I recently took the stage at a “Bloblive” event in Santa Monica, to share my idea for Vverdant with the crowd. The Bloblive website introduces the concept as, “The city’s open mic night for ideas.” It’s a forum to, “Grab the mic and hit the crowd with your best elevator pitch.” People have 90 seconds to talk and then get 3 minutes of feedback.

There were about 100 people there, and it was a great feeling to give my pitch to a room full of other entrepreneurs. I got mostly positive feedback from the audience. One guy must have read the same article I had, because he told me he thought Web 2.0 would be “growing up” this year. A UCLA Anderson Entrepreneurship professor patted me on the back on the way out and said “You did a great job tonight!”

Overall, it was a very positive experience that’s driving me to push forward. Here’s a great link to a Time article about the Web 2.0 “revolution.”

Something I've been asking myself a lot lately.

I’m currently reading What Should I Do with My Life by Po Bronson, and thinking about the impact I want to have on the world. The book isn’t extremely well written, but the biographies presented are inspiring. The author interviews people who have made big decisions in their lives to find their calling. It’s interesting to read about people who are in the midst of latching onto a dream, when I find myself attempting to do the same thing.

I want to do work that has a positive impact on people, and make enough money to support my family. I have a triple bottom line goal to work toward social, environmental, and financial success. My entrepreneurial ideas are focused on finding the best way to make this happen.

The green light bulb went off in my brain (and it was a compact fluorescent).

So I have this idea to start a company:

I’ve been thinking about it for a couple months, but the concept is just a sprout. It’s barely started to germinate in my brain. This blog is meant to change that. I plan to write about my entrepreneurial ideas here, both to catalogue my thoughts, and to provide a forum for feedback.

This is the concept:

I want to create a global Web 2.0 platform for the green building (GB) industry. A knowledge center: news, jobs, links, community, calendar. With user generated content. This will be a one stop shop for GB professionals — a resource I would use every day in my profession (I’m an architect), but which does not currently exist. I think this is a big idea because the construction industry is one of the largest in the world, and the entire thing is shifting to green. There is a large potential user group for this site.

My idea is to organize a website by location (similar in concept to Craigslist), so GB professionals can tap into their local networks. I plan to start with my current local network of Los Angeles, and spread to other cities if this is a success. I’m using Curbed as a model of a similar idea that is working for the real estate industry.

Phases:

I: Create GB network for Los Angeles. II: Spread to other cities in the U.S. and globally. III: Apply this model to other professional communities: artists, non-profits, financial executives, etc….

It’s all about scalability:

I think I’ve generated a model that could have a lot of potential. We’ll see how this blog and this idea continue to grow. Stay tuned.