Deal Radar 2008: SunRun

Today’s Deal Radar spotlight shines on California-based SunRun, a company whose aim is to make solar power an affordable reality for homeowners. Founded in January 2007, the company is the brainchild of Nat Kreamer, a longtime solar enthusiast. He had the idea for SunRun while working for Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s office and the California Department of Water Resources. Kreamer and his two co-founders, Edward Fenster and Lynn Jurich, founded SunRun to help families buy solar power more easily and make it more affordable for them long term. >>>

Engineering Algae-based Bio Fuel: Valcent CEO Glen Kertz (Part 1)

Glen Kertz is a serial entrepreneur and an inventor who holds over 20 US and foreign patents in various fields. He started his first company at the age of 12 and has continued to create new business ventures based on scientific innovation. He has an extensive background in the development of a wide range of other technologies and business in general.

SM: Let’s start this conversation by reviewing your background. Where did you grow up?

GK:I grew up in a small town in eastern Texas called Orange. I had a fairly normal background but always had an interest in greenhouse plants. >>>

Innovating Web 2.0 Storage: Fabrik CEO Mike Cordano (Part 7)

SM: Who are the key players at Fabrik these days?

MC: One of the key people on the team helping me execute the plan is Mike Williams. He was the original GM of Maxtor’s Branded Products group. He also spent 10 years prior to that at Apple. >>>

Deal Radar 2008: Archer Technologies

Archer Technologies provides enterprise governance, risk and compliance (GRC) solutions through the Archer SmartSuite Framework. Made up of eight core products that customers use to build applications to automate their business processes, the SmartSuite is a platform for building on-demand applications and packaging them into solutions to solve business problems. >>>

Innovating Web 2.0 Storage: Fabrik CEO Mike Cordano (Part 6)

SM: At what point did you launch the external drive business? You are now building two parallel businesses that will converge at some point. What is that evolution?

MC: We spent a lot of 2006 looking for potential alternatives. We had the option to build it organically, but that is a capital intensive activity. Our primary path was to look for a reasonable and interesting acquisition target. >>>

CEO Search At Yahoo! Commences

Jerry Yang is stepping down.

Here are the candidates according to Kara Swisher: >>>

Innovating Web 2.0 Storage: Fabrik CEO Mike Cordano (Part 5)

SM: How did you go to market with this? Where did you position it, and where did you see uptick?

MC: The final feature is total aggregation, which we will announce and take to market in the fourth quarter. It will initially go with our consumer products, which are sold in retail. The base version is free. >>>

Steve Jobs On Being Laid Off

[From his Stanford Commencement address]

My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky – I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents’ garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4,000 employees. We had just released our finest creation – the Macintosh – a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our board of directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating. >>>