San Francisco Bay Area
- Current
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- Co-founder and National Co-Chair at Cleantech and Green Business for Obama
- Founder at Gigaton Throwdown
- Founding Partner at Spring Ventures
- Board Member at Pacific Community Ventures
- Seed Investor at Oorja Protonics
- Investor at LinkedIn
- Seed Investor at Advent Solar
- Seed Investor at NanoSolar
- Past
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- Board member at City Carshare
- co-Founder, Executive Director at iCanvas.org
- co-founder, founding CEO at Brightmail (sold to Symantec)
- co-Founder, CEO at FreeLoader
- Internet Product Manager, Corp Dev Director at America Online
- Analyst at US Congress, Office of Technology Assessment
- Senior Engineer at Booz, Allen & Hamilton / NASA
- Engineer at RMS
- Recommended
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8 people have recommended sunil - Connections
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500+
connections
- Industry
- Venture Capital & Private Equity
sunil paul’s Summary
I'm an investor and entrepreneur in clean energy companies. Through my investment fund, Spring Ventures, I incubate or invest in companies that have the promise to become major, disruptive forces in solving the climate crisis and reducing energy dependence.
I look for ideas that have innovative, protectable technology or business-models that can change the world with teams that are smart, fun to work with and driven. If you have an idea or company that could transform the market and world, I want to talk to you.
My thesis since 2002: macro forces of environmental regulation, climate change, and energy security are creating new pressues on the energy market. New technology advances from other fields such as semiconductors, biotechnology, surface science, and nanotechnology will create produce profound breakthroughs. Innovations in business and finance models will be necessary to scale up their ideas to their true potential. Engagement with government is a necessary and vital part of a successful scale up of cleantech companies.
In addition to my "for-profit" activities, I'm engaged in a number of non-profit activities: political integrity and accountability, community developmental, and global climate change.
sunil paul’s Specialties:
investment, entrepreneurship
sunil paul’s Experience
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Co-founder and National Co-Chair
Cleantech and Green Business for Obama
(Public Policy industry)
August 2008 — Present (1 year)
CT4O was a constituency organization of the Obama campaign. We successfully engaged thousands of cleantech leaders and professionals, raised $1.6M, fielded battelground teams in 13 states, held over 200 national house parties in all 50 states, and recruited hundreds of volunteers to help with GOTV efforts.
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Founder
Gigaton Throwdown
(Renewables & Environment industry)
November 2007 — Present (1 year 9 months)
The Gigaton Throwdown is a project to encourage entrepreneurs, investors and policy makers to plan to grow companies to a scale that they change the climate. The project is in study phase evaluating a portfolio of cleantech pathways that could lead to 1 gigaton per year of CO2 equivalent reduction by the year 2020 and the implications for capital, policy, and industry. Unlike other studies that try to predict the outcome of technologies decades in the future, we aim to inspire companies to grow to gigaton scale in within a business planning timeframe.
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Founding Partner
Spring Ventures
(Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Venture Capital & Private Equity industry)
June 2007 — Present (2 years 2 months)
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Board Member
Pacific Community Ventures
(Non-Profit; 11-50 employees; Venture Capital & Private Equity industry)
October 2005 — Present (3 years 10 months)
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Seed Investor
Oorja Protonics
(Privately Held; Oil & Energy industry)
January 2005 — Present (4 years 7 months)
Along with McKenna Ventures, I was the first investor in Oorja, http://www.oorjaprotonics.com/
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Investor
LinkedIn
(Privately Held; Internet industry)
2004 — Present (5 years)
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Seed Investor
Advent Solar
(Privately Held; Oil & Energy industry)
January 2003 — Present (6 years 7 months)
Along with Angels with Attitude, I was the first investor in Advent Solar, http://www.adventsolar.com/
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Seed Investor
NanoSolar
(Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Nanotechnology industry)
January 2002 — Present (7 years 7 months)
Along with other angels including the Google founders, I was the first investor in nanosolar, http://www.nanosolar.com
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Board member
City Carshare
(Non-Profit; 11-50 employees; Transportation/Trucking/Railroad industry)
June 2005 — May 2007 (2 years)
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co-Founder, Executive Director
iCanvas.org
(Non-Profit Organization Management industry)
September 2004 — September 2005 (1 year 1 month)
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co-founder, founding CEO
Brightmail (sold to Symantec)
(Privately Held; 51-200 employees; Computer Software industry)
February 1998 — May 2004 (6 years 4 months)
Brightmail was purchased by Symantec in 2004 for $370M. Below is the boilerplate description from the (old) website:
Brightmail is the anti-spam market leader and won PC Magazine's EDITORS CHOICE for best enterprise anti-spam software. Brightmail protects over 1,500 of the world's leading enterprises, including Avaya, eBay, Bechtel, Booz Allen Hamilton, Cisco, Cypress Semiconductors, Deutsche Bank, Eastman, Lucent Technologies, Macromedia, Microsoft, Motorola, SAS and Terra Lycos. Brightmail also provides spam protection for the leading Internet service providers, including AT&T WorldNet, EarthLink, MSN, TelstraClear, and Verizon Online. Brightmail now protects more than 300 million service provider customers, and 5 million enterprise email users worldwide. -
co-Founder, CEO
FreeLoader
(Privately Held; 51-200 employees; Internet industry)
December 1995 — July 1997 (1 year 8 months)
FreeLoader was the first web-based push service. I founded it with Mark Pincus in late 1995 and sold it in the middle of 1996 to Individual, Inc. for $38M.
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Internet Product Manager, Corp Dev Director
America Online
(Public Company; 201-500 employees; AOL; Internet industry)
January 1994 — December 1995 (2 years)
I joined AOL as the first Internet PM when they were 300 people (50% customer support), less than $100M revenue, and no internet capability aside from email and Gopher. We built out all the early internet capability - Newsgroups, Web, Internet Center, ftp, tcp/ip, etc - and also built a strategy for AOL to leverage internet growth.
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Analyst
US Congress, Office of Technology Assessment
(Legislative Office industry)
January 1990 — January 1994 (4 years 1 month)
I wrote a report in 1991 that explored the emerging areas of nanotechnology and MEMS as well as other "Miniaturization Technologies." I also contributed to a report on influence of IT on the productivity of American enterprise. In my spare time I helped the agency figure out this new thing called the internet.
I also got to know the folks at OTA doing work in Energy and Environment, which turned out to be useful down the road! -
Senior Engineer
Booz, Allen & Hamilton / NASA
(Privately Held; 1001-5000 employees; Defense & Space industry)
January 1988 — January 1990 (2 years 1 month)
Worked on information system design of NASA's Space Station Freedom.
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Engineer
RMS
(Privately Held; 1001-5000 employees; Defense & Space industry)
October 1987 — June 1988 (9 months)
Operations at NASA Goddard Flight Dynamics Facility... supported the systems that told spacecraft where they were and where they should go.
