At the ripe old age of 40, I am now focusing all of my attention on teaching others what I know and trying to create an army of impassioned entrepreneurs and engineers that understand how to use capitalism for good.

If you want to see my full bio, feel free to click to here see my profile on LinkedIn or here to see it on CrunchBase.  Beyond Virgance (which is responsible for incubating and building 1BOG.org, Carrotmob.org and GreenOptions.com), I am the Chairman of the Board of 1BOG & Serious Business and I am the 2nd Vice Chairman of the Board of the Presidio Graduate School.  I am a serial entrepreneur who has been involved in building 6 companies prior to Virgance. Most recently, I co-founded and served as COO of Powerset, a natural language search engine company, which was acquired by Microsoft for ~$100 million dollars in 2008 to become part of BING.  I also served on the Board of Directors at Jaxtr a voice over IP company which was acquired by Sabse. Before Powerset and Jaxtr, I also co-founded or created several other companies that enjoyed success including Promptu Mobil (mobil voice recognition - private) and Loudfire (mobile email - now Nokia), was an executive at Proxicom (management consulting - now iCrossing) and AGS (energy trading - now Amerada Hess Trading) and was the editor of "The Entrepreneur's Workbook".

Why am I getting so involved in Sustainability?

 A lot of people expected that when I left Powerset, I would create my next startup.  In fact I had a slew of people and VCs who called to help me do just that - but I didn't.  The question is why?

As I mentioned before, I've had the opportunity to be a part of many companies and have helped to create over a lot of exit value.  In each company, I helped build teams, careers and long term friendships that I value highly.  But I had really come to a time in my life where I wanted to do more than 1) build a company 2) with a product 3) that makes money 4) that ultimately makes me more wealthy.  I wanted more.

During the 2007 year, I really had some time to reflect on my career to thing about what was really most importnat to me as a person.  So I did 2 things.  I made a list of the accomplishments that I am most proud of and I made a list of the things I would most want to accomplished:

Things I have accomplished that I am most proud of:

1. I married my wife and we got it right;
2. I gained the ability to admit my fears of failing;
3. I have lost the fear of trying bold new things;
4. I have understood and accepted the weight of asking people to join me;
5. I have helped a special few to come of age, face their fears and find out who they are;
6. I have always tried to tell the truth to my team members even when it was bad news;
7. I have always tried to share my knowledge with as many people as possible expecting nothing in return;
8. I have helped others to create their own companies and succeed in the face of great challenges;
9. I have done what I thought was right even when it caused me great personal loss;
10. I have failed and gotten back up and tried again without hesitation

Things I want to accomplish:

An Immodest Proposal

In September of 2007 I attended a thing called Renaissance Weekend.  It's not a jousting conference and nobody dresses up like King Arthur.  The way I describe it is that it is a convening of 2 types of people (1) those that are under 40 and think they can change the world and (2) those that are over 40 and have.  During the weekend they ask new people (blue taggers) to give a short speak that is their "immodest proposal"  My immodest proposal was to use the power and principles of capitalism for good - that is don't try to change capitalism, use it as it should be used, as a tool.  For the rest of the weekend all I can say is that I was humbled by the people that I met, their accomplishments and I was truly inspired by their support.

So what did I do?

Well, I came home and 1 month later, I quit my job at Powerset and started Virgance.  

Did I make the right decision? What am I focusing on now?

 There are only a few times in life where a person truly enjoys the knowledge of knowing they have, for sure, made the right call.  Sometimes it happens at Rockies in Berkeley when people order their hamburger, sometimes it's when you put on the exact right hoody (the kind with the fuzzy insides) to keep you warm on a rainy winter day.  For me, starting Virgance was like eating a Rockies burger while wearing my favorite hoody.  

Now I am focused on three initiatives:

1. for the past 2 years I've been building Virgance I, which was a million dollar experiment to see if I could create an social business that was run by people that I taught and could get funding from a tier 1 venture capital company.  I put enough money together to rent out Twitter's old offices and to create 4 shots on goal - you may judge my performance on your own;
2. I wanted to get closer to students and to universities and to get my message out. So I wanted to begin speaking and I set out to become a speaker at key events in technology and sustainability.  I also set out to get closer to universities.  So far in 2009, I spoke at over 20 events, including events at Stanford, NASA, Sustainable Brands, Social Capital Networks and Wharton.  As well, I am now the 2nd vice-charman of the board at Presidio Graduate School; and
3. after Virgance I succeeds, I wanted to create Virgance II.  A venture capital fund and startup school (a la Y Combinator for Good) so that I can teach as many people as possible how to use the power of technology and capitalism for good; 

My goal is to help, where ever I can, to create the tipping point in the sustainability movement by pushing initiatives in government, business and the broader social landscape.

