Skip to main content

Home/ GroundUp Bookmarks/ Group items tagged validation

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Janine Shea

Create Solar Energy Together | Mosaic - 0 views

  • Every Mosaic project is carefully vetted and structured to minimize risk while maximizing benefits to investors and to the planet.
  • Mosaic aims to open up this historic opportunity to everyone by democratizing the way energy is produced and financed.
  • You shouldn't have to choose between making money and making a difference. We created Mosaic to give people a secure place to invest directly in things that are real and create lasting value.
Janine Shea

State Impact Newsletter | Michigan Outreach - 0 views

  • It is my pleasure to introduce you to Michigan Impact. The University of Michigan is having tremendous impact throughout our communities. From the downtowns of Detroit and Grand Rapids and the shorelines of Traverse City and Muskegon, to the community colleges of the Upper Peninsula and the medical clinics in mid-Michigan, U-M is committed to improving the quality of life in the Great Lakes State.
  • A new $9 million U-M Great Lakes research and education center will guide efforts to protect and restore the world's largest group of freshwater lakes by reducing toxic contamination, combating invasive species, protecting wildlife habitat and promoting coastal health.
  • Nearly $1.7 billion in support for the U-M comes from donors and gifts from every county across Michigan. Support also comes from alums, and that happened in a significant way this year in the arts at U-M.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Long-standing collaborations with urban, rural and Native American communities around the state—in issues of the environment, K-12 education and higher education preparedness, public health, community and economic development and more—continue years later to contribute to the well-being of the state of Michigan and its citizens.
Janine Shea

How Mosaic brings cleantech investing to the masses | GreenBiz.com - 0 views

  • Invest as little as $25, or as much as you want, in clean-energy projects. Earn a princely 6.38 percent interest annually for the next five years. Make the world a better place.
  • Mosaic, based in Oakland, Calif., has figured out how to crowdsource solar projects in a way that seems to be a win-win for everyone. For each project, it seeks investors — smaller fries, like you and me — to fund a given project, promising a respectable rate of return. As loans get repaid, investors can roll the proceeds back into new projects, or take the money and run. Think of it as Kickstarter for clean energy.
  • He dropped out of Yale in 2002 to help build a youth movement for climate solutions.
  • ...30 more annotations...
  • “30 under 30” in energy by Forbes.
  • Their company started slowly, garnering interest-free investments from individuals to fund solar installations on five community projects. They range from homes on a Navajo reservation in Arizona to the Asian Resource Center in Oakland. All are smallish installations
  • I invested $100 in the Asian Resource Center installation in 2011, in equal parts to support the fledgling company as well as a social-service organization in my hometown
  • Those first projects were funded using a zero-interest investment model similar to Kiva, where investors get their principal back over time but no interest. This allowed Mosaic to avoid federal regulation and to go to market, learn the business, get feedback, and show traction for the idea. At the same time, it launched into the process of registering with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the federal agency that governs investment firms.
  • More recently, the company started raising money for projects in which it would pay interest. It can do this while waiting for SEC approval thanks to something called Regulation D, which exempts from regulatory oversight the offer and sale of up to $1 million of securities in a 12-month period.
  • A small group of investors was invited to put in as little as $25 and have been promised a return of 6.38 percent over five years.
  • The project is projected to save the youth center more than $160,000 through reduced electricity costs.
  • I invested $200 in this project as part of Mosaic’s private “beta” investment round
  • “As an asset class, the default rates on solar leases and power purchase agreements are extremely low,”
  • If I want, I can reinvest the earned interest and repaid principal in other Mosaic projects with the click of a button.
  • nlike investing in CDs, there are risks in Mosaic’s projects. The solar-installation customer could default on its monthly payments. The solar anels or installation could be faulty, tying the project up with repairs, negotiations, or worse.
  • There are a lot of unknowns: the number of people willing to invest sums, small or large, in energy projects offered by a start-up with a very short track record; the cost of attracting and servicing these investors; the number of available investment-quality energy projects; the actual performance of those projects during the life of the investments;
  • Together with a $2 million grant from the Department of Energy
  • All told, 51 investors ponied up $40,000 for the 106-panel installation; the whole project got funded in just six days. I’ve already received my first interest payment.
  • It’s a bold idea: Raise money from the masses in order to bring solar to the masses, providing value to everyone along the way.
  • Having proved the concept, Parish and Rosen are now ready to kick things into high gear, throwing open the doors to all qualified investors.
  • “The economics of solar have begun to make sense in more places, and online investing and peer-to-peer finance are becoming widespread. Those are the two big forces that we’re a part of.”
  • I asked him why no one had done this before. “It’s a really difficult set of skills and competencies that you need to pull together on one team to make this business model work,” he explained. “You need the securities law expertise. You need the solar project finance expertise. You need the technology expertise to build the online investment platform, and you need the marketing expertise to get people to invest in the projects.”
  • For each project, Mosaic provides the underwriting and due diligence. “If we like it and it meets our investment committee’s criteria, we make a loan offer to the project developer or the project owner, and negotiate a loan to them.” Mosaic takes a servicing fee (the difference between the interest rate charged the developer and the rate pays investors) and an origination fee of between 3 and 5 percent of the loan, which the developer pays. Mosaic doesn’t do the installation itself — it contracts that out.
  • Clearly, not yet a pathway to riches. What’s needed is volume.
  • “Our goal is to be doing billions of dollars of investments a year in clean-energy projects,
  • “We have already had a lot of developers coming to us," he says. "We’re interested in offering high-quality, clean-energy projects for people to invest in.
  • We believe clean energy is good in and of itself and is a great asset class for investment. So we’re looking at all kinds of projects.”
  • It’s not just solar. Parish and Rosen are looking at a broader category of projects to finance — what they call clean-energy infrastructure. That includes other forms energy as well as energy-efficiency projects and electric-vehicle infrastructure.
  • , the company aims to scale its offerings, including geographically, to get millions of Americans involved with funding clean-energy projects.
  • However it plays out, it’s a compelling and potentially disruptive business model. Allowing smaller investors to participate in clean-energy investments is an exciting possibility. And the relatively predictable returns of solar
  • can make these investments a safer bet than many traditional Wall Street investment vehicles.
  • And not for just small guys. Imagine if larger mission-driven investors, including pension funds and university endowments, started pouring money into Mosaic. The expanding investment pools could rapidly accelerate the growth of renewable energy and efficiency projects in the marketplace.
  • “I think a lot of people are just excited about the model,” says Parish, “and have been wanting to find a place that they can feel good about investing, that they can also generate pretty good yield from. And that’s what we’re trying to do.”
  • Parish makes a point: Some of this is an exercise in feel-good investing. But that’s nontrivial: How many of your investments do you feel good about? Even some of the so-called socially responsible funds hold stocks of fossil-fuel companies and other corporate nasties in their portfolios. If the nascent trend of disinvestment in fossil-fuel companies takes off among climate-minded investors, where will they next put their money? If Parish and Rosen have their way, there will be a new generation of cleaner investment alternatives to be found — perhaps, like me, right in your own community.
Janine Shea

