The latest from TechCrunch
- Vermont Energy Co. Raises $260,000 For Sustainable Gas-And-Convenience Stores
- Facebook Launches 'Friendship Pages' To Document Relationships With Your BFFs
- First Wind Retreats, Shelves IPO Plans
- Box.net Upgrades Personal And Business Data Plans To Include More Storage In The Cloud
- LinkedIn Beefs Up Its Board Of Directors Again
| Vermont Energy Co. Raises $260,000 For Sustainable Gas-And-Convenience Stores | Top |
| The Vermont Energy Company attracted a $260,000 seed investment a new SEC filing revealed to grow their environmental-minded gas station and convenience store business. Currently, the company operates a flagship store and four-pump gas station in Burlington, Vermont. According to a company spokesperson, they hope to become a leading supplier of alternative fuels over time, and stock their shelves with sustainable items alongside select, traditional packaged goods. The concept is simple— offer a sustainable alternative to 7-eleven or Mobil and other leading gas station and coveninece stores. The gas and convenience store industry in the U.S. is highly fragmented, but according to Hoovers research , reaches $200 billion in annual sales mainly selling gasoline. The Vermont Energy Company, if it takes off massively, could become the go-to, roadside brand for drivers seeking grease diesel, or other advanced and clean fuels . The Vermont Energy Company currently offers drivers of fuel-efficient cars a discount on plain old gasoline. Run under the name The Good Carma program, the discount is based on the miles-per-gallon ratings of customers’ vehciles. Such programs, if they became available nationally, could help encourage consumers to upgrade their rides to more fuel-efficient, if not zero emissions, electric vehicles . | |
| Facebook Launches 'Friendship Pages' To Document Relationships With Your BFFs | Top |
| Facebook is now allowing you document all of your interactions on the network with particular friends on designated pages. Called ‘Friendship Pages,’ the pages contain all public Wall posts and comments between you and a designated friend, photos in which you are both are tagged, events you’ve RSVP’d to together and more. You’ll be able to see other’s friendship page if you are friends with one of the people and have permission to view both people’s profiles. The brainchild of Facebook engineer Wayne Kao, Friendship Pages aren’t designed for all of your friends. It’s purposed is mainly for the friends who you interact with most on the network, via wall posts, events, photos and more. The new feature certainly adds a little more personalization to Facebook, but not everyone will want to make these pages public to the world. On the other hand, I can imagine the network taking the feature and making centralized pages for families or romantic relationships. CrunchBase Information Facebook Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| First Wind Retreats, Shelves IPO Plans | Top |
| Facing a dubious IPO and downward pricing pressure, First Wind announced on Thursday that it will put its plans to go public on hold. The wind energy company, which first signaled its intention to go public way back in 2008, was expected to IPO this week but several analysts and media reports questioned investor demand, citing a heavy debt load, a lack of profitability and broader challenges in the sector. Amid growing concern, the company dropped its pricing forecast to $18 to $20 on Wednesday— a 25% cut from its previous range of $24 to $26. Now, after shaving its expectations, First Wind is pressing pause on the entire IPO and has not indicated when it will resume plans to go public. “The terms that the IPO market was seeking at this time were not attractive to the company,” the company’s CEO Paul Gaynor said in a statement, according to reports. The cleantech IPO market has been pretty choppy this year, especially for companies that are seen as heavily dependent on government subsidies. On Thursday, Enel, a major European utility company, lowered its price range for the upcoming IPO of its green unit (Enel Green Power) in a bid to attract larger, institutional investors. The new range is now at €1.60 to €2.10 euros from €1.80 to €2.20. This is Enel’s second price drop. First Wind, which owns and operates wind farms in the U.S., was hoping to raise cash in the IPO to ease its large debt load. As outlined in a recent S-1 filing, the company still has $582.2 million in outstanding debt. Moreover, since its inception the company has racked up $233.0 million in losses. Cognizant of its debt and ongoing losses, the company warned investors that “our substantial indebtedness [could] make it difficult for us to satisfy our obligations with respect to our indebtedness, and failure to comply with these obligations could result in an event of default under those agreements, which could be difficult to cure, or result in our bankruptcy.” CrunchBase Information First Wind Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| Box.net Upgrades Personal And Business Data Plans To Include More Storage In The Cloud | Top |
| Cloud-based storage and sharing application Box.net is making a big data storage upgrade to its free and paid plans today. The company is increasing the data storage amounts for its personal, business, and enterprise plans. Box’s personal subscription plans now come with 5GB of free web storage. Box’s business plan is being adjusted slightly so that companies don’t pay by the individual user (businesses were given 15GB per users previously). Now businesses will automatically receive 500GB of data storage, tripling the amount of storage the average business subscriber has access to. Enterprise customers will have access to an unlimited amount of data storage,, says Box.net’s CEO Aaron Levie, allowing companies to manage terabytes of data in the cloud (Box charges enterprise customers $35 per user per month). To accommodate these changes, Box has built two enterprise-grade data centers, and received SAS 70 Type II certification. According to the company more than 60,000 businesses including Hawaiian Airlines, T-Mobile and ABC News use Box as a data repository. Levie’s vision in the future is that businesses and individuals will never have to worry about data storage, and Box will be the go-to platform to access what he calls the “Infinite Cloud.” Box, which raised $15 million in new funding earlier this year, has seen steady growth for a startup that is competing with the likes of Microsoft Sharepoint. Since its launch in 2005, Box.net has accumulated more than 4 million users, with hundreds of thousands of businesses using the application. Last year, the startup increased revenue by 500% and is seeing an increase in sales this year as well thanks to deals with the Oprah Winfrey Network, Volvo, and Nokia Siemens. The startup has also spent the past year consistently launching new features and products, including a file syncing feature, an Android app, HTML5 functionality and more. CrunchBase Information Box.net Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| LinkedIn Beefs Up Its Board Of Directors Again | Top |
| If I were a betting man, I’d bet on LinkedIn going public some time in 2011. But I’m not, so I’ll just share with you that the social networking service provider has been significantly beefing up its board of directors this year. Case in point: this morning, LinkedIn announced the appointment of its seventh board member, Stan Meresman . We’ll forgive you if that name doesn’t ring any bells with you immediately, but suffice to say this is a man with heaps of experience serving on boards of and advising public tech companies under his belt. In addition to LinkedIn, Meresman is a board member at Riverbed Technology, Meru Networks and HyTrust. Previously, Meresman served on the boards of directors at Polycom, VMware, Starfish Software and Lightsurf, as well as an advisor to Silicon Image, Inktomi and Real Networks. Meresman also has management experience, having served as SVP and CFO of Silicon Graphics from 1989 to 1997, before shifting his attention to investing. LinkedIn in a statement says it decided to expand its board for the third time this year as its membership and operations continue to scale globally – it now boasts 80 million members around the world – and as a way to “position itself for long-term growth”. And readying a public offering in the next 12 months, I’d wager. Last May, LinkedIn added Netflix CMO Leslie Kilgore to its board, and a month later expanded it again with the appointment of former Ask.com CEO George “Skip” Battle . Meresman marks the third outsider to join the IPO candidate’s board of directors in a matter of months. The four others are founder and former CEO Reid Hoffman , current CEO Jeff Weiner , Greylock’s David Sze and Sequoia’s Marc Kvamme. CrunchBase Information LinkedIn Information provided by CrunchBase | |
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