IPOs

The premature clean-tech IPO boom

Early-stage green technology companies are taking a page from the biotech playbook: IPO with little or no revenues. So far, it's not working.

A number of tiny, ambitious companies in a promising industry with a very small market are lining up to tap the public markets. It may sound like the biotech IPO boom of the 1990s, but this time it's firms in the clean tech industry filing S-1s faster than MORE

Skype's $200 million ad opportunity

The video chat service is mostly free, for now. But if Skype just tiptoes into the advertising business, its returns could be massive.

Apart from Google (GOOG), Skype may be the largest consumer site on the web without a banner ad. So when the company filed its prospectus with the SEC Monday in preparation for an initial public offering, I noted with interest that advertising was called out as one of MORE

Behind the hype on Tesla

Other than in the capital-raising department, Tesla has not succeeded yet.

I think it was the windmills that finally got to me.

I've been merely a passive observer of the Tesla (TSLA) phenomenon. I read Michael Copeland's outstanding cover story in Fortune two years ago. I saw my first Tesla, a fiery red Roadster, only a couple weeks ago. I've never met with the company or heard its pitch.

Then on Tuesday, MORE