People who played a role in Virgance I:

Brent Schulkin

Brent is the mastermind behind Carrotmob, the new method of consumer activism that has turned into an international phenomena. Frustration with the ineffectiveness of traditional methods of activism spurred him to create Carrotmob and co-found Virgance Stage I.

Before Carrotmob, Brent worked for The Go Game, designing hilarious games and producing elaborate, customized events for his clients around the world. In addition, Brent has directed a documentary film about criminal justice issues.

Brent works on making the activism projects at Virgance as effective as possible. He draws on his experience toiling away at less-effective methods of activism, including founding a criminal justice advocacy organization at Stanford, speaking at rallies, helping organize a team of anti-war protesters, and briefly raising money for an environmental non-profit. He has also been an organizer during several political campaigns.

Brent is now working on Carrotmob full time and remains a close friend and advisor to Virgance.

Naseem Hakim

Prior to Virgance, Naseem spent three years at PayPal, where he had roles as an engineer, architect and manager. While at PayPal, he architected and patented a new authentication system, and designed the PayPal Plugin, before moving on to start and manage the Financial Products team, which consisted of PayPal's credit and debit businesses. He found his passion in the 0-60 stage of building products and teams from scratch and scaling them, and quickly built Financial Products up to an international development team across three locations.  After leaving PayPal, Naseem was the first employee at one of the top Facebook application companies, before starting his own ventures in the social networking space.

Naseem holds B.S. and M.S. degrees, both from Stanford University.  He remains a friend of Virgance but has moved on from Virgance to explore his own ambitions.

Rahul Prakash

Prior to Virgance, Rahul was part of the early team at Spock where he served as Vice President and directed all marketing and operations. Spock was successfully acquired by Intellius in 2009.

Rahul is a Co-Founder of the Full Circle Fund's Energy Impact Circle, an alliance of emerging business leaders who help solve public problems through engaged philanthropy and public policy advocacy; and a Co-Founder of The Clean Economy Network, the national advocacy association for the clean technology and green business community. Rahul serves on the Board of Directors at The Junior Statesmen Foundation and sits on Public Policy Committee for the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce. Rahul was appointed to the Mission Bay Citizens Advisory Committee in 2009 by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. 

Rahul serves as an advisor to several prominent elected officials across the country on energy and technology policy.

Rahul is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania.  He remains a friend of Virgance but has moved on from Virgance to explore his own ambitions.

Dave Llorens

Dave is a co-founder of One Block Off the Grid and is actively involved with the San Francisco community and governmental initiatives concerning renewable energy. Prior to founding One Block Off the Grid, he founded solarpowerrocks.com, a reputable source for solar industry information. He also worked as a solar specialist for a local solar company where he was involved with the back end side of solar system integrations. He managed every aspect from site assessment, to designing solar energy systems, to educating customers on how they operate. His knowledge of state specific incentive structures, energy policy, and solar installation hands-on experience are essential in the expansion of 1BOG. Dave is responsible for the development and implementation of 1BOG campaigns nationwide.

Dave is also pioneering the model for getting solar on renters in San Francisco by working with specialists in both tenant law and tax law. As a result, he hopes to be able to bring solar to renters across the country. Dave is a graduate in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois. He likes to play a game or two of poker, and he dreams of making the final table in the World Series.

Dave is has now become the CEO of 1BOG and Steve Newcomb serves on the Board of Directors of the company now that it has spun out of Virgance.

David Anderson

Mr. Smooth Operator

David Anderson is the Founder and former Publisher of Green Options Media. He started his first blog on the nexus of energy and environmental issues in 2006, and has focused exclusively on renewable energy, sustainability, green business and environmental politics ever since. David graduated with honors from the University of California, San Diego with degrees in Political Science/International Relations and Sociology, and minors in Biology and Law. David lives in San Francisco, and tries to stop thinking about creating scalable change long enough each week to eat, sleep, and play some ultimate frisbee.places.

David is heading up GreenOptions as CEO.

