Speed dating for Highest Wind

While it sounds a little improbable, apparently it's pretty effective.

Highest Wind has been selected as one of the startup companies to present at the upcoming Speed Venture Summit.

See the press release about our selection.

This event connects startup companies with investors in speed-dating style - fifteen minute face-to-face chats across a table. Just enough time for us to both feel the 'chemistry' or not, and arrange follow-on meetings (or receive that emergency bail-out call from our wingman). After a few hours of this, the most popular startups then do a public presentation to the crowd with applause measured to choose the audience favorites.

Sounds wild.

On the hot-seat at the NHHTC "Entrepreneur Forum"

We've been selected to take the hot-seat at the first of the season New Hampshire High Tech Council's (NHHTC) "Entrepreneur Forums" on September 23rd in Manchester, NH starting at 6pm.

This is the same event we attended last April, but at that time we performed the two minute "Skydive Pitch" to rave reviews. (Blow a 20 mile per hour wind in people's faces and they seem to enjoy it.) This part of the Forum event is a bit more serious.

A week before the event, I submit our business plan to three reviewers selected by the NHHTC from the New England business community - including competitors, investors, academics, etc. At the event I have fifteen minutes to give our dog-and-pony show to the assembled crowd and reviewers. I then get grilled for thirty minutes by the reviewers. I've attended a few of these and they can get pretty intense. If you've ever wondered what it's like to pitch a business idea to venture capitalists, this is a pretty close approximation.

If you're not a Venture Capitalist, this may be your only chance to see the Highest Wind dog-and-pony show designed specifically for investors. Anyone can attend the NHHTC Entrepreneur Forum - just sign up and pay your thirty bucks. Good food, a very interesting crowd, and a chance to see the Highest Wind investor pitch (before we no longer need it).

I hope to see you there.

Highest Wind selected as MIT "Ignite Clean Energy" semi-finalist !

June 12th, 2009.

Highest Wind LLC was selected as a semi-finalist in the MIT Enterprise Forum's 2009 Ignite Clean Energy business presentation competition.

Highest Wind was selected as one of thirty semi-finalists from a field of more than two hundred entrants. Competitors entered teams under one of sixteen categories including; High Efficiency Vehicles, Energy Efficiency, Green Building/Sustainable Design, Hydro, Solar, and Alternative Fuels and Biofuels, among others. Highest Wind entered in the Wind category.

Ten finalists will be chosen from the thirty semi-finalists in September 2009. A single winner of a cash and services prize, of amounts yet to be announced, will be selected in November.

Highest Wind LLC is developing Energy Glider(TM) systems - small-scale, on-site distributed wind energy technology that harvests the stronger and steadier winds a thousand feet above the ground to cost-effectively help power rural organizations in low-wind locations where wind turbines are not cost effective - half our planet.