1BOG gets $5 million in financing from NEA

1BOG gets VC funding

Nearly 2 years ago, we set out to see if we could create a mission driven company that could attract the investment of the the Silicon Valley's most prestigious venture capital companies.   Our hope - that if we could prove that it's possible, that we might inspire an army of mission driven entrepreneurs to follow our lead. 

We are very proud to announce that New Enterprise Associates, one the largest and most respected Venture Capital companies in the Silicon Valley has invested $5 million in Virgance's solr group buying company, 1BOG.  We hope that this news helps to solidfy the proof that startups can use the power and principles of capitalism to build mission-driven companies.

To read more, click here.

Autumn Update!

For those of you not on the Virgance email list, here's a roundup on the latest news!


Hi everyone,

The first day of autumn is approaching, which means it's time for Virgance's second ever Equinox event! If you want the scoop on the new stuff going on at Virgance, find Steve or Brent at Equinox and they will be happy to tell you everything. We are committed to transparency and no questions are off-limits. We'll have booze, music, prizes, and lots of interactive ways to learn more about our company. It will be sure to be the most fun you've had on a Tuesday....at least in the last 6 months! We've already sold a bunch of tickets, so be sure to grab yours before they sell out.

Tuesday, Sept 15th, 6-11pm, at Temple Nightclub
RSVP on Facebook and reserve your ticket for $5

CARROTMOB

Everyone in SF has been waiting a long time for the second ever Carrotmob event in the city, and now the day is upon us! TOMORROW, San Francisco is mobbing Epicenter Cafe! Your life will not be complete without attending this event. If you know someone with an office in downtown SF, tell them to bring their whole office out for a happy hour. See you there!

Thursday, Sept 10th, 5-8pm, at Epicenter Cafe
RSVP on Facebook and get all the info here

Around the rest of the world, Carrotmob activity is heating up! We've seen great videos coming out of places like Charleston, SC and Antwerp, Belgium. Take a look at our mobs page to see a map of active campaigns. We have partnered with 350.org to support Carrotmob events on October 24th, the Global Day of Climate Action. Look forward to Carrotmobs happening from Minnapolis to Sydney, from Bonn to Ottawa, from Cambridge to Durango.... Let's hope the world leaders in Copenhagen take notice!

ONE BLOCK OFF THE GRID

We're happy to report that 1BOG is growing like mad, and helping make it possible for more and more people to switch to solar energy! To recklessly paraphrase this Wall Street Journal article that just came out, 1BOG is getting ridiculously awesome value for the homeowners who sign up with our programs. We are happy to announce that we are now launching programs in Phoenix, AZ, and Coachella Valley, CA, and ramping up our campaign in Sonoma County, CA. And remember, we are now providing home energy efficiency solutions for our members in the SF Bay Area.

LEND ME SOME SUGAR

We continue tinkering with Lend Me Some Sugar in our mad laboratory. Check it out and become a fan on Facebook, here...

GO MEDIA

Our blog network keeps pumping out more great content on blogs like CleanTechnica and Gas 2.0. We've had some nice guest posts recently, from people like GM/Chevy Volt exec Frank Weber, Mayor of Berkeley Tom Bates, Founder of Calcars.org, Felix Kramer, a series of posts from CEOs in the solar industry, and of course, the continuing excitement unfolding at electriccarrace.org.

Yours Truly,

Virgance

(ps: to all our summer interns, we miss you. you complete us.)

Lend Me Some Sugar Revealed!

Hello friends of Virgance, my name is Tibet, I'm an engineer here but have also been managing the early stages of our next big project, Lend Me Some Sugar. We believe LMSS is going to create huge amounts of positive social and environmental change and I'm excited to say that we can finally reveal some more details about it. This post comes a little late given that LMSS had its coming out party at the Sustainable Brands conference in June and has since been broadcast to the world via Facebook and Twitter, but nevertheless it deserves a blog post of its own.

In short, Lend Me Some Sugar is a new way to convert the massive advertising budgets of big brands into funding for world changing projects. The basic idea is that we will run American Idol style competitions where the contestants are social entrepreneurs instead of singers. Each contest will have a theme (environment, education, poverty...) and the contestants will be competing for a large cash prize (we're talking millions here) to fund their idea within that theme. The contests will be run online, utilizing the power of social networks to reach millions of people who will vote for their favorite idea each week. At the end of the week one contestant will be eliminated until the last idea standing takes home the dough.

