Oct. 2--The downbeat story in Thursday's Star Tribune about the job-slashing bankruptcy of construction equipment manufacturer Schwing America of White Bear Township is another painful reminder that we're in the very early stages of an economic recovery that probably won't lead to job growth until 2010.

Small business creates most new jobs. And it was good this week to spend time with capital-raising growth prospects.

Hope is always in abundance at the annual venture and finance conference of the Collaborative, the multi-venue bazaar that matches fledgling firms with investors.

There's a lot going on in renewable energy, as well as the Minnesota staples of med-tech and health care. The lineup included:

--Joel Cannon, the veteran entrepreneur behind Cannon Technologies and its "smart thermostat" and energy-saver switch for utilities, is back with TenKsolar, which already has 25 employees and expects revenue of as much as $7 million this year. Cannon is targeting owners of flat-roof commercial building for his "SolarMat," a modular system of panels that more efficiently converts sunlight to electricity and also reduces the heat load on the building, unlike other roof-attached solar products.

The TenKsolar panels and reflectors are attached to form a free-standing rack of panels that doesn't need fastening and requires less cleaning (www.tenksolar.com).

--Mark Gaalswyk, the Welcome, Minn., business builder behind Easy Automation, the feed software and automation outfit with 3,000 customers around the globe, is back with Easy Energy Systems, a manufacturer of pre-built ethanol production systems that are automated, self-contained and assembled like Legos.

Gaalswyk says Easy Energy's proprietary technology has successfully produced cellulosic ethanol from non-food feed stocks and that the modularized units solve logistical issues with smaller, economical units close to the bulky cellulosic feed stocks such as waste paper, wood and corncobs in rural America (www. easyenergysystems.com).

--Segetis, which raised $15 million from Khosla Ventures in 2007, is the Golden Valley-based "green chemistry" company that recently built a plant to prove it can produce on a large scale a variety of chemical products from renewable farm and forestry feedstocks (www.segetis.com).

--Doug Ruth, working with scientists formerly of Ecolab and H.B. Fuller, drew small crowds all day around a demonstration video for his new company, EarthClean.