Interview: David Anderson, Founder and CEO of Green Options

Posted in Green, Interviews on July 4th, 2007 No Comments

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David Anderson, CEO of Green Options Happy Independence Day everyone! To celebrate, today I share an interview with David Anderson, a young entrepreneur who’s endeavors embody the pioneering spirit of the early Americans!

David Anderson is a young guy who wanted to make a difference, so he founded the company Green Options upon graduating from the University of California at San Diego! (And funny enough - he’s our second David Anderson interviewed here at Thrilling Heroics!) Green Options’ online media portal, GreenOptions.com, serves as your home on the web for “Greening the Good Life,” which sorts through the information overload to bring you the best quality green news and tips for green living. David studied political science, sociology, biology and law in school, and now focuses on sustainability issues and renewable energy policy. He lives in Berkeley, California. [Photo credit to David...he described it as exhibiting "a little wackiness" =) ]

David took the time to chat with me about founding his company, working with people around the globe, about fossil fuels, and solar power, and he had some fantastic thoughts to share, drawing from his experiences.

You attended UC San Diego. Tell me about your education and how you got involved in sustainability. What made you go green?

I was interested in all kinds of things when I entered UCSD, but I defaulted to political science. I always had an amateur interest in renewable energy, but the chance to connect it to policy during an internship in Washington DC really drove me to immerse myself in the green movement. At the same time, the ineffectiveness of the non-profit I worked at (despite the best efforts of many very talented people) convinced me that I had to look to market solutions — the business world — to really be effective at creating change.

That’s a pretty interesting insight. So when and where did the idea for Green Options come about? What was REConn?

After I graduated, I still didn’t know how to fulfill my desire to help bring the green movement mainstream. In the meantime, I took a job as a technical writer at a firm that aggregated RFPs [Request for Proposal] for architecture and engineering firms. Immediately, I thought “why isn’t there anything like this for renewable energy?” A few weeks later, I quit and began planning “The Renewable Energy Connection” (REConn), which turned into Green Options. Although our first 6 months has focused on our green media portal, GreenOptions.com, this summer we’ll be launching the tools that are based on that original concept.

How did you connect with your primary team and get Green Options off the ground? Were there much in the way of startup costs, dealing with VCs, etc?

I was lucky through persistence. As a recent graduate, I had very few business contacts to lean on for advice. I ended up starting a blog that examined the nexus of energy and environmental issues (citizengreen.com, which I have now passed on to one of our interns), through which I met Shea Gunther, a fellow blogger and self-styled eco-entrepreneur, and Jeff-McIntire-Strasburg of Sustainablog. Shea had the entrepreneurial experience to help me get funding and get the company off the ground, while Jeff (also an English professor and southern gentleman) made a perfect editor for the media portal we were building. We found an angel investor almost immediately, so I never went through the VC rigmarole.

Did you have any previous entrepreneurial experience before starting Green Options?

Nope. For why, see above. But I’d always been interested to find out how the corporate world works… and this is one way to find out!

What sets Green Options apart from other green media centers like TreeHugger.com?

Jeff was (until very very recently) actually a writer at Treehugger. Truthfully, there’s a lot of overlap. Treehugger has been the leading multi-author blog in the green blogosphere since shortly after its launch, and our content has to date been focused on building a base of readers who already hold green values. The difference is that there is a large majority of people that don’t consider themselves tree-huggers, and would be unlikely to visit a site with that name, even though they might be open to a lot of the same information. Over the next few months, Green Options will be focusing on breaking down the barriers that keep people from opening up to this kind of information.

What are some of the challenges you’ve had to overcome in running a company with consultants that report to you from all over the country?

You said it. The simple fact that there’s no easy way to poke your head over the cubicle wall to ask a quick question does cut down on the efficient flow of information to some extent. As we’ve grown in terms of staff, we’ve increasingly adopted specialized collaboration tools that attempt to replicate a shared physical workspace. When it was just 3 of us, most of those tools weren’t necessary. They are now.

I know you’ve done a lot of research specifically on energy. What are a few major steps you think we need to take with that infrastructure?

Thank you for asking this! We’re going to face a huge challenge in the coming years. At some point, the question of “what’s next” after centralized coal electricity production and a gas-based transportation infrastructure is going to demand an answer (probably through some shock to the system), but the more we can do now to create the solutions we’re going to need, the more prepared we’ll be when pop quiz day comes. Even though our electric grid is an antiquated patchwork in desperate need of shoring up, it currently looks like the best bet we have to decouple energy consumption and generation from specific fuels. Unless some breakthrough algae or cellulosic ethanol technology provides some amazing bounty, biofuels are never going to provide a full answer to the oil problem. Electric and plugin hybrid vehicles look like the most efficient investment on a macro scale when combined with massive deployment of grid-connected, distributed renewables and major investment in the national electric grid. To me, that is the only ‘new energy economy’ scenario that solves the distribution problem inherent to renewable resources without relying on some amazing storage technology that hasn’t been perfected yet. For example, although hydrogen will undoubtedly play a role, California could replace its “hydrogen highway” pipe dream — ahem, initiative — with thousands of cheap electric 10-minute charging stations fueled by on-site renewables and backed up by natural gas, with a much greater immediate effect.

What are the best green business and energy conferences that you’ve attended?

Without a doubt, GreenFest. I attended the one in SF last fall solo, vowing to be back with a booth someday, and sure enough, the GreenOptions.com booth was bustling at GreenFest Chicago this April. I’m also very interested by the seminars put on by various groups to explain the complexities of the California Solar Initiative to solar installers, but maybe that’s just the solar geek in me.

Do you have any words of advice for college students who, similarly to you, are interested in starting up their own green companies when they graduate?

Stay away! Just kidding. The one piece of advice I can give unequivocally is this: only work with people smarter than yourself. Also, find out what it is about yourself that adds value to others’ activities, and offer it freely.

Great advice, David! Thanks for taking the time to share with us about your startup. I look forward to seeing you guys develop the service provider side of GO in the coming months.