Ed Norton's Crowdrise Brings Fundraising (And Fun) To The Masses | Co.Exist: World chan... - 0 views

    • Janine Shea
       
      "GroundUp is a personal narrative platform where you anchor your local life." Envision a future where folks are as closely identified with their 'local community personas' as they are with their broader 'second lives' on Facebook and Twitter
  • There’s a new era of social networking that’s taking shape around charitable giving. Younger people are rapidly adopting these new tools, and learning to use them in more and more substantive ways, to go beyond mere socializing and make these tools extremely productive. We’re seeing the sphere of social networking mature in a way that’s very exciting. People who continue to dismiss these social platforms as "a waste of time" or "just social chatter" are missing the boat. This is how people interact with each other and get things done. They share their personal and professional lives online. It should be no different when it comes to their philanthropic lives. More and more, we’re seeing the Crowdrise community share their charitable efforts with their social networks, both as a way to highlight their own commitment to a cause and as a very efficient way to turn their friends and family into new supporters.
  • They say “time is money,” but time is also an irreplaceable and personal connection to a cause.
  • ...18 more annotations...
  • that time binds you to the mission of an organization in a way money cannot.
  • I like to give my time because it feels good to connect personally with a cause. If you’re someone who is fortunate enough to be able to commit both time and money to a cause you care about, well that’s double the happiness.
  • I realized there needed to be a way for people, including myself, to give and fundraise money for causes in an easy and fun way.
  • I think generosity can take many forms … financial, effort, emotional … but at its core it’s rooted in the realization that you get a good feeling from seeing happiness bloom in someone else
  • healthy environment
  • All the young people I see using Crowdrise every day, putting their creativity and effort into making a positive impact on the world. 
  • United Airlines committed to match every dollar up to $100,000
  • ountless Crowdrise users have started their own campaigns to support relief efforts in affected communities.
  • hat tends to be through peer-to-peer fundraising, and Crowdrise enables people to get the word out quickly to their networks and raise as much money as possible in a short period of time.
  • It’s a platform to allow anyone to fundraise for a cause, and it does it with a laid-back and funny attitude that undermines the self-seriousness of a lot of philanthropy.
  • I think people like our voice because it’s authentic. We believe giving should be easy and fun. People like engaging with something that is real, not some generic text.
  • Crowdrise is based on an idea of "sponsored volunteerism."
  • cultivated a new generation of young activists who manage not to take themselves too seriously in the process.
  • Why does the Crowdrise brand of irreverence and humor work?
  • We’ve found the more off the wall the incentives, the higher the engagement
  • there’s truth to our saying
  • “If you don’t give, no one will like you.”
  • You have called Crowdrise a “personal narrative platform where you anchor your activist life." Do you envision a future where folks are as closely identified with their "giving back personas" as they are with their “second lives” on Facebook and Twitter?
Janine Shea

