We also know that meat pies really have no place in the push for health and wellness. Pies are not a ‘healthy' food. And quite frankly, who cares? All foods can be part of a healthy diet and trying to change your product because people can’t control themselves, does not a strategy make. It's high time food marketers started to realise this. The so called 'obseity crisis' is not their issue.

Under the control of Multinational Food Giant Simplot, Four n twenty lost the ‘plot’. They started launching pathetic line extensions like ‘Low Fat Pies’ - which clearly would never change the perception of a meat pie, let alone get a non pie eater to start eating them. It’s fake and just damages the brand.

Recently the Four n twenty brand was divested from Simplot, to new owners Patties. These guys – who just play in the pastry and pie market have really shown they get it, when it comes to engaging their core target market.

Four n twenty make no apologies for what they are, the product the sell, and who they make it for. It’s authentic marketing. And their authenticity facilitated a great piece of communication.

This spot is Gold. Clearly it is radvertising.

Kudos Four n Twenty.

Some of the ppl/startups I met:

Robert Gall from wakoopa.com they try to make software social. It's like RescueTime but instead of aiming on productivity they focus on sharing apps with your friends. Which applications are my friends using and spending time on?

Philippe Theunissen from WiseLine.com. WiseLine aggregates all your published web-items in one long Lifeline.

Richard J Fox from servepath, providing hosting-services (gogrid.com)

Jelle de Bruin from AppAppeal, which is a user generated web-based app-reviewing-site. They are looking for freelancers, so if you want to make some money reviewing webapps, this is your chance!

Jeroen Peeters, creating websites (consultancy-based)

Joop Dorresteijn from thenextweblog. We live in a small world, Joop is one of the creators of Open Coffee Club in Sweden and as I want to start OCC in Linköping, it was a great chance to discuss.

Marcel van Brienen from Gemzies. Gemzies could be one of the more interesting concepts from the meetup since it tackles a important question: Facebook and other socialnetworks are great at connecting me with people I already know, but not with the people I would like to get to know and it's not connecting me with the interests I have. (Facebook Groups/Pages is a joke!!) On Gemzies articles like "Vincent Van Gogh" and "Porsche" shows content built by other users (text/video/img...the usual). As of today there is no long-tail effect at all (200 articles..) and I guess reading the discussion-list on the wikipedia article gives just as good or better networking-effects=) But the site is in Alpha.

The above questions is something I'm thinking more and more about; connecting to people based on interests and connecting to the people I want to know but don't know as of today. Your thoughts?

Everyone's trying to figure out what it will take for plug-in hybrids to go mainstream: free electricity, tax incentives, a more mature plug-in conversion industry, aggressive automakers, or more innovative startup tech. Likely a combo of all of those. Whatever it needs the industry's players had more than enough news to talk about at the show:

• GM Partners with Utilities on Plug-In Vehicles
• Volt Battery Testing in Malibu Mule
• Google’s Plug-In Study Finds As High As 93 MPG
• Google.org Invests in Electric Car Startups
• Battery Startup ActaCell Charges Up with Google, DFJ
• Aptera Raises $24M for Electric Car Production
• San Francisco Calls for Electric Car Pitches
• Detroit, Meet the Startups
• Video Demo of Coulomb’s Smart Charging
• San Jose Partners With Coulomb’s Smart Charging

Andy Grove Calls for 10 Million Plug-Ins In 4 Years

An engineer with Google.org's RechargeIT green car program, Rolf Schreiber, told us Google is interested in Aptera because its vehicles go "to the extreme of high-efficiency," and are overall "cool," and "modern." Schreiber headed up Google.org's recent plug-in vehicle driving test that found the company's plug-in Prius' achieved over 93 MPG.

The Carlsbad, Calif.-based startup will use the funds to start manufacturing the Typ-1s in nearby Vista, Calif. In March Aptera indicated it was close to production, and sent out a to-do list to supporters, saying the company planned to hire new employees, move to a bigger facility, crash test more test vehicles and fine-tune the production process. Though, "secure funding" must have been the biggest production milestone not named back then.

