Investor interest

I should also add that while the blog's been a bit quiet, we did our first investor pitch. The investor is a big name Business Angel who has founded one of the most popular websites in Spain, which is a market leader at the European level. He really liked the idea, and we're working on some changes he suggested to the business plan. We'll keep you updated...

Our video

Well I've just seen 36 clicks in 3 hours for our "last chance to see" of our video on The Good Entrepreneur, as I assume they'll take it down soon after the grand finale tonight. So thank you all for your support, it'll take us a bit longer given that we didn't win the competition, but we're still very much going and talking to investors. We're also scouring the national and international markets for any grants we might get (also helps us get equity investment as well, of course).

Anyway, for those of you who haven't seen our 1-minute Good Entrepreneur video (you must have been living on the moon for all my posts to have missed you), here's the link.

Yes, those spots on my face are real (thanks Mark for pointing that out).

The blog is back!

Ok, I know, I know. A blog is a discipline that you have to do regularly. But it's been a mad month. Now, here's a thought from Trendwatching, an excellent site for predicting what's going to be big, and guess what they said about sustainability in their top 10 issues for 2010? That we've got to make it easy for people to be green. At the moment it's all too complicated and that's turning off consumers.

Now I don't want to make a big deal of it, but that's what we've been saying for the last two years. In fact, it's the basis of our business model. Anyway check out the article for yourself here.

It's great to be back.

It's The Age Of Stupid, stupid

The Age of Stupid Global Trailer w/Spanish Subtitles from Age of Stupid on Vimeo.

Went last night to see The Age Of Stupid, actually a very well-made and powerful film. Biggest simultaneous screening of any film ever, etc. etc. Very impressive what they've done with practically no money, strong beliefs and good organisation - chapeau.

It's probably an important film, as was An Inconvenient Truth, and it will probably stir people to action to do something in advance of the Copenhagen summit - good. In fact, 90% of what it says is pretty much correct, it's just a shame it can't resist the temptation, Michael Moore-style, to sound off about whatever other perceived injustices (like the war in Iraq) are against Franny Armstrong's personal beliefs.

If one part particularly rang true for me, it was the comment by an environmental scientist that humans had never before had to deal with a slow-moving iceberg of a problem like climate change, we were evolutionarily equipped to deal with wild animals, warring tribes, etc. - immediate threats. We had no experience of dealing with something like this. The unspoken corrollary is that we tend to vacillate, panic and achieve very little, as we can show over the last 10 years or so.

Anyway, it certainly shows that the issue of Climate Change is by no means far from people's minds, indeed if anything it's resurging. Good - and not just for Barcelona Green.

Wow...didn't expect that...

As a coda to The Good Entrepreneur competition, we now have a paragraph on their site from TGE's Steve Sedgwick (he's one of CNBC's main presenters, I think) about our entry:

"Rob Marchant - Climate Change Retail

Well put together. Combining the need to educate and push the roll-out of proven green, energy saving products. I think the idea will be a great success but my concern surrounds the basic concept of a retail format. Having physical retail stores rather than perhaps a dedicated online offering as a standalone still requires a physical footfall and hence increased energy consumption from store set up to transport to and from the store."

Well that's quite complimentary, really. I'm delighted.

Responding to Steve's concern, the obvious answer is that we would LOVE to do an online-only shop, if ONLY people would buy from it. But there are already plenty, and they don't.

It's a shame, while I understand entirely that your carbon footprint is higher in retail, you have to deal with the way people are now, not the way you would like them to be. Educate first, move them to online purchase later. The key thing is to change their domestic habits, whatever it takes to get there.

Funding starts here!

Well, the Good Entrepreneur competition gained us over 1400 pitch video views (the most of all entries in the competition), pretty much constantly in the top 10 pitches, and a great deal of profile-raising, so we're delighted. Now the real business of getting funded starts in earnest - going well so far, we already have pitch meetings booked. Watch this space...

Finally - a computer that works!

Am now back fully online, after all sorts of problems with computers when I came back from holiday. Thanks, HP, for selling me a computer which takes me 3 days to recover from a hard disk crash...

And how have things been going in the meantime? Well, it seems that the site has settled down a bit, entrants are no longer accusing each other of dastardly deeds and they are rightly focusing on the competition and discussing real issues rather than complaining about the rules, CNBC and each other's entries.

We're a respectable no.5 as I write and still the most viewed video on The Good Entrepreneur. But there are still 9 days to go for shortlisting and the competition is pretty hot, there is now an incredible number of entries (now stabilised at 194). No-one I'm sure expected that many (ok Luis you predicted a last-minute rush, I know, I know).

Anyway, think we have marketed the entry pretty well - apart from friends and family, it's all over LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.

Preparations for finishing touches to business plans in motion as we head for the 21st August deadline...