Strategies for Unemployed Architects | Recession & Recovery | Architectural Record - 0 views

  • finessing her resume and portfolio, scouring the Web for job openings, networking at full-throttle. She even printed her own business cards.
  • letter of recommendation
  • assemble their portfolio and resume immediately. The longer one waits, the more difficult the task becomes. “Do it the minute you get laid off
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • a standout resume is vital.
  • “You need to separate yourself from the pack.”
  • Job hunters should also reach out to everyone they know—friends, former coworkers, old classmates, consultants, contractors.
  • spending up to 10 hours a day hunting for a position
  • The occasional job opening she does spot typically requires five-plus years of experience. “Getting a job is harder and harder,” she says. “There are fewer and fewer jobs.”
Janine Shea

Who We Serve - 0 views

  •  
    Brownfields
Janine Shea

How Crowdfunding Aids Hurricane Sandy Relief | Solar Mosaic | Invest in Solar Projects ... - 0 views

  • This could be a better practice since it creates a separation of powers. Instead of blindly donating, you can see someone in your community or across the world is in need and set up a page in their name to collect funds for them. This allows those who are too busy to volunteer to feel more active in the donation process. They are able to see the effect of their funds and can even reach out to the person in need after they have donated. 
Janine Shea

Bootstrapping a $10M Creative Marketplace: Envato Founder Couple Collis and Cyan Ta'eed... - 0 views

  • It took us six months to build the site. The first night we sold $10. I was disappointed at the time, but looking back I am impressed that we sold something our first day.
  • We had a lot more people who had joined the site as members but did not transact. There is a group of active users and passive users, and it is interesting to look at that ratio
  • In 2007 we did a lot to grow our customer base. Some of it was organic growth. The thing about a marketplace model is that buyers stimulate the seller economy, which stimulates authors which in turn stimulates buyers. We also engaged in grassroots marketing, and we tried social media. We started talking about running competitions.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • At that time we started up FreelanceSwitch where we could put our lessons learned. We also started a tutorial blog. Those sites today receive close to 10 million visits a month. They have grown a lot over the years. The company today comprises two parts. We have the market places and 12 tutorial sites that cover everything from game development to making music sound like a DJ.
Janine Shea

Bootstrapping a $10M Creative Marketplace: Envato Founder Couple Collis and Cyan Ta'eed... - 0 views

  • For me the biggest challenge is that you are just getting your first visitors. I would go out and comment on other blogs and comment in forums to try and get people to visit my blog. When it came time to launch a new blog, we would harness traffic from the first blog to promote the second.
  • Digg during its second week of existence. That was a potent source of traffic back in the day. We have concentrated a lot of social media ever since. To do well in social media you have to build up a genuine profile. You have to get on sites and interact on sites as a real contributing user. You need to establish a network and feed in content. We did a lot of that.
  • We joined Twitter fairly early on. We built up profiles for the company as well as ourselves. I tried to think of Twitter using a 90/10 rule, meaning 10% might be something involving Envato and 90% of the time I wanted to be engaging followers with engaging content based on the topic itself.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • the important thing is to understand your customers. You need to know what they find useful.
  • That was because we were speaking to genuine customer demand.
Janine Shea

CreateDetroit - 0 views

  • "We're going to make this a fun place to live. We are going to somehow create the 'Austin lifestyle.'
  • That's just not what drives a city now. What drives a city we know increasingly are good places to live, great neighborhoods, great cafes, night life, places to have fun.
  • The thing is, with places like Detroit, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, St. Louis and some of the Sunbelt cities in a different way, is that they don't want to change. The creative people are either unempowered or the institutional structure that exists disempowers them.
« First ‹ Previous 41 - 60 of 65 Next ›
Showing 20 items per page