Aptera says it expects the first round of electric vehicles to start rolling off the line by the end of the year, with production ramping up through 2009. At the end of 2009, the company plans to start production of its hybrid model; down the road will work on more mainstream vehicles, Aptera CEO Steve Fambro told us in an interview in December.

Aptera already has a sizable following -- the startups says it already has over 3,300 orders from California customers for what it claims will be the world's most efficient passenger vehicle. The all-electric version will get 120 miles to the charge while the hybrid is estimated to get 300 mpg.

Aptera share Google's $2.75 million investment with lithium-ion battery startup ActaCell. ActaCell announced Google's investment as part of a $5.8 million involving DFJ, Applied Ventures and Good Energies as well.

Such services are generally referred to as cloud computing, and the game-changing potential of those services has venture firms sitting up and taking notice. Indeed, after spending the past few years pouring money into Facebook applications and me-too social networks, venture firms are starting to invest in infrastructure again, with both hardware and software plays tied to the cloud.

"Clearly there is a renewed interest and investment in infrastructure," says Bernard Dallé, a partner with Index Ventures. "Twenty-four months ago it was all about the consumer Internet and still a lot of money is going after that, but it has been rebalanced. Now firms see the value that EqualLogic and virtualization has generated, and it's time to invest."

So far this year, companies providing cloud services or building services on top of the cloud have raked in more than $70 million. That's nothing compared to the $14.9 billion that VCs invested during the same six-month period overall, but interest is picking up.

Just this week, 10gen raised a $1.5 million first round from Union Square Ventures to create a platform for programmers to build products on top of the cloud. Appirio, a company trying to help enterprise customers link their data among clouds offered by Google, Salesforce and Amazon raised $5.6 million from Sequoia. And earlier this month, EngineYard raised $15 million from New Enterprise Associates, Amazon and Benchmark Capital to build out a development platform for programs built using Ruby on Rails.

These companies join a growing ecosystem of startups trying to create utility and business models built on top of thousands of servers. If you peel back the fog surrounding cloud computing there are several layers of services. It all starts with a virtualized server running a hypervisor. Between the hypervisor and the operating system -- such as Linux or Windows -- sits a class of service providers, among them Elastra and Enomaly. They provide tools and services that help an IT manger build out, monitor and manage the virtual hardware inside the cloud.

On top of those are development platforms that can be tailored to a specific cloud, such as Amazon's, or tied to a programming language, such as Ruby on Rails. Startups here include Bungee Labs, EngineYard and Coghead. Once developers have their programs built on the cloud, they need to monitor and tweak them using tools from the likes of RightScale and Hyperic. With the exception of Enomaly and Coghead, all of these startups have scored venture funding this year.

Coghead raised $8 million last year, and Reuven Cohen, co-founder and CEO of Enomaly, says he's fielding about 40 calls a week from venture firms that want to invest in his profitable, boot-strapped company. "I'm not in any desperate need to raise funding to keep the business afloat, but we could grow substantially faster," Cohen says. "We are open to it and from what I can see, there won't be a better time for valuations."

Valuations might be on the rise, but VCs are still focused on capital efficiency. For example Sunil Dhaliwal, a general partner with Battery Ventures, says he's not interested in investing in any cloud provider that wants to build out thousands of servers as there are plenty of companies -- among them Google, Amazon and Rackspace -- doing that already. In fact, he's approaching the entire cloud space with caution.

"We're so early and there's still plenty of money to be lost -- and I underline lost here -- and plenty to be made," Dhaliwal says. "I think there is going to be a lot of trial and error. People are defining and building solutions without people knowing how they really want to consume them."

He believes the big opportunities will lie with firms that can help corporate customers connect their existing IT networks to the cloud, as well as with those that provide computing as a service to small and medium businesses that don't want to manage their own IT networks. One way or another, the move to computing delivered as a service is a huge change in the way businesses and even consumers will consume information technology. As far as venture dollars floating amongst the clouds, this is only the beginning.

This was originally published on BusinessWeek.com.

The average Youtube video lasts for 5 minutes. It's a rare event indeed for a video to get watched until the end. That's why most view counts are so low, only those watched until completion count.

