Over the past 16 years, I have been involved in 5 successful startup companies ranging from an energy company, to several .com companies. Now I am focusing all of my attention on creating the tipping point in the sustainability movement by pushing initiatives in government, business and the broader social landscape. 
Many people are curious, what I am doing since I left Powerset. Well, the short story is that I have decided to dedicate myself to what I call the new Green Economy and I am working on several initiatives with other leaders in government and businesses that all fall under the responsibility of non-profit that I am founding called SF Green. 
On May 12th between 6:45pm and 6:52pm I was the coolest person on earth
DONE! On Monday, May 12th, we held the second SF Green Event and again well over 300 people came to the event. I wanted to say a special thanks to VentureBeat, SF Green's new media partner as well as my co-founding team at SF Beta (Christian Perry and special thanks to Cassie Phillipps who simply rocks)
This event was quite different than the previous event in that we had two speakers and a stage from which the speakers could be heard. Our goal was to have Darryl Siry, VP Marketing of Tesla Motors and Ray Lane GP at Kleiner Perkins answer questions from Matt Marshall in a "fireside chat" sort of style.
As I stated in my last post, the main reason that I created SF Green was to bring people from different viewpoints together under one rood so that they may better understand each other and so that maybe we can create a shared vision that has elements from many constituencies - and Ray Lane definitely lived up to the momentt.
We asked Ray to speak for many reasons, including that:
1. he is a managing partner at Kleiner Perkins which is one of the most influencial venture capital companies in the US
2. he has made significant investments in the GreenTech space
3. is not afraid to mix it up and is quite well informed
4. he is a republican
5. he strongly believes in the new green economy
Now, those of you who are reading carefully will notice LINE 4 - he is a republican. Yup, that's right. I particularly was interested in Ray's viewpoints because he represents a new class of "green" people. Those that see green from an economic standpoint as well as a social standpoint. I find that I share many of the same opinions with Ray in that his viewpoints are the realities of how business, poilitics and economics work in the world. He's not trying to change those elements of society, he's using his knowledge of them to inform him on how to best approach being "green".
I had the honor of asking him the last question of the evening and here it is - (by the way, I loved his answer)
"How will the new Green Economy affect the balance of power in the world? Is Rome (that's the US) about to fall?
His answer, not that he knew it, was exactly what I believe and that is - Green is going to be one of the biggest opportunities to maintain and grow the United States as an economic and socially relevant powerhouse.
Basically what Ray was trying to say (if I can attempt to summarize) is that when it comes to big shifts in how the world operates, the United States has always been the one to take the lead and thus take the lion's share of the benefits for being the leader. Just as we have in the industrial, computer and now Internet age, we will also be the leaders in the new green economy.
As the world tries to take advantage of the new opportunities within the green space, new technologies, processes and know-how will need to be created and America is where it is going to built. If America is the driving force behind these new advances, then all of the other countries such as China and India will want to buy those technologies from us.
What I like best about Ray's answer was that he didn't back down in the face of my question. I ask this question to nearly everyone that I meet and 99 times out of 100 the person basically says that our economy and our way of life in the US may further be erroded other countries taking a lead in the new green economy. Those people further illustrate their point by pointing out that nearly every 1st world country and 2nd world country has a larger "green" budget than the US.
I used to think this way - in fact I posted something near to this a while back, but of coarse was smart enough to say that I was research my answer fully. Well, I have and my opinion is simple. - We are still America and we still are the leader of the world. The problem we have isn't that America is waining, it is simply that the administration that has been in office for the last 8 years has held us back in so many ways. Regardless of who we get as our new leader, I think we are going to get back to our roots of tackling big and tough issues the way we used to do. I think this not only because I think we are the greatest nation on earth - I think this simply because we haven't kicked ass in a while as a country and we have so much pent up energy we just going to explode with creativity when we get our new administration.
If you would like to join the SF Green group on Facebook, you can join here.
Thanks again to our sponsors Ernst & Young, Sun Microsystems, Dig Communications, Network Verde, California Cleantech Open, City Car Share and the SF Chamber of Commerce.