I met with Rob Bernard, Microsoft’s Chief Environmental Strategist, at – appropriately enough – Green’s Restaurant in San Francisco to discuss the company’s green strategy and why it was late to embrace its green credentials.
What motivated Microsoft to appoint a Green Czar?
Why isn’t Microsoft more prominently green?
“This is not a competition issue for us. This is about literally lightening up the entire ecosystem of the IT industry; and we see it as a collective approach as opposed to an individual company, A or B.” Rob Bernard
Laurie Yolerwas an early enthusiast and angel investor for Tesla Motors, the pioneering electric car maker. She talked to me about her rationale for backing green technology and Tesla. Laurie doesn’t believe we should be green at any cost. Instead she focuses on the great opportunity to find innovative businesses and make (a lot of) money. Laurie points to General Electric which has a long standing history in clean energy innovation, inspired by the profit motive.
“The reason I’m involved in Tesla and I’m passionate about green technologies is I feel you can both be solving the world’s problems and making a profit at the same time.” Laurie Yoler
This is an extract of an interview recorded on October 15, 2008 at the WITI conference in Silicon Valley. For the full interview click here for Part Oneand here for Part Two
In this interview, Mayor Chuck Reed, the Green Mayor, describes how the City of San Jose is helping clean tech startups and established companies grow and thrive in Silicon Valley. (more…)
In the fourth in our series, Fresh Green Minute, we feature Charlie Rose– the acclaimed interviewer and host of the nightly PBS program, Charlie Rose.
We discussed Tom Friedman’s book, Hot Flat and Crowdedand why Charlie thinks that the United States can reassert its leadership in the world by engaging the energy question.
Andres Wydleris a clean tech executive based in San Francisco, formerly with BPL Global, a smart grid company. He cofounded the Constellation Investment Group of angel investors. In January, he delivered a sold out lecture serieson clean tech entrepreneurship at Stanford University and will repeat the seriesthis summer.
I sat down with Andres at a Sand Hill Road venture capital firm to discuss the reasons for the huge demand for his class; what outstanding startups he discovered at Stanford; his thoughts on the morale of venture capitalists today, and his future expectations for the green sector. We also covered:
Catherine Cook was a big draw at SDForum’s Tech Titans of Tomorrow: Teens Plugged In Conference last Wednesday at the Hewlett Packard Auditorium in Palo Alto. She is cofounder of MyYearbook a social media network for teens which has raised almost $17 million in funding. She talked to me about the site’s Causes Application which allows users to donate money to charities with their virtual currency, Lunch Money.
Catherine told me teens are choosing to go greenand make a big difference to our planet. To date, MyYearbook users (reportedly 10 million of them) have bought 2 million pounds of carbon-dioxide offsets and saved millions of sqft of rainforest. (more…)
