It's about time to put up a new Greentech Media Top Ten Startups. It's been hiding down here for months in it's quiet little corner, keeping to itself. Not really doing what a good top ten startups list should do - eliciting spit-takes of disgust and incredulity, nods of approval, or just annoying all the companies that didn't make the list. This was a nice list; diplomatic, catholic, well considered, self-satisfied. It had touched on all corners of the greentech universe and anointed fewer than a dozen companies some special status among the hundreds of peers. It launched with the site, back on September 4, and made for some decent reading, and was read. Especially the Bloom Energy entry. That remains one of the most read pages on our entire site. But now, as the new year begins, this list has grown a little mossy and some of these entries have a certain gamey smell to them (we almost had Imperium on the original list, which would definitely be smelly today, wouldn't it?). Were updating the list now, and we'll post it in two weeks. Here's what we're thinking so far:

1. don't worry about the order to begin with
2. come up with 30-40 companies that we like, for whatever reason
3. make sure they are in an area of the market we like/know anything about
4. then let's dwindle the list down to 10
5. then let's worry about the order

In no time we had a starter list, thanks to an analyst here who prefers to be known only as the one who wears the mask. He has selected for our review the following companies: Energy Efficiency, Demand Response, Advanced Metering, Green IT

• Fat Spaniel
• GridPoint
• Powerit Solutions
• Silver Spring Networks
• SmartSynch
• Verdiem

Storage and Portable Energy Tech

• Enstorage
• Deeya Energy
• Bloom Energy
• A123 Systems

Solar

• Ausra
• Brightsource
• Nanosolar
• Solaicx
• Recurrent Energy

Lighting

• LED Lighting Fixtures

Transportation

• Transonic Combustion

Small Hydro, Geothermal, Wind

• Nothing!

Biofuels

• Amyris
• Ceres
• LS9

We need more entries, and we need a real reason to love them. The original ten are considered automatically entered, and we've got these above. I would assume Ausra is going to make the final 10, and Tesla's probably going to drop down if not off the list (they are righting the ship, but are they really a top-ten anymore?). Some of the others on our original list just don't really set the world on fire, either. So there's room for a reshuffle. I'll be back with more thoughts on this as we work through it. Feel free to post any suggestions. Scott