Here's highlights from an article on the officers of OCTI....Energy company launches in Davis-Sacramento Business Journal - by Celia Lamb Staff writer
Two Sacramento-area investors have formed a publicly traded energy company in Davis to finance renewable power projects and buy energy efficiency technologies.
Octus Inc. (OTCBB: OCTI), which will do business as Octus Energy.
Its chief executive officer, Chris Soderquist, is a serial entrepreneur and business consultant. George Ecker, the chief financial officer, is president and director of Nova Mobility Systems, a three-year-old Carlsbad company that makes handheld computers.
Octus plans to work with commercial customers and public agencies, such as school districts, and install solar power systems and technology that reduces energy consumption, such as evaporative cooling systems and lighting controls. Customers would pay for the energy produced or make payments based on the reductions in their energy bills.
“The clients do not pay for the assets,” Soderquist said. “Instead they agree to share the savings, or they agree to share the power if it’s a power purchase agreement. We are almost like a master general contractor.”
For each project Octus would form a limited liability company composed of debt investors, tax equity investors and installers of solar power projects, climate control equipment or lighting systems.
The company also is evaluating a handful of energy efficiency technologies it wants to license or buy, Soderquist said. It’s seeking only technologies that are ready for market, not that require research and development, he added.
The $787 billion federal economic stimulus package enacted in February includes up to $11 billion for energy efficiency.
“That will help get a bunch of markets started,” he added.
By setting up shop in Davis, Octus is in close proximity to several energy research hubs, including the University of California Davis Energy Efficiency Center, the California Lighting Technology Center and the Western Cooling Efficiency Center.
On Feb. 24, Soderquist and Ecker signed three-year employment agreements with Octus Energy that pay each a base salary of $180,000 per year, which they will defer until the company can afford to pay them. Each received 15 million shares of the company’s common stock, totaling 69 percent of the 43.4 million shares outstanding.
Octus can use its shares to buy other companies and grow the business, Soderquist added.
Soderquist left his position as a partner in a venture capital fund managed by Chico-based Golden Capital Network to start Octus Energy.
“For a company that’s going to get started, he’s got the requisite experience, skill set and relationships to do that as well as anyone,” Golden Capital Network president and CEO Jon Gregory said of Soderquist.
Soderquist founded a Sacramento technology business consulting company in 2000 called eVentureLab, which he reorganized under the name Soderquist Group during the dot-com bust. He took over the management of the Technology Development Center, a West Sacramento technology business incubator, after the death in 2004 of his father, Charles Soderquist.
Also in 2004 he co-founded a luxury real-estate investment business called Crescendo, which he said raised $15 million to $20 million. Abercrombie Kent Inc. in Downers Grove, Ill. bought Crescendo last fall.
Soderquist, 40, met Ecker, 49, while assisting with the startup of Sierra Energy, a Davis company developing a technology to retrofit blast furnaces into energy generators. Ecker is an investor in Sierra Energy.
“I’ve been looking at energy-related businesses for several years now, just keeping abreast of things,” Ecker said. “To me it looks like one of the most dynamic areas you can be in now and for the foreseeable future.”
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