With almost 90 million videos on the site;

Start up blog says: Review your Youtube videos. Make it clear what they're getting in first few seconds, or they wont have the patience to ever find out.

Irvine, Calif.-based BlueFire was granted a conditional-use permit by the county of Los Angeles to build a plant on 10 acres next to the Lancaster landfill, where the company says 170 tons of potential feedstock in the form of biowaste gets dumped every day. The plant, estimated to cost $30 million, will have an output of 3.2 million gallons of non-food-based ethanol using the company's "patented and proven" concentrated acid hydrolysis technology process, BlueFire says.

And that's just the start of BlueFire's plans. BlueFire CEO Arnold Klann told us in an interview earlier this year that over the next 5 years the company wants to build 20 plants near landfills, which could generate 3 billion gallons of ethanol per year by 2017.

As the food-vs.-fuel debate continues to grow, waste-to-fuel is attracting dollars from increasingly large corporations and column inches from mainstream media. The New York Times reports today that companies like DuPont and Genencor, General Motors, Honeywell and BP are investing in waste-to-fuel projects that are planned to come online in the next year or two. DuPont and Genencor estimate the non-food global fuel market will eventually be worth $75 billion.

Fulcrum BioEnergy plans to begin construction on a waste to ethanol plant later this year. Boston-based waste-to-biofuel startup Ze-Gen is being backed by the investors at Flagship Ventures and VantagePoint Venture Partners. Cellulosic ethanol maker Coskata says its can use waste as the feedstock for its biofuel creation process and is being backed by the VCs at Globespan Capital Partners, Khosla Ventures, GreatPoint Ventures and Advanced Technology Ventures (not to mention GM).

GeneSyst, an 18-year old private company based in Hudson, Ohio, is also looking to build waste processing and biofuel facilities near landfills. The company processes waste in water tanks, letting gravity do the trick of pulling out bits than can be recycled, as well as the cellulosic waste materials, which it can turn into ethanol. The company is building its first landfill to fuel plant in the Netherlands, and has plans for its first plant in the U.S. likely to be located in Lake County, Indiana (a suburb of Chicago.)

BlueFire received $15.5 million from Quercus Trust earlier this year, and was selected by the DOE to potentially receive $40 million in funding for an even bigger waste-to-ethanol plant that the company tells us is still on track for 2010 operation (unlike some DOE-funded ethanol projects).

Thanks for the write up!  We particularly liked this 'graph:

"Ok, i know some of you are thinking ‘Agloco’ - but the actual product - the search engine - is good enough to work on it’s own without any incentive and that’s what’s cool about it. There’s a genuine social search engine here which has the potential to put a dent in google’s monopoly."

Sean MacEntee is a 21 year old entrepreneur from Ireland who is carving his niche out on the Web.   His about me page tells a good story about his philosophy toward work, one which we whole-heartedly endorse, albeit it's not for everyone.  But, for those who embrace technology, have a healthy imagination, a bit of technical savvy and the desire to move forward even when others say you're crazy, or your idea is no good then this is definitely the life for you.

Good luck Sean!

- The Scour team

• Monitor110: A Post Mortem

It is definitely one of the most objective and well-written startup post mortems I have read by a member of the actual team.  His list of Seven Deadly Sins, which in my opinion is not complete but a great list nonetheless, consists of:

1. The lack of a single, "the buck stops here" leader until too late in the game
2. No separation between the technology organization and the product organization
3. Too much PR, too early
4. Too much money
5. Not close enough to the customer
6. Slow to adapt to market reality
7. Disagreement on strategy both within the Company and with the Board

Now, depending upon the situation, some of those may or may not hold true for all startups, but I would like to highlight the first one "the buck stops here" along with "not close enough to the customer".  You need a strong leader who can come to final decisions and be responsible for them (but be ready to change as the market or situation requires) and you also need to truly get in bed with your customers.  Now, by that, I don't mean you need to cowtail to each and every whim (especially on the features side) but you do need to truly  understand their pain and come up with a solution that directly addresses it.

I want to send out my thanks to Roger for sharing his insight into the problems and struggles at Monitor110.  It is great to see others willing share their real-life experiences building startups and doing it without placing blame all around.  That's a hard thing for most people to do and I applaud those that are able to successfully accomplish it.

