Did You Ever See a VC Cry?

“I’m afraid it will be too late”, intones uber VC John Doerr. He’s referring to correcting course in regards to green technologies and gobal warming. When Doerr speaks you should listen. As one of Silicon Valley’s top venture capitalists, he’s directed the funding of Compaq, Netscape, Symantec, Sun Microsystems, Amazon.com and many others.

He gave a presentation in March at the TED 2007 conference outlining his vision for the so called Green Tech movement. He predicts that the next decade will bring an unprecedented wave of economic boom throughout the world as we fashion new technologies to conserve or eliminate our use of hydro-carbon based energy sources. It will make the dotcom boom seem paltry in comparison. He gave a more detailed overview on The Charlie Rose show last year.

He believes in this idea with all his heart. This has become his life’s crusade. You can get a sense of this when, at the end of his TED talk, he starts crying at the prospect of having to face his daughter in twenty years and explain how we finally started turning things around and saved the world… or explain how we didn’t.

He’s spot on or course. Let’s stop kidding ourselves. We’ve been lead down a path of pernicious complacency by greedy corporations and dim-whitted politicians who have made a concerted effort to deride and negate the evidence so clearly before us. Containing and reducing the production of greenhouse gases will not only preserve our world, it will also save a lot of people lots of money. Doerr focuses on the Walmart example. They’re one of the leaders in this effort. Do you really think Walmart cares about people? Clearly not. But they do care about longevity and their bottom line.

Watch the TED presentation here.
Watch the Charlie Rose interview here.

Wednesday, July 18th, 2007 Life Lessons