Will they fund TIP?

In several of our TIP discussions, I have been of the view that once we are clear about what we want to accomplsh, the venture and other capital sources will line up with TIP - so we can look forward to a "peace industrial complex" emerging - and thus to Make Peace Profitable. The following story illustrates what happens when a successful entrepreneur and who in turn became a venture capitalist gets a moral compass in his hand (heart, head).

PS: Vinod is a fellow IIT graduate and is accessible via the IIT Alumni club.


Valley man bankrolls clean-energy initiative:
OIL FIRMS TO PAY TAX TO FUND FUELS, CARS
By Matthai Chakko Kuruvila
Mercury News

Vinod Khosla is bankrolling a ballot initiative that would tax oil producers and subsidize alternative energy -- technologies he invests in as one of the valley's most prominent venture capitalists.

If California voters embrace the November initiative, the tax on oil companies could generate $4 billion for projects intended to reduce the state's dependence on oil by 25 percent within a decade.

Such political moves are still new territory for the well-heeled venture capital community more accustomed to funding start-up companies than ballot campaigns. That changed in 2004, when the industry put its money behind another technology-building initiative: stem-cell research.

This marriage of personal and political passions makes some consumer advocates uneasy, while outraging the oil industry.

Initiative backers are currently gathering signatures, which they say they'll submit by the end of the month. Khosla says the measure, which he's already spent more than $1 million to back, is not about him. He says it's about 'doing the right thing.'"