Greenbang diary - fame, bald investors, BP boo hoo, show me the money
January is over – thank goodness – and we step positively into February. Life at Greenbang Towers has been a bit chicken oriental of late.
We’ve just made it onto CNBC’s list of top blogs, Google News has started to take our news, and we’re just about to relaunch the website with a new design.
Out and about on the streets of London, we’ve been bumping into quite a few investors interested in the green space. Many are bald, many are ugly, some are pretty, but my my, they will tell you how much their funds are worth withing five seconds of meeting them.
Something so many people are commenting on is how many investors there are popping up in the green space now. They all seem very confident of what they’re backing (at least publically). But contrast that with marketing and PR folk. Many seem confused as to where the green bucks are going to be. Many have no idea who they need to be talking to.
So where is the money? Well – energy is obviously a safe bet. You can say there’s money in green gadgets, energy-efficient cars and computers etc., but that’s got to die out soon enough. The real dough is in power.
Interestingly, BP contacted us this week to announce it is launching a blog called Beyond Petrolium, an attempt to win some eco-credibilty in the blogosphere, perhaps in response to blogs like ours that aren’t convinced by their efforts. (We were once contacted about sponsorship by an oil company, but we turned it down. It just didn’t feel right. And aren’t we kicked ourselves now 🙂 )
But this highlights something the investors we met this week mentioned. One, who’d already mentioned the size of his – or his company’s – fund four or five times, said: “Ooh, there’s a lot of green blogs out there at the moment aren’t there?”
Yes there are. And now, to really take the piss, BP the big OIL COMPANY, has got one. Alarm bells have shattered Greenbang’s mind.
Now – if you want to know what’s really going on behind the scenes in the media, read this.