ELITE LIST: Top 10 Entrepreneurs in Cleantech, Biotech and High Tech
Posted on: June 22, 2009
ELITE LIST: Top 10 Entrepreneurs in Cleantech, Biotech and High Tech From worth.com
Jim Barnes
Founder, CEO
Oakleaf WasteManagement
Jim Barnes makes money by getting rid of stuff that other people don’t want—namely, garbage. Barnes is the founder of Oakleaf Waste Management, which specializes in working with companies (Wal-Mart and General Electric, for example) to determine what waste can be recycled or even resold.
Martin Roscheisen
Founder, CEO
Nanosolar
German-born Martin Roscheisen is a first generation pioneer of the greentech industry but a second generation entrepreneur. After working on three Silicon Valley startups in the late 1990s, Roscheisen saw opportunity in green energy. Nanosolar’s “thin film” solar cells convert sunlight into electricity without the bulkiness or cost of traditional solar panels.
Ric Fulop
Founder
A123Systems
Ric Fulop isn’t one to give up. After three failed tech start-ups, his fourth attempt is becoming a success: Fulop’s A123Systems is the leading producer of lithium ion batteries—the kind that General Motors hopes to use in its much-touted Volt electric car. With over $70 million in backing from GE, the company is on track to supply batteries for half a million plug-in electric vehicles by 2013.
Joe Polastre
Cofounder, Chief Technology Officer
Sentilla
Computer scientist Joe Polastre is helping companies cut costs and boost performance by sizing up their energy footprints. Through technical innovation and partnerships with IBM, Sun Microsystems and the Green Building Council—to name a few—Polastre is gearing up to make major advances in the greening of commercial buildings and businesses.
Elon Musk
Cofounder, CEO
SpaceX
The view from outer space is only slightly more grandiose than Elon Musk’s ambitions: to develop space travel, electric cars and solar power. The businessman behind SolarCity, a leading installer of solar panels, Musk is also the CEO of Tesla Motors, makers of the high performance electric sports car. But his most intriguing venture to date may be SpaceX, which makes space launch vehicles.
Steven Nichtberger
Cofounder, CEO
Tengion
After 15 years of working in biotech and Internet ventures, Steven Nichtberger launched Tengion in 2004 and built the world’s first facility for growing human organs. Tengion is in the clinical stages of developing new organs and tissue from a patient’s own cells—a development that could one day vastly decrease the need for organ donations.
Jay Flatley
President, CEO
Illumina
Since industrial engineer Jay Flatley began building up Illumina, a maker of genetic analysis equipment, his field has shown lightning-fast progress. Within five years, Flatley says, every parent could buy a DNA sequencing of their newborn for less than $1,000.
Peter L. Corsell
Founder, CEO
GridPoint
Our current method of receiving electricity is a “dumb, inefficient system,” cleantech guru Peter Corsell has said. So his company, GridPoint, is developing energy management software to help create a “smart grid”—one that will control and conserve energy consumption, in part by giving users greater control over when and how they use electricity.
Matt Tucker and Bill Lynch
Cofounders
Jive Software
Matt Tucker and Bill Lynch, founders of Jive Software, created a social business revolution three years before Facebook made its debut. Profitable since its start in 2001, Jive makes social business software, which helps companies support and facilitate internal communication.
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