I think double bottom line investing is here to stay. When we founded the company, not many people knew about it, and it's really enjoying a renaissance. I mean, I think it's moved from the periphery to the mainstream. I mean, a lot of people, for example, I don't have to tell people what double bottom line means anymore, and there's a whole...
kind of industry being created around impact investing and looking at both social and financial return. So I'm very happy about that and pleased that DBL can play a role in that. I would say that we still have to, just as we were talking a few minutes ago about cleantech, we still need to have more success stories because there's still people out there that will say, oh, you know, you shouldn't interfere with just making profits. making returns for your shareholders, you shouldn't infuse a social dimension into that because it might muck things up.
And the more positive stories like a Tesla or a SolarCity, Pandora is one of our investments that we can show, you know, actually you can do both and the two goals enforce each other, the better because that, you know, that will help people have a less, you know, bring less of a... assumption to the field that it somehow is a compromise. Well, the role of government in the clean tech sector is pivotal. It's not unique. A lot of people say, oh, it's just clean tech that has this big government overhang.
I mean, I was a life science investor for many years, and if you don't think the FDA plays a role in the outcome of life science investing, it really does. It isn't unique, but the thing about cleantech is that people care so much about it that the things that normally wouldn't get attention are on the front page all the time, which is both a blessing and a curse. It can be great because you've got this great power behind what you're doing, but it can also get you into some of these media wars that we've seen.
I would say that the jury is out on the government's financing of these cleantech programs. you know, cylinder being the bad case. You know, BrightSource, one of our portfolio companies, got a loan guarantee and is going to be flipping on a switch that will create a plant, a solar plant in the Mojave Desert that powers over 100,000 homes later this year. I mean, that's going to be a hugely positive story. So I think that when all is said and done, the government's role will be looked at as very positive.
And a lot of those loans, Tesla has already been a winner, will be seen... to have been not just good for policy and for job creation, but turned out to be pretty good investments. So I think a lot of the negativity was, again, its origins were more in a political view than possibly a reasoned financial one. But I know people disagree about that. But what's happening is that, unfortunately, because we are cutting back in terms of some of the government funding of cleantech, In the U.S., a lot of our companies are going to China because China is funding all manner of clean tech activity at both the national and the regional level.
And so that's where companies that are quite young in their kind of gestation are finding themselves in China a lot earlier than planned. And that's good for the company, but I'm not sure it's the right answer for the United States. Our firm only invests in U.S. headquartered companies, but what we are seeing is that a lot of our CEOs are spending a lot of time in China and that China is leading in some of the applications.
For example, we have a battery company that's a nickel-zinc company called Powergenics that makes a battery that's much better than lead-acid in a stop-start engine where it turns on and off instead of idling. And China, because people are buying cars for the first time, they don't want to have all of the pollution and climate change impact. They love this product, and Europe has laws about this.
And so this company is, you know, the poor CEO is flying between Brussels and China, and those are the two markets that are going to open up first, and then U.S. will be third. So it really does shift where the early adopter... juice is. And as we all know for young innovative companies, you've got to find those early adopters no matter where they are in the globe. When you're doing double bottom line investing, helping your companies navigate that public sector, private sector interface, a double bottom line approach really is essential.
And I think our CEOs, our management teams look to us to help them with that navigation because most of them don't know anything about the government. If anything, they've run the other way because they're entrepreneurial and they're very business oriented. But when you work with... your teams to show them how the government can be helpful and is a stakeholder just as a customer is a stakeholder in in the outcome of your work a lot of magic starts to happen and and so for example something as simple as moving and all of our companies move because they're growing can be a hugely positive experience on the double bottom line level because you can help your companies understand well you know if you move into a targeted area that needs jobs that has high unemployment, a lot of poverty, sometimes there are tax benefits or there are loans you can get or workforce training dollars and all the sudden that's real savings.
That's very easy to quantify for a management team and so if you can help companies, this is just one example, move into a low-income neighborhood, It can help the company, but a lot of good things start to happen in that neighborhood, just looking at cities across our country that have been revitalized because they've been able to attract entrepreneurial activity. And so I think what DBL likes to do and is helpful is in bringing that entrepreneurial economy to these neighborhoods and to these regions that really haven't benefited from it in the past. We often get asked, you know, do you have to turn down investments because they don't have a social dimension that's up to snuff or whatever? And the answer is no. We don't see trade-offs.
What we see are categories of investment that are inappropriate for venture capital that often have a social dimension. But it's not because of their social dimension. It's because... Maybe they're a family business or they're a lifestyle business or they don't, you know, the people don't want to maximize their growth. I mean, that's fine.
There are a lot of fabulous companies out there that do good that aren't big. But the model for venture capital is you invest in a small company, but you want it to get big. I mean, that's kind of how you get your exit. And so we have to turn down companies that... kind of don't fit that model.
But it isn't so much because of a social dimension. It's just because either they don't want to or we don't think that the business has the capacity to grow. And so what we like to say is that there's a social dimension in just about any company.
It's just perhaps you haven't found it yet. And we're like a muse. We help our management teams understand it's out there and give them some ideas about how they could. engage with the community or engage in a broader social context.
And then we start to work on that and let them build it with us. And what's fun is that a lot of times you can never predict what the business benefit will be. It comes later. It comes after you've actually done it.
And one example we have with Pandora is that we work with them to teach school. to teach music in a school that had no music budget. And they've been doing that now for five or six years, I think.
And when they needed help getting the royalty battle fixed, they were able to go to the mayor of Oakland. They're in downtown Oakland. That's where they're headquartered.
Who had been in Congress for many, many years, who helped them find a congressman in Congress at the time that was the appropriate committee chair. to lead a royalties discussion and that, you know, a year or two later turned into a law that everyone could live with. And throughout that whole process, they did not teach school in order to get that audience with the mayor.
I mean, that's not the kind of people they are. But the CEO did remark at the end of it all, you know, Nancy, I never knew that when we were teaching music at that school in Oakland, that it would help us on Capitol Hill. And that's really... kind of the sums up our work is that a lot of times you don't quite know what value you're built you're building in terms of reaching out and having a more multi-dimensional approach to your business that includes the public sector and NGOs and all of that but it's value nonetheless and it will come back to help you in ways that you can't predict.