Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Sex.com; Match.com and Financing Solar

From cnet:
Here come the solar tech financiers

Joseph Brakohiapa is thrilled to hear about how scientists are making solar cells more efficient at converting light to electricity. But he'd much rather be making a sale of solar panels.

Brakohiapa is the CEO of Clean Power Finance, one of a growing number of young companies that are spending their brain power on software and financing, rather than photovoltaics....MORE

HT: earth2tech

From Mother Jones:


Mr. Match.com Pimps Solar

Gary Kremen sat in his San Francisco office on a winter afternoon, shouting on his cell phone and taking frequent, inexplicable swigs from a bottle of lemon juice. Kremen is 44 and stout, with a raspy voice and an inability to sit still. He founded Match.com in 1993 and ran the porn-marketing site Sex.com before selling it off for a reported $14 million in 2006. Lately, he has been sinking a chunk of his wealth and most of his energy into a new, slightly more altruistic startup called Clean Power Finance.

The new company, says Kremen, "is all about bringing solar to mass market"—making the case for going solar to average Americans, rather than just selling its virtues to what he calls "green liberals," "national-security types," and "utility haters." He wants to make installing solar panels on your roof as mundane as buying a car or any other big-ticket item. "If we're really going to get solar working, it can't be a green sell. It's got to be an economic sell," he says. "I'm all about 'green is cool.' But that's not big enough.">>>MORE