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It is 8am at Dublin's Westbury hotel and Hartnett is already frighteningly pumped up. He is on his second breakfast meeting of the morning, with a third pencilled in for 9.30am. His diary for the day maps out a blizzard of further meetings, before he is due to address a technology conference at UCD in the evening.
"I like to fit as much as I can into a work day," he beams.
Hartnett, who started his career on the shop floor of Wang computers in Limerick, now has a Grade A Silicon Valley pedigree. He made his name as head of worldwide sales for Palm, the handset maker whose PalmPilot device became a must-have for gadget-hungry business executives in the mid-1990s.
But in November, Hartnett made the surprise leap to become head of G24i, a green energy start-up. The company's idea is to make lightweight, flexible solar panels that can produce energy in lowlight conditions, and can even be incorporated into clothing.
G24i has secured up to $100m (€78m) in backing from investors including Morgan Stanley, the former investment bank. It is headquartered in California, although its manufacturing base is in Wales.
Would that be sunny Wales? Surely an odd choice to locate a cutting edge solar company? "The company chose Wales to demonstrate a point," says Hartnett.
"If you can prove the product in gloomy, cloudy Wales, you can prove it anywhere." Hartnett describes G24i's technology as being "solar without the sun". To prove his point, he whips out an A4-sized panel, about as thick as a piece of cardboard and as flexible as camera film. A green light glows in its corner: it has been producing power while stored in Hartnett's bag.
"No other company can claim that sort of capability," he says. "To be able to power people's equipment from dawn to dusk: that is a massive step forward from where solar technology is today. This product can work from 7am to 7pm. It can work in cloudy conditions and indoors, and it is light and flexible." According to Hartnett, the plan is to sell the technology to the makers of other products such as tents, consumer electronics goods, clothing and even the US military.
"It won't compete with the national grid," he says. "But it can compete with batteries.
We are personalising the whole solar experience. We're at the start of something great." When Hartnett picked up his Leaving Cert results in 1980, he was far from the start of something great. The rugbymad teenager was academically inconspicuous, and took a mundane job on the Wang assembly line in Limerick.
"I made a big mistake, but I made it early," says Hartnett. "I had no career planned out. The number one thing for me was rugby. But as soon as I started work, I realised: 'Wow, I am at the lowest end of the totem pole here. What am I going to do about it?' "I looked around and saw engineers and business people, and having no education was a real disadvantage. So I just turned that around." He attended night classes at the local university, gaining qualifications in marketing, finance and control systems.
"I finished work at 5.30pm and studied until 11pm every day. Eventually, I moved up the food chain. I became a technician, then a business analyst, and I left the company in 1989 and went to work for Digital (a computer company) in Galway." He then moved to Dublin, where he founded the international base for MetaCreations, a computer software company that worked closely with chipmaker Intel. Around 1996, the company asked him to move to Silicon Valley, but he initially turned down the offer.
"I resisted moving away from Ireland at first. I said: 'This is a global company, why can't I do this from Ireland?' But I soon realised that, at a certain level, you need to be able to walk the corridors of a company and deal with the politics of the business. Being there was very important," said Hartnett.
He upped sticks with his first wife, who worked for Intel, and moved the family out to California. He has been based there ever since. "I love the intensity of Silicon Valley and the energy you find there. It's very uplifting. The glass is half full, people are always looking up," he said.
In recent years, Hartnett has joined the ranks of Irish-American high society, and is now a regular on the green-tinted social circuit that stretches across America. He is also closely involved with the networking and philanthropic group, the American Ireland Fund, and acts as its contact in San Francisco.
His other hobby horse is the Irish Technology Leadership Group, a conclave of high-ranking Irish Silicon Valley executives, which acts as a sort of dating agency between Irish tech start-ups seeking cash and US venture capitalists.
ITLG, whose members include Intel vice-president Rory McInerney and technology company Cisco's Barry O'Sullivan, can open heavy duty doors for their Irish cousins. Next month, the group, which is backed by the Irish government and business names including entrepreneur Dermot Desmond, is bringing Irish companies such as Peter Conlon's social networking punt Ammado, out to California to pitch for cash.
It will also be honouring politician and Nobel Prize for Peace winner John Hume, and Wim Roelandts, whose Xilinx company employs 1,000 people in Dublin, at a special gala event.
"Putting a young Irish company in front of an audience of the top guys in Silicon Valley really takes the lid off that company's story. We are also getting brand recognition for Ireland Inc at the highest level. The cross section of companies we are taking over really shows the breadth and depth of Ireland's capabilities," says Hartnett.
He sits on the foundation board of the University of Limerick, his alma mater, and is also an investor in Atlantic Bridge Ventures, the Desmondbacked tech VC firm.
He says Irish companies need "to go for it" a bit more.
"There's sometimes a lack of ambition. We want to push companies to go all the way. Don't be looking for €1m when you should be looking for €10m." He says the tendency for successful Irish technology companies to seek trade sales, rather than make it big themselves, is a "fundamental flaw of the Irish economy".
"It means you don't build the Irish brands into global players. You can stand on the leg of FDI [foreign direct investment], but you also need to stand on your own leg. We need big Irish companies," he says.
When he's not obsessed with technology, Hartnett is fanatic about rugby. Munster rugby, to be precise. He founded Munster USA, which for the past two years has joined up with Setanta Sports to bring the Munster team out to America for a challenge match against the US national side.
"Maybe that's why I am so happy to be spending so much time in Cardiff. I was normally only ever there with a red jersey on my back," says Hartnett.
For now, though, his focus is on sewing up partnership deals for G24i, which plans to launch its first products in the first half of this year.
The company is chasing contracts with camera-makers to put solar panels on to carrier bags and clothing to enable wearers to use the energy to, for example, charge up their mobile phones. It is also focusing on the two billion people in the world who do not have access to a national grid, but also need somewhere to charge up their mobiles.
"The solar market is currently worth $20 billion. It is predicted to grow by 30% a year for the next decade. There is no other market in the world that is going to grow like this. It is the opportunity of a lifetime," says Hartnett.
Sounds like he has a powerful proposition.
The life of John Hartnett
VITAL STATISTICS Age: 46 Education: University of Limerick and Stanford University Home: Los Gatos, California Family: Married with four children, including a daughter from a previous marriage Favourite book: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, by Stephen Covey Favourite film: Gladiator
WORKING DAY About half of my time is spent in Silicon Valley and the other half is taken up with travelling in Europe and Asia. Right now, I'm focused on working closely with our research and development team.
DOWNTIME I'm a passionate rugby fan. Munster could win a third Heineken Cup, and I'll be there to celebrate it. I play golf badly, but I do own a golf course on the outskirts of France.