Vijay Anand, Proto.in's chief organizer, is already populating his to-do list in preparation for the next edition of the unique startup showcase event scheduled for December in Bangalore. "We're pulling the January 2009 edition to December. So this year we will actually do three editions," he says. Next year, therefore, will have only one edition, instead of the usual bi-annual format, and it will be held in Mumbai. The significantly higher scale and scope of the event at the recently concluded New Delhi edition (July 18-19) is a big reason for shifting to a once-a-year format.

The New Delhi edition, held at the Indian Institute of Technology, saw over 400 people attend, among them representatives from about 30 venture capital firms. "Three weeks before the event we had only 150 registrations and based on that we targeted that 200 people would turn up. But in the last three weeks registrations just shot up. And this time we had more startups and entrepreneurs registering than usual. In the past students have been a big contingent," he says. This is a good sign because Proto.in will now be able to tighten its content much more around entrepreneurship and differentiate its value-proposition from other loosely formatted unconferencing events such as BarCamps. That does not mean BarCamps have no role to play. In fact, as platforms such as Proto.in and Headstart take on the role of playing intermediaries between startups and customers or investors, BarCamps can go back to being simple and fun networking gigs for entrepreneurs.

Proto.in July 2008 was also the event's first foray outside Chennai, its city of birth. The intent was to take the platform national. There were companies from Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad and Mumbai, of course, but also a reasonably large contingent from the National Capital Region (NCR). Break-out numbers by region were not available.

Going national has helped in another constructive manner -- both the organizers and venture capitalists who were at the event said that the quality of startups this time was much better. The 16 showcase finalists were chosen out of 90 applications. That is actually less than the number of applicants in the previous edition -- 120. "While there were more applicants last time, when we put them through our selection filters, the reduction in numbers was drastic. This time we got less of business plans and more of actual companies," says Anand. Of course, even some of these 'actual companies' are still quite raw -- read Clearstone's Rahul Khanna's take on startups showcased at the event.

As the event gets bigger, the filters or parameters for selecting startups will need to become more stringent. Some of this was put into execution at the New Delhi edition. While the organizers did follow the usual selection-by-jury format -- much of the jury is drawn from Proto.in's steering committee -- they also decided to get the applicants introduced to similar companies and potential customers in their space who vetted the commercial viability of their services and products.

At the Bangalore edition next, the organizers hope to be able to showcase 20 startups, against 16 this time and 14 in the previous edition. Incidentally, there is a possibility that the Bangalore edition will be clubbed with The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) Bangalore chapter's 'Entrepreneurship Summit' but nothing has been firmed up yet. It does seem a bit incongruous to see Proto.in, which is built on the open source collaborate and share philosophy, align with TiE, which is essentially a closed-user network. At the same time, given that both work towards the same objective -- fostering entrepreneurship -- working together may not be such as bad thing after all.

It has not all been great going -- out of the 86 startups showcased at Proto.in since inception, Anand says, four have shut shop. Also, while getting startups funded is not Proto's main agenda, money ultimately is what gets things going. About 10 per cent of the startups who apply to Proto.in, do so in the hope of raising venture funding. That's not really happening at acceptable levels yet, but as Proto.in grows up and matures, and it is doing so fast, the rest should follow.

[Update] Ich habe den Rest des Artikels wieder rausgenommen, vielleicht etwas zu weit übers Ziel hinausgeschossen! :-(

Det är kul att Twingly ger trafik till bloggare. I Norge älskar dem det.

"Find your startups 'moment'" är en intressant tanke/artikel av den numer icke-bloggande Jason Calacanis. Det är pikarna av eufori som gör att vi lever och de kan dyka upp på alla möjliga sätt. Men de är väldigt viktiga för nya företag.

Och så lite nyheter om svenska startups...

Spotify ska öppna säljkontor i Frankrike, Tyskland och Storbritannien. Och det innan lansering!

SoundCloud hyllas av känd blogg. Och deras widgets, facebook-app och de flesta andra nyheterna på senaste tiden är riktigt grymma.

