Green Options

At the Investors’ Circle Conference in San Francisco, the Plenary Session of the May 7th Education Day was titled, “Is Organic the Next Clean Tech?” Can organic foods (and other products) can attract major investment capital, in the way clean technology has in the past few years, to the tune of tens of billions of dollars.
I am not sure whether the answer is a resounding yes, but panelist Walter Robb, Co-President and COO of Whole Foods Market announced that Whole Foods will be investing in small supplier companies, and all of the panelists were positive about the potential of investing in organics.

Kristen Groos Richmond, Co-founder/CEO of Revolution Foods, who has a wonderful if improbable company, which I wrote about before, can speak first-hand about the ways entrepreneurs can attract professional investors while pursuing goals such as connecting local farmers and consumers.

Revolution Foods is a fascinating start up — a for-profit company focused on a public health issue (obesity), in a highly regulated “industry” (meals served in schools), with venture capital funding. When I heard that co-founder and CEO Kristin Groos Richmond was going to speak about the founding of her green company, I had to go hear how she got the idea, how she got Whole Foods to become a partner before Revolution Foods was even off the ground, and how she obtained venture funding.
At an event co-sponsored by the UC Davis Center for Entrepreneurship and the Davis Net Impact chapter, on January 24, 2008, Groos Richmond advised attendees to do a pilot project when starting a company. Although she acknowledged the importance of the startup business fundamentals (identifying a market need and researching what the market really wants) before starting, her advice was to get started with a pilot project as soon as possible.