As I mentioned in the last piece about two California ‘renewable’ energy propositions failing, Americans love the entrepreneurial spirit. It really does define who we are.
At ‘Launch Pad,’ the pitch session of the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, half a dozen entrepreneurs pitched their companies yesterday to a panel of venture capitalists and the audience. The theme was “Web meets world” the ways in which stuff we do online connects to stuff we do in the real world.
One the panel’s favorite companies was a virtual, CleanTech enterprise called Sungevity (http://www.sungevity.com). It is still a private company, but one day, has the promise of becoming publicly traded (a good one to keep an eye on I think) and represents the creative business model all investors love to get in on at the ground floor.
Here’s what Sungevity does: it is a Silicon Valley solar panel installation company. And here is some of what they pitched to the venture capitalists...
Buying solar panels for your house takes a lot of time and effort. The installer has to visit your home, often more than once, to measure and fit the panels to your roof, all just to give you a quote.
“When you visit Sungevity’s Web site and enter your address, it uses satellite and aerial imagery to measure your roof and delivers a quote within 24 hours, often in 15 minutes,” said Danny Kennedy, its co-founder and president. “It charges 10 percent less than most installers, saving the consumer money and time.”
“The real opportunity with clean tech is to make it easy and efficient for consumers,” Mr. Kennedy said. He plans to eventually offer Sungevity’s software tools to other installers over the Web.
A new business is born!
MarketMan