Clayton B. Cornell

The Blogger

Clayton B. Cornell is the General Manager for GO Media. He was formerly the Managing Editor and director of social media strategy for the blog network before it became part of Virgance. Clayton gained most of his social media and Web 2.0 experience during his time as a professional blogger and Lead Writer for Gas 2.0, GO Media's blog covering the future of sustainable transportation, and he's been covering biofuels and green car technology for GreenOptions.com since the beginning of 2007. Before GO, Clayton ran the training program for one of the EPA's largest public toxicology information libraries at Oregon State University, which was fulfilled under a $2-million Federal grant. He became a biodiesel enthusiast after experimenting with small-scale biodiesel production in OSU's chemical engineering lab, and has extensive hands-on experience with diesel cars and trucks, including the practical use of biodiesel and straight-vegetable-oil (SVO) as alternative fuels. Clayton graduated from the University of Utah with honors, receiving a degree in Biology and Chemistry. On the side, Clayton likes to spend his time at the beach or in the mountains. He's been a professional river-guide, amateur beer judge, and resident of some interesting, far-off places.

Clayton is now an important part of the 1BOG team.

Aaron Brodeur

Designer and Front End Developer

After spending 7 years traveling the wastelands of consulting, contracting and one of his own hair-brained startups, Aaron joined Virgance. He's passionate about hand-crafted XHTML, CSS and javascript as well as stunning, easy to use designs. He's been a part of Virgance since the early days when the company was eating lots of Ramen and borrowing desks from investment bankers. These days he spends his free time thinking up the next big Virgance campaign and cursing Internet Explorer 6. 

Aaron has now joined 1BOG as its lead designer.

Avra Winograd-Hutner

Getting It Done

Before joining the 1BOG team at Virgance, Avra was working in New Orleans on policy and funding for post-Katrina redevelopment. She created a $40 Million program for the State Office of Community Development that was then adopted as a key pillar of recovery for the City of New Orleans. Prior to moving to Louisiana, Avra worked for the New York City Housing Preservation and Development as a project manager for affordable housing and mixed income developments. She is a native Californian and happy to be back in San Francisco working for Virgance. Avra graduated from Stanford University with a degree in Urban Studies and a minor in Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Avra has now joined 1BOG as its President.

Brad Burton

Products and Strategy

After graduating from Stanford with a degree in History and a minor in Italian language, Brad spent his first year out of school working as the Summer Staff Director for Stanford Sierra Camp. Having developed significant experience in managing community and business in college and beyond, Brad is excited about bringing his knowledge and enthusiasm to the business world. He hopes to play an important role in 1BOG and Virgance for the foreseeable future, learning as much as possible about how to successfully grow a business, then eventually continue on to pursue a graduate degree in business. When he's not in the office, on his BlackBerry, or writing emails on the train, he enjoys playing beach volleyball and obsessing about professional European soccer.

Brad has now joined 1BOG as its VP of Product

Cameron Octigan

The Callinator

Cameron moved to San Francisco about five years ago after finishing studying in Continental Philosophy and Russian Studies in Atlanta. He's always been interested in and involved with non-profits and organizing, and is happy to apply this passion to disseminating solar information and assisting with group purchases on the 1BOG team. He's very excited to help you move forward with solar, so give him a call!

Cameron has now joined 1BOG as one of its key pre qualification specialists

Grant Patterson

Engineer and Fractal Enthusiast

Grant joined Virgance after 2 years at VMware, where he made computers run inside computers. Now he makes computers run projects that create positive social change. The latter is slightly easier to explain, and he likes that. Grant studied computer science at Stanford and came darn close to a music minor. When he isn't wielding regular expressions like swords of glory, he sings, tinkers with electronics, jockeys discs, communes with Nature, and participates in Burning Man.

Grant has now joined 1BOG as its VP of Engineering.

Jonathan Weisblatt

Biodiversity Networker

Jonathan is a community organizer reaching out directly to the people to spread solar energy knowledge into our communities through 1BOG. Educated in a variety of artistic mediums in several countries after a Literature and Language Arts degree from the University of Michigan, Jonathan is committed to the artful generation of new mediums to connect people with the heart of our common humanity to inspire and empower us all to collaborate to create thriving communities and ecosystems and to protect biodiversity as integrated extensions and reflections of our greatest selves. He is now starting to teach Virgance office yoga classes in South Park - Join us!

