Category Archives: Start-ups

Better World Books Creates Better World Through Triple Bottom Line

With all this talk about the “triple bottom line,” I have found very few companies who have actually achieved such a thing. Better World Books is one of the few. And I had the privilege of interviewing co-founder Xavier Helgesen to get the scoop. Triple bottom line refers to an organization which considers its impact [...]

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Interview with Xavier Helgesen, Co-Founder of Better World Books

Buying Books with Heart and Soul Next time you’re buying a book online – you may be able to help people around the world learn to read. Better World Books is an online bookstore that supports nonprofit organizations with literacy programs such as Room To Read and Books For Africa ($3.1 million contributed so far) [...]

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Skyrocketing Interest in Careers in Social Entrepreneurship and Start-ups Evidenced by MIT Sloan School “Tech Trek”

We are currently witnessing a shift in the job market away from the more traditional MBA path, which is crumbling as I type, towards traditionally riskier start-ups, social ventures, and entrepreneurial careers with social and environmental impact goals. Each year, business school students at MIT’s Sloan School of Management embark on a “Tech Trek,” visiting [...]

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Are You Solar Ready? Solar Red’s Disruptive Solar PV Technology Can Halve Cost of Residential Solar

A typical residential solar system will put you back ~$20,000+ after credits and incentives and requires extensive design work and several trained technicians toiling on your roof – drilling, wiring, bolting, and performing other complex tasks to build the proper infrastructure. What if your roof were built for solar panels, and installing them were as [...]

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Yoga by Donation

I’d like to dedicate this post to my father’s intrepid new business venture.  On January1st, 2009, Bob Vaccaro will open Yoga By Donation in small-town Portsmouth, New Hampshire.  My father has taught yoga for over 15 years now, most recently owning and operating Ocean Spirit Yoga in the same space, and has muttered his intent [...]

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How to raise VC funding: Tips from a professional VC negotiator

Venture capital funding is capable of super-charging innovation, financing high-potential start-ups at their most risky stage. Of course there are clear pros and cons to seeking venture funding. How do you know if the venture capital (VC) route is the right one? What does it take to raise VC funding for your start-up? Especially today, [...]

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Huddler: A Platform for Green Knowledge Sharing my Mom Could Use

At first glance, Huddler.com may seem to be just another social networking site, but I would contend that this is not the case.  Huddler is a well thought-out, elegantly integrated “social commerce” community platform for user-generated content, reviews, discussion forums, Wikis , videos and more.  I had a chance to sit down with Dan Gill, [...]

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Interview with Dan Gill, CEO and Co-Founder of Huddler

“Giving passionate, knowledgeable people a platform and a voice” Combine people, products, and passion… mix in user-generated content, product reviews and discussions… and you have an ambitious web site called Huddler, that aims to create a “social commerce” community. In this interview, “chief Huddler” Dan Gill shares with us how he started the business and [...]

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Blow, Baby, Blow: Getting Wind Power Past The Naysayers

Why do so many people think wind farms are ugly? The idea is persistent enough that eco- and regular journalists often write about it as a given—any plan to build “eyesore wind farms” will inevitably prove unacceptable to locals, whether in Atlanta or Cape Cod. But perhaps it’s just that—the idea of wind farms, made [...]

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Start-up of the week: Distributed World Power (DWP)

Idealab-birthed, LA-based, Distributed World Power is an early stage start-up aimed at creating low-cost energy generation tools to provide off-grid power in emerging markets. DWP was founded in response to the uneasy truth that “Half of all people alive today do not have adequate access to inexpensive electricity. One in four does not have any [...]

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