As I get caught up on various blogs I subscribe to, I’ve seen many suggestions, actions, and wonderful stories of help for Katrina victims this week. Most of the companies I’m involved in did something – ranging from contributing a percentage of September revenue to sending folks down to volunteer.
Rick Segal wrote about what one of his portfolio companies – which makes kits that enable light steel buildings – is doing. Money helps, but active deployment of new technologies to help is great leverage – both for this situation and in advance of the next inevitable disaster. My understanding is that Rick’s company GenesisTP is offering up the use of their facility at their cost to help enable the rapid creation of new buildings. Rick / GenesisTP aren’t looking to make money on this disaster – rather they are taking a longer term view around the value of the IP they are creating while getting real experience and exposure to disaster scenarios which they can then use to proactively sell their technology / IP in advance of the next catastrophe like this.