able to offer Seeley a presence in the fast growing United States HVAC market.
Integrated Comfort develops retrofit solutions for commercial rooftop air conditioning. They use evaporative cooling to increase the efficiency of existing HVAC products. ICI is headquartered in West Sacramento, California and recognized as a rapidly growing clean technology manufacturer in the region. Within less than three years, the size of the team has grown from two full-time employees to fourteen. Also, the management team is confident about the future potential as ICI continually builds out a well-diversified customer portfolio while maintaining a very strong long-term business relationship with a great customer, WalMart.
ICI’s patented products, DualCool and Coilcool are demonstrated to be efficient mechanical cooling systems that reduce peak electrical demand up to 40% and reduces cooling energy consumption up to 35%. As of 2017, Integrated Comfort has installed more than 2,500 units of DualCool units at 380 WalMart stores across seven states in the South West.
ICI’s competitive advantages come from Dick Bourne’s decades deep experience in energy efficiency. After being a founding member of the Davis Energy Group Dick joined UC Davis in 2006 and formed the Western Cooling Efficiency Center (WCEC). Dick left the WCEC in 2009, and joined ICI as an owner to focus on growing the company and the deployment of a suite of energy efficiency solutions which he had been the primary inventor of. His background and leadership has enabled the company to be highly innovative through collaborations with research institutions and manufacturers.
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.