Be The Change
This week, Bloom Energy unveiled their Bloom Box on 60 Minutes, followed by a press event at their campus in Sunnyvale. There is a lot of hype for Bloom to live up to, but looking at their 10 year stealth development, the secret beta program at Ebay, and founder K.R.Sridhar’s plans for future developments, I have a lot of faith.
Greentech Media did a great interview with K.R.Sridhar at the event this past week.
One of the quotes from the media circus really made an impact on me.
“Silicon Valley is learning some hard and important skills, mainly making stuff again,” said Mr. Doerr, a partner at the venture-capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and a Bloom Energy board member.
This hits at the core of what I believe is needed in our society in general, and in the valley in particular. We’ve spent a lot of time and energy on infinite permutations of social networking. Morphing from a culture of pure software and app development to produce a system is a big change. What companies like Bloom Energy, Tesla, and Better Place have done is dream big and build big. Tackling the hard problems earns you respect and (hopefully) reward.
-Rob
En route to Bend, OR
PS. For good reading on solving real problems, check out Vivek Wadhwa’s piece on TechCrunch (“What’s better: Saving the world or building another facebook app?”)
Rob Knoth
I would completely agree with Doerr if I saw that as the real motivation in the energy startup arena. Unfortunately, most of the interest in energy is more fad based that honest innovation. If Silicon Valley VCs really wanted to “build stuff” there are a lot of really good companies out there that are innovating in many areas, not just energy and facebook apps, and they should be investing in them. But unless you can tie your company to one or the other, you are out of luck.
The good news (and bad news for VCs) is that investment communities are rising up in areas that are far away from the Silicon Valley, which will eventually suck the innovators out of the balley.
Lou Covey
February 27, 2010 at 2:13 pm