EEStor : Say goodbye to the old gas hog
With solar cell efficiencies making rapid strides, the focus is now shifting to efficient storage systems that can bridge the time gap between supply and demand for the energy.
For large scale systems, one alternative is to convert solar power to steam by heating water. There are many options for storing steam, including far out ones like pumping and storing the steam underground.
For cars, however, it would hardly be practical to go tooling around town in a fancy steam locomotive - not yet anyway. There is a lot of excitement these days, over super capacitors - very large parallel plates (the kind you don’t want to get in between) which are charged electrostatically, and will store enough energy to get you across town.
When asked about the greatest startup idea by CNN Money, Elon Musk, co-founder of PayPal, mentioned the super capacitor as the next generation of battery technology. Such systems are capable or recharging repeatedly and suffering very little loss in performance. According to Musk “they kick ass on any chemical battery”
EEStor is a company that has laid it sights on electrostatic storage. Its storage device is reputed to be able to charge up in 5 minutes. A car can drive 500 miles on it, and it is about 7 times as cost efficient as gasoline. That should put an end to our gas hog ways!
In September 2005, high profile VC firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers in July led a $3 million investment in EEStor Inc.
Around the same time EEStor and Feel Good Car company of Canada (the makers of Zenn Cars and now called Zenn Motor Company) entered in to a technology agreement to acquire exclusive worldwide rights to purchase the Electrical Storage Units for small vehicles.
EEStor is building a production line in Cedar Park, TX. Zenncar is expected to receive some of the energy storage units by now.
Tags : Technology
Precision Reproduction: The Art, Science - and Business - of procreation
Precision Reproduction, has recieved $250,000 in seed level funding from Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Earlier, the team of 4 UCLA students who came up with the business plan for the venture, won the Knapp 2006 competition at the Harold Price center for Entrepreneurial Studies at UCLA.
Precision Reproduction has developed, patented and tested a device and procedure for in-vitro fertilization that improves success rates and reduces risks for both mother and child. Unlike the traditional method of embryo transfer, Precision’s Sub-Endometrial Embryo Delivery gives doctors the control to consistently deliver an embryo to an ideal implantation site, and has eliminated the risk of tubal and ectopic pregnancy from IVF.
Humor in investing: Funniest holiday cards from VCs
A humorous look at the life in the VC world from Blue Print Ventures. Our hero, Gary Snoman makes his millions by selling snow men and then joins the VC community. His favorite question “what about India and China?”. Yup, have heard that before umpteen number of times!
And does this sound familiar? “yes we may be interested, but we need to find out who else is interested before we get interested” Yup, been there!
Of course the collection of hilarious holiday cards from Onset Ventures in the form of a comic book Santa from 1995 onwards are precious.
My favorite one is:
Tags : Opinion, Venture Capital
A blurb about Blurb - $2.5M financing from Hercules
Blurb, one of our favorite creative book publisher, secured a $2.5M financing from Hercules Technology Growth Capital.
Blurb is funded in parts by by Canaan Partners and Anthem Venture Partners and is making inroads in to the areas of self publishing and print on demand needs. The $2.5M infusion is in the form of debt financing.
Hercules Technology Growth Capital, is a NASDAQ traded specialty finance company providing debt and equity growth capital to technology-related companies, particularly for companies backed by venture capital and private equity firms that have already raised significant venture capital.
The print on demand and self publishing market continues to grow. Other important players in this space are Lulu, iUniverse, Xlibiris. Even Amazon acquired BookSurge in 2005 to tap in to this market.
Tags : Technology, Venture Capital
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