Webb-tv-annons-kungarna på Videoplaza har inte bara köpt loss domänen Videoplaza.com efter mycket strul, de har dessutom fått in riskkapital. Videoplaza ska bli intressant att följa framöver... Investerare var Creandum tillsammans med bland annat Henrik Torstensson.

Det hypade svenska mobil/webb-videostreaming-företaget Bambuser har också fått in riskkapital. Hur mycket är okänt men det ska hållas en videopresskonferens idag torsdag så vi får se om någon siffra dyker upp. Investerare var norska Kistefos.

Och btw, Knol har lanserats publikt av Google. Känner dock ingen "Wow!"-känsla.

Marquiss CEO Paul Misso tells us the Folsom, Calif.-based startup has just kicked off fundraising for its Series B round; he will be down on Sand Hill Road this week looking for $7.5 million to $10 million in funds to add to the $2 million from Velocity Venture Capital and small investors it's raised to date. Misso says the money is needed to build out the six-person company with a dozen more employees as well as to secure international manufacture and sales. Misso estimates that Marquiss, which was founded in 2006, will be profitable by the first half of 2009.

The young company only has three turbines installed but is moving quickly to put more product in the field. Misso says that in addition to deals with two customers, Marquiss is in talks with a dozen more interested parties -- including a number of big-box retailers -- and will be doing new installs by the end of the quarter. The company's small turbines range in price from $29,900 to $79,900 and generate 5-20 kilowatts of power.

As a small-scale wind player, Misso isn't sweating the looming expiration of the production tax credit that threatens utility-scale wind. "For small-scale wind, given it’s a complete different scale, there are different incentives available," Misso explains. "Unfortunately those incentives are pretty meager except in California, Nevada and Hawaii. What we’re doing is investing time at the state level to get state incentives." On the municipal level, Marquiss sits on San Francisco's recently formed wind power task force, which is charged with making recommendations on fostering the nascent urban wind market -- a huge opportunity for small-scale wind startups.

Misso said the company is also trying to find favorable markets abroad. "We're looking abroad to license marketing and distribution. Chile and Malaysia especially. There's lots of government incentives there for manufacturing in those countries."

But there are still hurdles. "It’s difficult to find generators and inverters that match to wind energy," Misso says. "That’s a big barrier to entry." The problem is that the electronics need to be able to handle quick and constant changes in power generation as wind gusts ebb and flow.

With the expiration of the production credit drawing nearer, investors looking to make a wind play might steer away from utility-scale projects and see small-scale wind as a safer bet. At least, that's what Misso will pitch to the Silicon Valley VCs this week.

Cisco has already tried to address this trend by using Pure's technology in its Linksys Easy Link Advisor program, which was introduced on Linksys routers in April and is aimed at making it easier to manage multiple PCs and equipment. Today's acquisition was driven, in part, by vendor and consumer satisfaction with those routers. It's also because Cisco is trying to drive its vision of an intelligent network as the hub of the connected digital home. Pure's software and HNAP protocol, which works with any IP network, from Wi-Fi to Ethernet, will underlie that intelligent network.

In contrast with Intel, which views the home network as a group of devices centered around a PC, Cisco's Chris Dobrec, director of worldwide strategy for Linksys, says networked devices can and should have the level of intelligence built into them to recognize and talk to one another without using the PC as an intermediary. That's a common enough vision, one that would allow you to take a photo with a digital camera and easily send it to your friend's camera without ever using a PC. The days of standing there for 8 minutes at a family reunion while 10 people pass along their cameras to snag a shot would be over.

The problem with that scenario is that intelligence in devices doesn't come cheap. In addition to a networking chip, certain protocols require a lot of CPU power or memory in order to identify and disclose themselves to a network. Dobrec says the HNAP protocol is light enough that it doesn't need additional chips and could easily be embedded on existing hardware. Cisco plans to push the HNAP protocol as a standard and get device makers on board.

Eliminating the PC as a middleman won't be easy with Intel pushing its own consumer networking technology, Cliffside, which uses Wi-Fi to connect devices and is scheduled to be introduced next year. The capability is already built into Intel's Centrino chips, and will be activated with a software update in about eight months. Both HNPA and Intel's Cliffside project will network Internet-connected devices as well as those that aren't connected to the Internet.

