Carbonoffcast.com aims to fight global warming by advancing the creation and adoption of products and services that do not emit CO₂ or other green house gasses. And to do it through individuals and business' contributions based on their carbon footprints, enabling a new kind of carbon neutrality.

We're different from other carbon offset programs

Like other carbon offset companies or programs, Carbonoffcast.com allows individuals and businesses to calculate the amount of CO₂ their activities produce, showing the carbon footprint. But there's where the similarity ends. Carbonoffcast.com takes contributions towards that carbon footprint and applies it to solutions to climate change problems.  Until Carbonoffcast.com, carbon offset programs have concentrated on projects like planting trees to take CO₂ back out of the air, or building renewable energy projects with existing technology (like solar or wind energy).  These are important remedies to today's unsustainable level of carbon pollution.

But instead of offering another remedy, Carbonoffcast.com is working on the cure.  Carbonoffcast.com takes offcast contributions and plugs them into the biggest, most effective machine for finding ways we can all live and work on this planet without creating too much carbon in the first place:  the free market economy.  With the right incentives, today's businesses and entrepreneurs will make the products and services that do not pollute but maintain or enhance the lifestyle we're accustomed to.

It's like the 'teach a man to fish' analogy.  Give a man a fish, he will eat for a day.  Teach the man to fish, and he'll eat for a lifetime.  By supporting solutions that don't pollute, carbon offset programs may someday not be necessary.

That incentive starts with your contribution to offcast your carbon footprint today.

We're different from venture capital investment companies

Like venture capitalists (VC's), Carbonoffcast.com raises money and uses it to fund companies with promising ideas for new products and services.  VC's look for investments that will give them the highest return, and are advanced enough in their business development to be less risky.  Venture returns are expected to be at least 100% (sometimes several times that), and funding amounts are usually $.5 million to several million dollars.  Venture capitalists are highly selective in their investments; only one or two out of thousands of businesses or ideas are funded.  There are venture and angel capitalists that focus on greentech - companies working on solutions for climate change.  This is very good.  But there's also a very good chance that the best solutions climate change may be overlooked by these investment vehicles because they focus on monetary, not environmental returns.

Investment formula

Carbonoffcast.com may look at companies or technologies that are also of interest to angel investors and VCs,, but weighs more heavily the strength of potential positive carbon reducing impact instead of sheer potential monetary return.  VC's expect the maximum return on their investment, in one aspect only: $$.  Their (simplified) formula for picking companies to invest in consists of the potential earnings growth, and risk factors to those earnings.  The higher the earnings potential and the lower the risk, the more likely a match for VC's.  On the other hand, carbonoffcast.com raises money from contributions, not from investors like VC's.   That opens a lot of flexibility to invest differently; with a different formula.  For us, success is not measured in % return like VC's, but is measured in clean products getting out to the market place to make a difference and contribute to the market viability of clean technology in different ways. The highest measure of success for carbonoffcast.com is the amount of CO₂ that funded companies prevent from contributing to global warming.

Scale

VC's have billions of dollars to invest, and need to reduce overhead and management costs on that money to protect their returns.  This leads to their typically investing from $2 million to several million dollars per investment.  This fits their purpose well but there are a lot of companies with promising products/services/technologies that need early stage financing - they don't need that much money yet.   In fact, the most innovation is occurring at much smaller organizations.

We're different from Angel Investors

Carbonoffcast.com's funding model differs from Angel investors primarily in the same ways that we differ from venture capital. With carbonoffcast.com, environmental benefits trump pure financial return prospects, and an ownership stake is not required.

Angel capital comes from individual wealthy investors who prefer providing mentorship and experience to the companies they invest in. This differs from venture capital, where money is managed as a fund and the venture firm's managers have a more active role in their investments. Angels often invest in the same startups as venture firms, but at much lower funding levels.

Like both venture and angel investors, Carbonoffcast.com works actively to ensure that the companies that get funding succeed. Carbonoffcast.com has established a panel of experts in the business/functional areas of finance, accounting, legal advice, marketing, public relations, sales and operations. This panel is instrumental in guiding those with the environmental, scientific or technological innovations in what it takes to succeed as a business.