The state of Colorado is looking for managers for its newly formed Colorado Carbon Fund. This fund aims to aggregate Voluntary Emission Reduction (VER) offsets in an effort to help the state cut its GHG emissions by funding proven carbon abatement project in Colorado. This is in support of Colorado’s climate action plan which aims to reduce GHG emissions in-state 20% by 2020. Gov. Bill Ritter (D) is a big supporter of renewable energy, helping the state to become one of the leaders in wind energy generation in the US. Colorado emits over 120 million tones of CO2e per year, of which 48 million tons comes from electricity consumption. In tandem with these goals, the State’s Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) mandates that 20% of that electricity will come from renewable resources by 2020. The Governor’s Energy Office (GEO) aims to have the carbon fund launched by the early summer.
What am I doing here?
For the second year in a row, Forbes names Boulder ‘smartest city’ in U.S. While a more accurate name would be the most educated city in the U.S., I can easily support the argument that the place is full of people with impressive intellectual power. Come visit us and see.
Conviction or Discipline
Filed in Management | Venture capital
No, it’s Conviction and Discipline according to Fred Wilson, “Conviction and discipline are two sides of the same coin.” I like the view. Similar to a great strategy with weak execution, conviction without discipline will often lead you into the ditch and will never get you to the mountaintop.
Berkshire Hathaway’s Shareholders Letter
Filed in Economy | Management
Berkshire Hathaway’s Shareholder Letter
is a must read and this one is no exception. Continuing last year’s scolding of the sub-prime mortgage banking industr, my favorite lines included these:
John Stumpf, CEO of Wells Fargo, aptly dissected the recent behavior of many lenders: “It is interesting that the industry has invented few ways to lose money when the old ways seemed to work just fine.”
You only learn who has been swimming naked when the tide goes out – and what we are witnessing at some of our largest financial institutions is an ugly sight.
Is Founder Control in Public Companies a Good Thing?
Filed in Management | USA politics
Another high profile company going public has decided to maintain control while selling a majority of the economic stakes in the company to the public. This time it is Al Gore as a founder of Current Media.
I certainly agree, the company’s shareholders have a right to decide the control structure they want to have after a public offering. At the end of the day, people can always choose not to be a party to it. And the average investor (not the same as the average dollar invested) has little voice in the actions of a company. But I still don’t like it. I guess it comes down to creating value for all shareholders and when you remove options – and putting control in the hands of a few reduced options – you lower the value to the group as a whole.
In this case the interesting thing will be how Gore is viewed in this debate (not that I’m trying to pull Barak and Hillary into this). In Al Gores Convenient IPO the comparision with Google focused on Gore’s holding public office and being a voice for many of the institutions who are currently fighting against these type of control structures. I don’t think we should hold Gore or any other ex-public official to any higher standard than we hold each other. And he should not try to tell us to do what he thinks is better for others unless he is willing to do that or more himself.
Steven Spielberg’s Ghost Town
Filed in Colorado | Technology | Web 2.0
Steven Spielberg’s Ghost Town suggests the social networking theme will take, or at a minimum test, the boundaries of segmentation. In this case not market segmentation, but segmentation of social circles. The main question I raise is “Do I want a lot of distributed social network tools?” Of course, I am in a lot of different networks, many of which have zero or close to zero overlap. And I would like to control this overlap with social networking tools. Perhaps a product like SocialThing, which allows me to participate in a lot of different social networks through one site provides the necessary control.