A Kickstarter For Solar, With A Twist: Invest In Crowdfunded Solar Projects And Make Some Cash

Mosaic lets you pony up money for someone else’s solar panels. But it’s not just to help the environment, they’ll be paying you back from the money they make selling that clean energy–with interest.

It’s hard to come across cheery cleantech news these days. But Mosaic, a Bay Area startup that’s merging one of the most popular trends out there–crowdfunding–with solar and the promise of making some money, should provide some cause for celebration.

We first wrote about Mosaic in the summer of 2012, when the startup had just raised $2.5 million for what it was calling a “Kickstarter for solar”–a solar installation crowdfunding platform. The Kickstarter moniker didn’t really make sense at the time, when over 400 investors on the platform had raised over $350,000 to finance a series of rooftop solar installations in California, with the promise of getting paid back without interest in up to eight years. It was more like a Kiva for solar. Now that’s changed.

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