Stanford MBAs Fail to Ask EEStor Question

A group of Stanford University MBA hopefuls gathered together recently to waste each other's time by asking a collection of run of the mill dumb questions at a Kleiner Perkins & John Doerr presentation. From what I can tell by skimming through the video, no one at Stanford has any sense at all. Ok, there was a tiny bit of common sense in the crowd but it was starved for oxygen. So, non Stanford alums, walk tall today because you saved quite a bit on your education and are probably in much better shape as a result.

Yes, it is necessary to be critical of smart people who have an opportunity to ask smart questions but fail to do so! Had "the EEStor question" been asked, we might be in a more tolerating mood this great Monday morning! Now, let's show our Stanford friends how we get down to business.

Skip to 12:00 and examine the Green Fund Portfolio which includes the "stealth capacitor" investment. MUHAHAHAAHAH!!

We know who the stealth capacitor company is. One of the stealth battery companies is Fortu. Not sure about the stealth battery company and the stealth vehicle company.

A stealth vehicle company? V-Vehicle? Can't be them because they are out of stealth unless you are suggesting Kleiner partners are too lazy to update their powerpoint slides.

Special thanks to an alert reader who sent this video to me!

Unstealthing Kleiner Perkins' Fortu Powercell: Kleiner helped them seek DOE Battery Funds

Via yet another determined reader of TheEEStory.com, a new stealth Kleiner investment has come to light. This time, it required a FOIA request to the Department of Energy to learn the list of applicants for advanced battery development funds.

The complete list is a whos who of battery upstarts, established players and wannabes. It is currently located at TheEEStory.com.

Since Kleiner has been so generous to me in regards to my numerous requests for comment on EEStor, it does make me chuckle a bit to be able to help uncloak yet another of their investments hiding in stealth. :-)

The DOE document lists Fortu Powercell Inc., as having an address of Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers of 2750 Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park, California 94025. The POC listed is Mr. Alan Greenshields. From their website, it looks like this is a German company. http://www.fortu.de/

According to the forums website, RCGroups, Fortu uses a lithium chemistry consisting of Lithium-Cobalt-inorganic technology.

HHHhhhmm. Backing a German company for funds designed to grow a domestic battery industry. HHHhhhhmmm, not commenting on the EEStor investment. HHHhhhmmm.

Anyone at Kleiner care to clear any of this up for inquiring minds? Email: eestorblog@gmail.com


Here is one of their patents.

The Manhattan II Project: Kleiner's EEStor Keiretsu?

Back in the late 1930s, when it became apparent that Nazi Germany was approaching the completion of a nuclear weapon, a US project involving over 130,000 people and the equivalent of $24Bil of today's dollars was carried out to develop nuclear weapons. Distributed at sites around the USA (and world), pockets of several thousand people would come to worksites knowing only enough to get their own particular job done each day and no one else's. Such was the secrecy of the project.

Toward the tail end of the project, when success was in sight, the project's leader, Gen. Leslie Groves, who also oversaw the rapid construction of the Pentagon (the largest office building of it's day), approached the New York Times to appoint a science writer, William L. Laurence, to work on a major wartime story involving science. Laurence had a track record of writing on the relevant areas of atomic research and was allowed access several top secret events including the testing at Trinity site along with the bombing of Japan, with two production line prototypes. Spies infiltrated the project ensuring that the United States would always have nuclear rivals.

Comparing EEStor's work to a Manhattan project is in many ways much more than a stretch, but it's something EEStor's leader appears to have no problem doing. In addition to statements Dick Weir made to Tyler Hamilton in this regard, I can confirm that Weir made a similar statement to me (one of multiple interviews I subsequently chose not to publish...yet) showing not only that the words were chosen deliberately but via repetition, underscored as if to advance a message. But a message to whom and for what?. What I can say is that ever since he said it, my radar has been locked onto any reference to Manhattan Project in the context of alternative energy, not so much because I believe the US Government is funding secret research in this area but more to the point, the use of an odd phrase like that is a linguistic clue that occasionally implies a community of closely related persons with a common set of experiences. Phrases sometimes are constituent to shared histories.

[Article continued here]

EEStor Permitivity Test Clue from Richard Weir, EEStor CEO

I spent part of my day trying to figure out why Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers does not list EEStor as one of their investments on their website.  To find out, I called Bill Joy's office and his secretary informed me that KPCB's only investments are the ones listed on the website and EEStor is not listed.  I got the feeling she was a little confused and won't describe the ensuing conversation.  But it caused me to get really curious about this topic and for some reason, I stumbled on Joel Serface as a place to focus more attention.  Why so?  

Well, Mr. Serface is new to KPCB and his prior employment as Director of the Austin Clean Energy Incubator organization which is part of the Austin Technology Incubator. I was told today by someone who has worked with Mr. Serface that he knows everyone in Austin in the Clean Energy space.  I thought it was interesting that Mr. Serface had been quoted in an article that was focused on EEStor and companies like it.  HHhhmm, I thought, Austin Energy Company expert goes to Kleiner Perkins....to do what exactly?   So, I got Mr. Serface on the phone and asked him, "Did Kleiner hire you to run their EEStor investment?"  Simple question, right?  I got alot of no comments but Mr. Serface did say that he was "not involved" with EEStor and that I should seek more information from EEStor or "someone more knowledgeable about the topic."  I said, "should I ask Bill Joy?"  "No Comment."   He was polite but I was clearly not on his agenda today which I'm alright with obviously.

When I originally called KPCB today, I picked someone randomly on the GreenTech team (look it up) and asked the receptionist if I could speak with them. The person I chose had a secretary that indicated he/she did not work on that investment.  I asked that secretary who I should instead talk with and she said, "hang on a second, we have a database...(long pause)...talk to Bill Joy. "  So apparently, what's on the website does not equate exactly to their internal database. 

So, I still felt like KPCB's secrecy about EEStor was strange.  Then I came across this article which talks about their investment in an electric car company from Norway called Think Global.  Their goal is to bring 50,000 EV's to the US late next year. TG uses lithium ion technology.  Now, it's not unusual obviously for anyone to hedge their investment bets.  But it did strike me as a little bit interesting that EEStor's two biggest investors are somewhat significantly competitors in the EV space.   Not a big deal?  Zenn Motor confirmed they had not been approached by KPCB for this initiative. 

All of this t left me wondering about the KPCB investment in EEStor and so I decided to go to the best source of info on this, Richard Weir, CEO of EEStor.  I just asked him directly if KPCB was still invested in the company and he said yes and that he is happy to be associated with them.  We went around the horn a bit and of course, as with everyone out there, I had to ask about the permitivity tests.  That's when a clue popped up that I hadn't expected. 

Blogger:  What about the permitivity testing? Is it going to happen?

Richard Weir: Everything here is quite going along exceptionally well. We're very happy with things. And things are going exceptionally well....as witnessed by the Lockheed Martin contract. What did Lockheed Martin say, "does it work?"  They said "yes".  Next, they were asked can they produce it?  They said "yes."  So there's your answer. "  

The conversation came to an abrupt end.  But I really started thinking about what he said here. This is my take.   If you ask him about the permitivity testing, he will cite the Lockheed Martin statements.  (He did this before in the prior interview. ) He seems to be holding up Lockheed as a quasi-third party entity that is not officially touting capabilities but nonetheless is doing so.  Granted, everyone is waiting for an independent 3rd party test and Lockheed is not the entity to do that. But for some reason today it clicked a bit more.  Everyone's been asking does EEStor have anything that works? If yes, can they mass produce it?  Richard Weir is saying Lockheed knows and has announced the affirmative to both.