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Gala honors clean-tech start-ups

The 3rd annual Clean Tech Open Awards Gala honors the six winners who showed the most promise to launch a viable, clean energy solution.

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Kara Tsuboi Reporter
Kara Tsuboi has covered technology news for CNET and CBS Interactive for nearly seven years. From cutting edge robotics at NASA to the hottest TVs at CES to Apple events in San Francisco, Kara has reported on it all. In addition to daily news, twice every week her "Tech Minutes" are broadcast to CBS TV stations across the country.
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Watch this: Clean Tech Open entrepreneurs win big

It's pretty difficult to find free money these days. With the economy ailing and venture capital money as scare as a Republican sighting in Silicon Valley, it's pretty remarkable that the Clean Tech Open is offering $100,000 prize packages to six clean-tech start-ups.

To be clear, the founders and CEOs of these companies had to work a bit for their money. Forty-three finalists were selected across six categories and put through a mini-business school course load on how to run a company, how to raise money, and how to get a product out of the laboratory and into the marketplace.

The 3rd annual Clean Tech Open Awards Gala held Thursday evening in San Francisco honored the six winners who showed the most promise to launch a viable, clean energy solution. And yes, that prize is pretty sweet: $50,000 in cash and an additional $50,000 worth of business tools like legal and accounting services, public relations consulting, office space and other goodies that are considered part of the "start-up in a box" package.

Here are the six categories and their respective winners:

• Air, Water & Waste Award: Over the Moon Diapers

• Energy Efficiency Award: Viridis Earth

• Green Building Award: BottleStone

• Renewables Award: Focal Point Energy

• Smart Power Award: Power Assure

• Transportation Award: ElectraDrive