Colin Bulthaup, the visionary founder of Potenco—whose mission is to make clean power universally accessible and immediately useful all over the world—shared a few thoughts and inspirations behind his work.

Me and some friends at MIT in the basement of Media Labs started Squid Labs.  Our goal to start creating an innovation “factory” to take technology and creativity with direct focus to make a huge impact on world.  We were part of this community around 2000-1.  We tried structure our passion.  We spun off 5 companies:

Instructables—a do it yourself website to share projects w/ others…an open-source application for everything.
Optiopia—creating technology to make low-cost eyeglasses for developing countries for less than $1/piece.  The machine costs $100 and can be carried on the back of a motercycle.
Makani Power—to make the ultimate renewable energy—high-altitude wind generations
Howtoons—for creating educational cartoons for kids on how to build things
And Potenco.

We decided to tackle a large problem—Power.  We were involved in the human power concept and developing the power for the one-laptop project per child project.  We took the opportunity, developing the underlying power technology for it.

http://www.potenco.com/
http://laptop.org/
http://squid-labs.com/companies/

We created our own separate company and now have 13 people working here.

We’re a “platform company”.  We create the platform and infrastucture for power.  We have a number of problems all over the world.  We have excited people on all levels—from individuals to ministers in government positions who want to improve the lives of their citizens.  We are also talking to the US government since we have a way to build goodwill overseas.

Our project does not harm the world…and does not take away from existing economies.

There is such an incredibly strong need for significant change…and the possibility for change.  We are half tech-company and half micro-finance/logistics company.

There are over 2 billion people in the world with no electricity and no ability to communicate.  One third of the planet is not participating in the global conversation.

We were in Bangladesh one month ago testing models in the field.  We got out 3 days before giant cyclone hit.  We are also in Uganda conducting extensive field studies in really remote villages.

Want to draw people in and push our mission.  We’re doing a number of versions of the product here in the US for emergency preparation, camping, etc.  We want people to participate getting involved with technology for greening personal power production in the States.

We need your experience.  If you have have connections or relationships in these countries would love to hear from you.  Contact: info@potenco.com.