Where will the money come from you ask? That's the best part. Each Lend Me Some Sugar contest will be funded by sponsorship from a big brand. For example, a soda company, lets call them Cola-Mola, might want to sponsor a clean water competition. We would work with them to pick 16 highly qualified contestants who have great ideas for supplying the world with clean drinking water and then launch the contest co-branded under their name as well Lend Me Some Sugar's. For the brands it is a great opportunity to run a highly engaging social media marketing campaign that associates their company with doing good, but for us it is a huge, untapped pool of money for creating social and environment change.

We are currently in the process of pitching Lend Me Some Sugar to a number of brands that have expressed genuine interest in sponsoring a contest. In the meantime, we need to demonstrate that we will be able to reach a large audience when Lend is launched. With this in mind we are trying to get 500,000 fans of our Facebook page to prove that people are excited about this idea. If anyone out there has other creative ideas for spreading the LMSS love please let us know, especially if you want to write about it on your blog.

Help us make this powerful idea a reality!

Follow Lend on Twitter
Become a fan of Lend on Facebook

Steve and Brent are speaking at SoCap09!

SoCap09 has generously offered to give friends of Virgance a 30% discount to the conference, this September 1-3. Steve and Brent will both be presenting. Here is a note from Amy Benzinger, Associate Producer of SoCap:

Social enterprise and innovation is on everyone's mind these days.  The big question is how to figure out how to drive money towards it.  Virgance was one of the first to bring attention to this trend and the SOCAP conference was the first of its kind to bring people together to talk about it. SOCAP09 is a gathering of the world's top social innovators held on September 1-3rd, 2009 at The Fort Mason Center in San Francisco.  Last year at SOCAP08, over 600 attendees from 26 countries came to discover the landscape of the social capital marketplace. This year, members of the administration and key players from the public and private sector will explore new strategies for success in the changing financial world. Steve Newcomb is onboard to speak on a panel on "Community Driven Change." We're looking forward to the chance to participate in this conference and hope to bring Virgance folks along. There is a 30% discount for our networks using the code "VA30," Register at www.socialcapitalmarkets.net by August 21st to take advantage of this offer! See you at SOCAP09!

The State of the Virgance, Summer 2009

Here's a little update about a lot of things that we've been up to!

CARROTMOB

We just announced our next SF campaign...we've got videos of 3 businesses explaining why they deserve to win the Carrotmob, and we're letting you go here to vote now on who the mob should reward! Vote now and spread the word! We'll let you know the date of the event once the voting is done... We've also got Carrotmobs happening in 8 countries now with more coming soon! We've got 2 big ideas we're working on a lot, but they are both surprises, so nothing to report on that yet.... 

GO MEDIA

Our blog network has circumvented the authority of Congress and the president and declared war! San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom told us that SF was going to be the leader in developing infrastructure for electric vehicles. Then Portland Mayor Sam Adams told Gavin to "bring it on," saying Portland will be the leader. We put together a site called ElectricCarRace.org and now the mayor of Seattle just got involved...check out the site, best war ever!

1BOG

We've got several active solar campaigns going on right now, so if you have friends who live in these cities, spread the love: Denver, San Diego, LA, SF Bay, New Orleans, and Sonoma County. What's that? You already have solar? Or you want to focus on efficiency first? Well luckily 1BOG is trying out a new project: home energy efficiency! We've made a deal with a great company called Sustainable Spaces to get 1BOG members 15% off the usual price of energy efficiency retrofitting! If you go to this page your mind will be blown by all the great home improvements that you might be interested in, and your eyes will be strangely transfixed by Dave and Brad's video.

VIRGANCE HQ

The team is growing! We've hired a couple more engineers (Grant and Tibet), some more people on the 1BOG team, and a huge swarm of summer interns! We had our first real offsite which was fun, and helped mold us into a graceful and coordinated team.

Since the last email 3 months ago we got some more good press, including a great Union Tribune article about 1BOG in San Diego and a piece about Carrotmob in Time Magazine. Also, our company just challenged the few employees among us that actually drive cars regularly to take Zipcar's "Low Car Diet". If you see any of our employees driving to work in the next month, let us know so we can publicly shame them. Mark your calendar for the next Equinox event on September 15th!

Love,

Virgance