{"id":69,"date":"2009-06-23T19:04:54","date_gmt":"2009-06-23T19:04:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/earthsayers.tv\/sustainabilityadvocate\/?p=69"},"modified":"2009-06-23T19:29:18","modified_gmt":"2009-06-23T19:29:18","slug":"sustainability-and-the-vc-taskforce-roundtable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/earthsayers.tv\/sustainabilityadvocate\/?p=69","title":{"rendered":"Sustainability and the VC Taskforce Roundtable"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Each month the <a title=\"VC Taskforce\" href=\"http:\/\/www.vctaskforce.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">VC Taskforce<\/a> hosts The Elevator Pitch Roundtable an opportunity for entrepreneurs &#8220;in a startup that is currently seeking capital&#8221; to present a 90-second elevator pitch to a panel of VCs, usually four. These are very interesting as the panel gives a score of their interests based on the pitch and the Q\/A that follows.<\/p>\n<p>If I were to expand beyond my experience with this group it seems to me many VC&#8217;s, not ALL of course, have no sustainability strategy for their investment activities. If they venture outside the business as usual space, they have a laundry list of sustainability related categories, as do the big consulting firms. See my blog article below on laundry lists. Mobile, alternative energy and bio refineries is a list from Khosla Ventures and under &#8220;the things we care about&#8221;\u00a0 <a title=\"Khosla Ventures\" href=\"http:\/\/www.khoslaventures.com\/nonprofit.html\" target=\"_blank\">(Khosla Ventures<\/a>), you will find some of this and some of that.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Microfinance<\/strong> &#8211; SKS, SHARE, ASA, CFTS, Jamii Bora Grameen USA, Unitus &#8211; with a goal to provide credit to over 25 million &#8220;below poverty line&#8221; borrowers. See also <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gsb.stanford.edu\/news\/headlines\/2004globalconf_khosla.shtml\" target=\"_blank\">An Anti-Poverty Success Story<\/a>; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gsb.stanford.edu\/multimedia\/events\/globalbusiness\/khosla.ram\">Video<\/a><\/li>\n<li><strong>Environment<\/strong> &#8211; GE Ecomagination Advisory Council, Chairman of India Advisory Board of the Cleantech Network<\/li>\n<li><strong>Education<\/strong> &#8211; Indian School of Business &#8211; a world class school of business, DonorsChoose.org &#8211; teachers ask for private funding on thousands of projects<\/li>\n<li><strong>Health<\/strong> &#8211; Public Health Institutes of India, UNICEF<\/li>\n<li><strong>Affordable housing<\/strong> &#8211; Global Home &#8211; goaled to build a $5000 home!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Companies need to put all the wood behind one arrow as spreading energies across a broad spectrum of sustainability categories has proven to be pretty ineffective.\u00a0 Jeffrey Hollinger of Seventh Generation hits the nail on the head when he talks about the need for companies &#8211; and VCs are no exception &#8211; to make sustainability their core business strategy.<\/p>\n<p>At one Roundtable they poohed-poohed two technologies relating to reducing energy consumption in existing buildings (big, big source of greenhouse gases), but got\u00a0 excited over a travel Website catering to honeymooners.\u00a0 That&#8217;s when the question entered my mind: Are we twittering while Rome burns?<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s going to take more than Al Gore to turn things around, if they can be turned around.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Venture Capitalists pooh-pooh sustainability as do-gooder stuff while exhibiting a lack of knowledge about sustainability and related technologies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[85,81,84,666,75,82,83],"class_list":["post-69","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-education","tag-investment","tag-khosla-ventures","tag-sustainability","tag-sustainable-development","tag-vcs","tag-venture-capitalist"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/earthsayers.tv\/sustainabilityadvocate\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/earthsayers.tv\/sustainabilityadvocate\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/earthsayers.tv\/sustainabilityadvocate\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earthsayers.tv\/sustainabilityadvocate\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earthsayers.tv\/sustainabilityadvocate\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=69"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/earthsayers.tv\/sustainabilityadvocate\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71,"href":"https:\/\/earthsayers.tv\/sustainabilityadvocate\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions\/71"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/earthsayers.tv\/sustainabilityadvocate\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=69"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earthsayers.tv\/sustainabilityadvocate\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=69"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earthsayers.tv\/sustainabilityadvocate\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=69"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}