Human Innovation

Here’s a response that I wrote to a big oil company that approached us about investing in Mosaic. I won’t name names, but it’s definitely a sign of the times that they are interested in an innovative solar company like Mosaic. It’s a big decision because at Mosaic we have a policy of taking money only from people that are completely aligned with our vision and values -- which is to democratize the financial and environmental benefits of solar. We have turned down money because we have felt that the lack of alignment would turn into bad things. Anyway, here’s my response as we begin this courting period. He asked me, “what is novel about Mosaic and how can it help our company.” For me, this was about setting up the values fence posts as well as giving me a chance to write about innovation and big energy. Hope you enjoy it!

Dear big oil company interested in investing in Mosaic,

A pleasure to talk to you yesterday.

You asked about novelty of the idea and the innovation behind Mosaic. My response stays the same. It's in our simplicity.

Mosaic is one of the first websites where you can invest directly in solar power, on someone else's rooftop. It is a place where that can feel like it's on your own roof. We are a company where people do it together and are a part of a community greater than themselves.

What was Mark Zuckerberg's innovation with Facebook? Not too much, actually. It connected people through the way they were already connected. Great technologies don't blow your mind, they integrate into society, become part of the human experience, seamlessly. Jack Dorsey, founder of Twitter and Square said, “With great technologies, you don’t even realize they are there.” A black swan is something that no one sees coming and after it comes, no one can imagine their lives the same way afterwards. I think Mosaic has this potential. Soon, it will be weird not to put your money into the local solar bank that earns you long-term returns, generated by the Sun. It will be weird to see a rooftop without solar.

What will it do for you? Well, you are an energy company. Which means, you won't be an oil company a hundred years from now if you want to be relevant. I think the big oil companies understand innovation, but are also slow because of the hundred + years of amazing ROI's from sticking a straw and drinking cheap-oil. As you and I both know, those days are over, but big oil is still acting like they have hundreds of years of cheap oil ahead of them. The Saudies are drilling offshore and the tar sands are not only an environmental disaster, but a disaster for human civilization (human development is dependent on energy ROI). As any energy economist will tell you, it's not about IRR in cash. It's about ROI between energy exerted and energy returned. The Tar Sands are using natural gas to turn shale into oil. It's reverse alchemy - gold into bronze. The renewable energy era is not about putting a pump/ pipe into the earth, but extracting that which is abundant, and even perhaps, infinite -- human innovation.

Solar energy and all distributed generation is highly agile, based on human innovation, and of course, is inherently decentralized. Will the old centralized bank financing schemes that financed the centralized fossil fuel infrastructure work for such an agile and abundant source of energy? To be determined. But if energy companies don't catch on, they will be outpaced, outsmarted, and outfunded by web/ IT innovation that puts power into the hands of people. Don't take my word. Look at the big media companies who are scrambling as Twitter and Facebook eat their lunch. With SOPA, they are actually trying to shut down the internet.

But you can’t stop an idea whose time has come. Human beings are infinitely powerful people. The computing power on the average person's iPhone is more than the processing power of the computer that helped launch man to the moon. Now, each person is as powerful as a publishing house. Each person, armed with an iPhone, Twitter, and Facebook, is a Media Empire. Instead of invading countries to topple dictatorships, let’s drop iPhones armed with Twitter and watch people do it themselves.

Mosaic follows this trend and asks, "What about energy?" There will be a time, in the not so distant future, where the same trend that happened with media, happens with energy. Every person will be a solar power plant. There will be millions of solar barons who are able to create solar power for their community and finance it online. Look at the explosive growth of solar developers and entrepreneurs just in the last 10 years. Their biggest need? Financing and sales. There’s not enough money to keep up with their growth. And Mosaic, can help make solar social -- as it turns out, people are more likely to go solar because their neighbor or friend went solar. Mosaic users can provide not only capital, but valuable leads for solar developers generated by our online community. Mosaic is an elegant solution to their biggest needs and will empower them to create a lot of solar power.

Hope this helps you understand where we are coming from with our vision for Mosaic. Glad you enjoyed learning more about our company and we look forward to continuing the conversation with you in 2012.

Best,

Daniel