David Chen, Visionary in Energy Efficiency Financing
Brent Marsh, a new “2GreenEnergy Associate,” arranged for me to speak on Skype with David Chen yesterday. “Oh, this is going to be terrific,” I thought, believing that this was the David Chen who speaks so compellingly on novel ways to finance energy efficiency. And the fact that the caller was in Shanghai made me even more convinced.
Wrong David Chen.
But it turns out that the call had great value anyway, as this gentleman (David T. Chen) and I discussed the development of an angel investor consortium to fund a bunch of cleantech start-ups. Someday I hope to direct a publicly traded entity that provides capital for a number of different start-ups simultaneously, a kind of hybrid between a mutual and venture capital fund. It’s a good idea; someone needs to make this happen.
Acorn Energy (ACFN) is essentially a publicly traded company that acts as a venture capitalist, buying stakes in relatively early stage companies. I personally find the company very had to analyze because of the diverse and changing business mix so have not spent a lot of time trying to figure it out, but they do pretty much waht you are talking about here.
OK, thanks. I’ll look into that.