When looking at any new technology offering, however, market penetration rates are crucial. As we've seen in the past, the best technology is not what always wins -- all that matters is what consumers adopt. With that in mind, here is a breakout of the numbers for these TV-connected devices and content offerings:

• Xbox 360: 10.5 million units sold in the U.S. (source: NPD)
• Netflix: 8.2 million members (source: Netflix)
• PS3: 4.9 million units sold in the U.S. (source: NPD)
• TiVo Series 3: 250,00 units sold (estimate). While TiVo won't say how many have been sold, they did say that 750,000 Series 2 and Series 3 units are connected via broadband. Estimate assumes that two-thirds of them were Series 2.
• Apple TV: Roughly 350,000 units sold (estimate). While Apple won't say exactly how many have been sold, published reports put the figure at less than 400,000, missing Apple's goal of 1 million units.
• VUDU: 15,000 units sold (estimate). While VUDU won't confirm a number, they did say that sales are in the "five figures."
• Netflix Player by Roku: 10,000 units sold (estimate). Roku isn't saying how many they've sold, but realistically speaking, how many could they have sold in just a couple weeks before they ran out?

By adding up the above numbers we're left with 19.3 million units sold. On paper, that seems like a half-way decent number. But if we break down these numbers even further, the real number of consumers capable of getting these content offerings is much smaller -- so small, in fact, that they barely register.

Take for instance the recent Microsoft and Netflix announcement. While neither side will say just how many consumers have both an Xbox Live account and a Netflix account, it's clearly less than half of Netflix's 8.2 million members. So if we estimate on the high side and assume that a third of Netflix's members have an Xbox 360 console and an Xbox Live account, we come up with a mere 2.7 million consumers.

As for the PS3, Sony only launched their online video service late last week, so it's hard to estimate any numbers. But of the 4.9 million PS3s sold in the U.S. to date, not all of them are online. Estimating that 20 percent of them are not connected via broadband, we'll use an install number of 4 million consumers.

When it comes to TiVo, you have to estimate how many of the 750,000 broadband-connected TiVo units are Series 3. Estimating that a third of the units are Series 3 would give us 250,000 consumers. But how many consumers have more than one TiVo? I have two Series 3 TiVos in my house, so while I am counted as two units, I'm only one consumer. TiVo won't say how many customers have more than one unit, but taking that into account, the number of real consumers that TiVo is reaching with the Series 3 is probably more like 200,000.

That leaves us with the Apple TV, the Netflix player by Roku and VUDU. Using the numbers above, I estimate they reach 375,000 consumers combined.

Adding up all of the new numbers gives us just over 7.2 million consumers, far lower than the original 19.3 million hardware units that have been sold. And this 7.2 million number is even more skewed in that it does not take into account unique consumers. How many of the 7.2 million consumers have an Xbox 360 and a TiVo or an Xbox 360 and a PS3? If you estimate that 20 percent of them have multiple devices, you're left with 5.7 million unique users. That's a very small number. And then you have to estimate what percentage of those consumers will adopt and use the new services, and over what period of time?

Even if you had 50 percent penetration from day one, which you won't, that would still be less than 3 million consumers using these devices to get Internet-based video to their TVs. While it is good to see more content options coming to consumers, adding up all of the install numbers for these devices gives a stark picture of just how small the install base really is. The market is still too fragmented, with too many different devices, all limited by a lack of premium content.

In the long run, the cable operators still have the best shot at bringing Internet-based video to the TV. Set-top boxes still have the most penetration with consumers and provide them with multiple ways of getting content. Unless of course you're like me and only have TiVo, in which case the single-stream cable cards that most cable operators use don't allow for any of the functionality of cable TV set-top boxes.

Dan Rayburn is EVP of StreamingMedia.com and has his own blog at BusinessOfVideo.com.

While Google.org has had its plug-in vehicle research program for over a year now, moving to investing in startups is significant. Like Google has done for Internet and wireless, and has started to do for renewable energy, the step positions the search company’s RechargeIT program as an EV incubator and venture capital arm for the next-generation of cleaner transportation. As Craig put it after attending Google's plug-in conference in June, the search giant has now added transportation to the list of industries it will attempt to revolutionize.

