As with the internet boom before it, the cleantech explosion is inspiring unqiue investment schemes to serve take it and capitalize on it. The spectacular growth of the cleantech sector over the last couple of years, in response to unconscionable gains in energy prices and acquiring awareness of climate change issues, pretends the cleantech sector look rather tempting. One of the wrinkles in the investment growth, withal, is that unlike the internet boom, which quite literally saw a number of start-ups doing their million dollar IPOs from a garage workbench, a cleantech revolution is starting to want much greater investment because the infrastructure requirements are that much greater. Competing with the current giants of industry won’t necessarily need their record annual profits in the tens of billions of dollars, but they do need billions. That’s one of the concepts behind Steve Newcomb’s drive to felt a newfangled VC fund, one that doesn’t look to a few abstruse baged investors, but to what the IT industry squalls crowdsourcing, lots of little investments from the middling investor. Newcomb is the co-founder of search startup Powerset, and gos through majuscule potential in both the pocket-sized investments and taken in wisdom of many waiting to make up a difference. He likewise figures a sort of American Idol approach to selecting investments, having investors vote to hold up what faces the most hopeful. And while the American Idol comparison might be a bit frightening to some, there’s an underlying value in pollarding a lot of median investors for investment ideas: if nothing else, it’s potential to have a best idea of what potential products might be commercially executabl (more…)