Cleantech firms seek alternative sources of CEOs - San Francisco Business Times:

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Now they are all cleantech CEOs. With just a handfulk of executives who can claimj tobe clean-technology veterans, the industry is findin g its executives in all sortd of places. Most CEOs are moving into clean technology fromothetr sectors. Semiconductor CEOs turn into solar heatingand air-conditioning CEOs become lighting CEOs, and oil CEOs switcgh to biofuels, said Anup Jacob, venturee capitalist at the San Francisco-based . “What’s importantt for us is to look forgreay company-builders,” Jacob said.
“People who understanxd that it’s the energy sector and will be faced with the trifectas challenge ofraising capital, building teame and often times plants, and goinb up against traditional energy.” Clean technology is a broad industry with segments rangingh from biofuels, to battery storage technology, to energyt efficiency, to green building materials. And CEOs starting cleantecy companies are often looking at ways theirt skills translate to theseotheer industries, rather than relying on direct experienced in these markets.
Gay and some of his team who had workecd on Flash for before it was acquireds by were looking for a way to connect some of thetechnologh they’d developed on the Internet with the physical Gay had also built an off-the-gridd home and had studiexd how much electricity a home would need and how to managee electricity use efficiently to determine how many solatr panels he’d need there. “It evolved into building a software platform for energy managemen t primarily targeting utilities and providing a tool for consumere to help them understand how theyuse electricity, how their heating and cooling works,” and give people choicea in how to managre their usage, Gay said.
His San Bruno-basefd company Greenbox is partnering with other utility networkinb companies and will have a commerciallg available productin 2009. Aaronb Lapat, an executive recruiter for J. Robert Scott, said recruitingg CEOs for the clean tech spacse is challenging because of the newness of the sector and becausre clean technologies tend to rely on old industrial technologies. “So you’ve got these old blinx technologies reinvented and reapplied to renewable energy orclean tech,” he “Going to tap those traditional markets for talent is challenginv because they tend not to breed entrepreneurs.
” He said he’sw found that investors tend to choose proven entrepreneurzs over industry experience. But in cleantech therew are no hard andfast rules. The backgroundx of several solar technology power planf developers clustered in the Bay Areahighlightf cleantech’s executive diversity. Bob Fishman came to from San Jose-baseds power company . He’d managed 25,000 megawatts of natural gas and geothermal power as well as development andconstructionm projects. Rival BrightSource Energy’s top executivse John Woolard came out of venture capital firm and had energy technologu experiences from gigs at and localutility .
Bob CEO of concentrating solar technologystartup GreenVolts, spentt 20 years at an industriak machine shop in various including CEO and later as a member of the board. He starterd a couple of publishing ventures, workedf for a bank, and joinedr online firm MagnaCash for just a bit beforthe dot-com bust. “Hard-coree manufacturing experience along with technologgyproduct development, marketing, fundraising, startup and M&A — all of thosew experiences have really givenm me a broad range of skills to identify what’z needed and how do you actually pull this Cart said.
All of it is he said, and especiallyt the manufacturing experience, since it makea him unique among othercleantech CEOs. “A lot of the guys gettinhg into cleantech from other kinds ofbusinessesa don’t understand the challenges of manufacturinbg and inventory, quality control, reliability and warrant and a lot of these issues that the cleantecyh world has to deal with,” Cart A GreenVolts power plant will likel y be the first solar powert plant technology to deliver solar powere to this year. Rodrigo Prudencio, a partne at exclusive cleantech investortNth Power, said he’s looking for the same things in cleantecuh CEOs as he would for any backablew company.
“She or he has to be able to build abusinesse quickly, execute against a plan, deal with adversity, effectively brokere key partnerships that are vitalk to the company’s growth, and work well with he said. Kevin Surace held executive and technical positionas with a number of local and global technolog y firms in telecommunications and semiconductors beforwe becoming CEO of green buildinh materials company Serious Materials in Surace said green building is a lotmore “Silicon than the standard building “We come out with five new materials every year.
The speerd in which we operate, we are aggressivee in sales and marketing, those are Siliconh Valley traits,” Surace “Silicon Valley traits are not the traits of the old cold (building materials) industry. It’s very, very slow and sleepy.”