Aptera is a Carlsbad, Calif.-based startup that has been building a three-wheeled electric vehicle called the Typ-1, which will have an electric and range-extended versions. In March Aptera said after two years of research and development, it was ready to move into production of the electric three-wheeler that it says has recorded 231 miles per gallon. The company is hoping to bring its first vehicle to market by the fourth quarter of this year.

In December Aptera CEO Steve Fambro told us he started working on the car’s teardrop streamlined design some five years ago in his garage. And he said he sees the problem with the world's transportation as the fact that “cars are not designed to be aerodynamic, they are designed largely as furniture.”

The company previously raised funds from Bill Gross’ Idealab and Esenjay Investments, and Fambro told us in December that it was in the process of raising its Series C round. Fambro predicts that the company's capital costs can be pretty low to build three-wheelers and told us “To do something like this you need under $20 million dollars."

But don't count it out as a niche three-wheeler just yet. The company is planning to sell the cars for under $30,000 and Aptera is also working on its next generation of more mainstream electric vehicles that the company hopes to offer down the road. Fambro says the company expects to be profitable once it has sold 2,000 vehicles, forecast to take place in the second years of sales.

Google.org also invested in lithium ion startup ActaCell through its RechargeIT program (which we wrote about here.) Google.org contributed to ActaCell's Series A round, which also included DFJ Mercury, Applied Ventures and Good Energies, and totaled $5.8 million.

One thing I came to realize is that there is no shortage of ideas or people looking to invest in ideas, but to capitalize on any opportunity takes more then what most people initially understand. A few observations and things I have learned over the last few months.

• From a personal standpoint I have learned that starting something from scratch is harder then what I perceived and understood. (Yes, I am sure that some of the people I spoke with the last few months came away thinking I was way too optimistic)
• Lots of people can talk about startup ideas, but talking is not doing a startup. At some point you have to build something and until you start building something you are not making "real" or "tangible" progress.
• My biggest mistake was not having a technical partner signed up for this a few months ago or being more proactive in reaching out to my network of contacts or VCs to help identify some candidates that were looking to be the technical partner in a startup.
• I had what turned out to be some naive ideas that everything would fall in place if I just pushed hard enough on the critical path items. This has not worked out since when I got to the point where I thought I had a viable concept my not having a reliable technical partner became an issue in making progress.
• I do not know a lot of true startup-type people. Surprise, my network is mostly people who have been working in larger or established companies. Lots of people I know were of the mind that doing a startup would be great after the "A round" was in place, but not so excited about being there from day 1. Lesson is that the people you need to start from scratch are probably not the people you know if you are working in a larger company. Anyway, just another people-oriented issue I observed.
• The Boulder technology community has a lot of great people who are interested in helping new startups. I had no trouble networking and meeting new people. Anyone I reached out to was happy to email, chat, have a coffee and usually had either feedback or could suggest other people I could contact.

So, what am I up to now?

• Back to square one it would seem as I simply have not been able to find a reliable technical partner. As I wrote in my post last month, Startup Observations I, my skills are primarily on the business side and I can do a fair amount of defining and designing software, but I am not the person to write functional code.
• I am still very interested in doing a startup, but am now believing that the best way to do this is to find a good fit with any early stage company that has a few people, say under 10 or 20). Ideally something in the web infrastructure or collaborative application space, but other areas also are interesting. Given my skills across the product and marketing areas I think I could add a lot of value in this scenario.
• Given I am going to have to get back to work at some point I have also started returning calls from a few larger companies that have contacted me about opportunities. A couple of the opportunities would be no surprise since they larger vendors in the infrastructure space, another opportunity is related to what I use to do but from a different perspective and another would be a newer vendor in the cloud computing space. I have no real favorites, but am open to talking to these companies since they pro actively contacted me the last couple months.

