Former Hulu VP Mark Richards Joins OnGreen As CTO

A Los Angeles startup that’s trying to become a cleantech mashup of AngelList, LinkedIn and Intellectual Ventures, OnGreen, today announced it has hired ex-Hulu, ex-Myspace vice president Mark Richards as chief technology officer.

According to OnGreen’s founder and chief executive officer, Nikhil Jain, while the site is currently running in English by the end of 2011 it will also launch in Chinese.

Among companies that have used OnGreen to seek funding so far, two hundred eighty in 7 categories of cleantech have reported raising a cumulative $150 million, Jain said. The thing is, OnGreen can’t take direct credit for any of that funding. The site still lacks accreditation and other features that will enable it to track its impact, and act as a direct broker down the line. For now, it is just a free marketplace for deals and investors.

The incoming CTO, Mark Richards, explained:

“While a green tech marketplace may have content that’s very different from [the entertainment content] I’ve worked with before, this is about scaling and becoming more international. I’ll be ensuring that OnGreen can handle multiple users in any location, and making sure we maintain high performance and reliability as we grow.

The technology foundation of OnGreen does not rely on an out of the box social code base. It’s all being developed in-house, with an extensive number of custom Drupal modules. We’ll be growing a full-time tech team to support and expand on this, both in China and the U.S.”