Jonathan has now joined 1BOG as one of it key pre qualification specialists

Kalvin Wang

Engineer and Human Difference Engine

Kalvin grew up in the Bay Area, studied Computer Science at Stanford, and is interested in scalable social change, the Internet, and startups. Virgance is a strange fruit that claims all three, making it confusingly crunchy on the outside and fascinatingly juicy on the inside. Prior to Virgance, Kalvin worked at Hewlett-Packard and at startups with 48, 4, and 2 people.  Online, you can find him on Hacker News, reading Slate, or hunting deals. IRL, Kalvin plays tennis, board games, and fixes things that aren't broken. His favorite bloggers are Ezra Klein and Nate Silver; his favorite voices are Joel Stein and Michael Kinsley. He finds Yelp immensely useful and would like to thank his family and sister, who's going off to a great college soon. Lastly, Kalvin greatly enjoys working at places that allow bios last seen in high school theater programs.

Kalvin has now joined 1BOG as one of its key ninjas.

Kanyi Maqubela

Boots on the ground

Kanyi joins the 1BOG team at Virgance from Las Vegas, NV, where he served as Regional Field Organizer for Obama's Campaign For Change. Tasked with breaking voter registration and turnout goals in a once highly-underrepresented district, he organized volunteers and supporters to break the pattern of apathy, and engage in community-building and empowerment. Before working for the campaign, Kanyi worked in business development and marketing at Doostang, an online job resource in Palo Alto, CA where he currently serves as advisor. Kanyi studied Philosophy at Stanford, where he won the Community Writing and Rhetoric award for his investigative work on Domestic Abuse in Santa Clara County, sang a cappella, and participated in the drama program. Kanyi enjoys reading, hip-hop, writing, soccer, learning about his family, squash, electronic music, languages, South Africa, the opera, disruptive technology, and the thought that we need to save ourselves from ourselves. He's pretty undecided about that last one, and mostly likes the way it sounds.

Kanyi has moved on from Virgance and is exploring his own ambitions.

Matt Bellehumeur

Lando Prequalrisian

Prior to One Block Off the Grid, Matt worked with the inside sales team at SunRun introducing residential PPAs to California and beyond. He also recruited for the medical device industry, was a music promoter and the editor of a student newspaper. A Milwaukee native, Matt has called San Francisco his home for over 3 years. An avid surfer, sailor and Ocean Beach enthusiast, Matt is excited about helping you go solar and doing his part to help build a new sustainable economy.

Matt is has now joined 1BOG as one of its key pre qualification specialists.

Lara Eventide

1BOG Prequalification

Lara has been thinking green her whole life since she was on the recycling team in 2nd grade coveting her own personal copy of 50 Simple Things Kids can do to Save the Earth. But as a recently unemployed history teacher she found her calling to no longer teach history, but be a part of it. With her growing interest in renewable energy she started at One Block Off the Grid in February 2009 after interning at Greenpeace and Greenhome.com and eventually began using her teachings skills to help 1BOG participants understand solar energy.

Lara has now joined 1BOG as one of its key pre qualification specialists.

Tibet Sprague

Engineer and Tall Person

Tibet was born and raised in hippie-ville western Massachusetts, studied Computer Science at Brown University and then spent the next 5 years in Brooklyn and Providence, RI trying to get two different software startups off the ground. While both ended up flaming out before achieving orbit, he feels supremely fortunate that their trajectory landed him in San Francisco and eventually at Virgance. His previous work includes developing vehicle tracking and dispatching software at East Transit Technologies, and leading engineering efforts for Fusecal.com.  While primarily a master of all things web development, Virgance has already pushed Tibet to flex his Keynote skills, and become an expert on Facebook game mechanics and social media marketing, working on the Lend Me Some Sugar team. No matter what the task though, he is incredibly excited to be working on projects he feels passionate about and looks forward to helping change the world for the better. In the meantime Tibet spends his spare cycles exploring his new home in the bay by foot, bike and rollerskate, cooking up tasty vegetarian food, camping, hiking and looking for a bar with a good foosball table.

Tibet has now joined 1BOG as one of it core software engineers.

Natasha Mooney

CEO and President of Rahul and Steve

Natasha Mooney is a member of the Business Development and Marketing team at Virgance. Natasha received her B.A. in Urban Studies in 2008 from the University of Pennsylvania, where she was involved in environmental advocacy and building curriculum based community service programs. She is also an alumna of the International Honors Program, during which she conducted comparative research in urban development in Buenos Aires, Beijing, and Bangalore. She serves on the board of the One Percent Foundation, as well as the Full Circle Fund's Global Economic Opportunity Circle. She enjoys traveling, and is interested in the spatial challenges facing mega-cities in the developing world. Originally from Philadelphia, Natasha currently lives in the Mission District of San Francisco.

Natasha has moved on from Virgance and is now exploring her own ambitions.