Let's see what the next month brings. I would really like to keep a good work-life balance and travel less then what I was doing in my last role at BEA. My preference would still be to find a good fit at a local company or a remote position at a larger company that would let me manage my travel time

Update: ActaCell CEO and president Bill Ott tells us the company, which currently has fewer than 10 employees, will use the money to hire more personnel to work on developing the technology. Ott says the company plans to work quietly on technical development for the next year and then will look to raise more money to bring a product to market in 2010. At that time, Ott says, he'll be able to divulge more details about the company's technology.

ActaCell's technology was developed in the Material Science and Engineering labs of Professor Arumugam Manthiram at The University of Texas at Austin. The startup says its lithium ion batteries have a longer cycle life at a lower cost than its competitors and are safe (a concern for the technology). In a release Ned Hill, managing director at DFJ Mercury, said that the batteries would be particularly valuable for the plug-in hybrid vehicle market.

Google's move to invest in a lithium ion battery company could also have benefits for their various projects in mobile electronics. Reicher said Google.org would be making multiple investments in plug-in cars so we'll likely be seeing some more announcements over the summer, perhaps in smart charging and electric vehicle infrastructure. Next up, the G-Car? Update: Google invests in electric car startup Aptera.

We had a chance recently to catch up with Episodic CEO Noam Lovinsky, who developed the idea of building a "WordPress for video" as an entrepreneur-in-residence at Granite Ventures and took $1.5 million in funding from that firm in July. He now has a small team in San Francisco. We'd previously met Lovinsky when he was running the failed event-planning startup Skobee.

Episodic has developed a nice interface for browser-based manipulation of advertising and content -- where content creators can modify their videos, rotate in new ad campaigns and receive real-time analytics. It aims to make money by taking a cut of revenue from advertising shown on its customers' videos.

The company is laser-focused on the needs of show creators, which could mean anyone from an independent producer to the digital division of a broadcast network. Take this example of an extremely specific feature mentioned in an email from Lovinsky:

"One of the more interesting features that's coming soon is the ability to do A/B testing on both clips and thumbnails. As you probably already know, thumbnails are critical to getting plays. With that in mind, our player will allow you to rotate several thumbnails for the first X thousand views and then automatically select the thumbnail that gets the best play conversion."

It's a definite sign that online video is maturing to see a new funded startup focusing on online content creators as a market. Whether or not it's a valid market hasn't been established yet, but based on the new companies we're seeing formed -- e.g. Video Breakouts, which we wrote about today -- this is a coming trend.

But at the same time, Episodic is just now getting into this market -- Lovinsky said he is in tests with some customers but didn't disclose names -- so it may be tough to get video creators to switch their precious shows to an unproven platform. blip, by contrast, has grown up alongside the online video show phenomenon, and has deep loyalty within the online video community.

Episodic, though, is comparing itself more to white-label providers such as Ooyala, Brightcove, and thePlatform. It offers a custom player as well as integration with TubeMogul for cross-posting across video sites. It also built its own ad server but integrates with outside vendors, and works with any CDN, said Lovinsky.

The company is hiring and also looking for video shows to beta-test its product.

The most recent quarterly MoneyTree Survey noted OptiSolar's $132 million as the largest round of last quarter. We noted earlier this year that in January OptiSolar had raised $38.3 million according to regulatory filings we found.

So over the past several months the company appears to have raised over $200 million, which makes it one of the more well-funded cleantech startups around. While other solar thin film firms like Nanosolar, Heliovolt, and Miasole have raised sizable rounds, too, we're not sure exactly how the company plans to spend the cash. We've repeatedly tried to contact the company and are still waiting to hear back.

We had recently commented that Joost's investors could barely be nice to it in their public remarks, so it's good to see one of them chipping in to help it out. Joost has said it will soon be adding a web version of its Internet TV software, but it looks like the Chinese version is still a download.

The Chinese P2P software market actually seems to be lucrative and vibrant, as compared to the situation in the United States -- and also the Chinese video portal market -- as Janko reported this weekend. So good for Joost for seeing the opportunity, but it might be a little late to this game. PPLive, which told us it was profitable, had 24 million active users in May and roughly 23 million RMB ($3.4 million) in revenue in the first half of the year, according to a report by iResearch. PPStream, PPFilm and UUSee also had significant traffic and revenue.