Getting around

- by Stephen Gregory Lutsch

Wednesday Nov 9^th:

Today was interesting. I was able to make a few meetings and connections within the energy industry here in California. Setup a meeting with a friend of a friend for tomorrow. She has been working for the big utility provider PG&E for years and now just moved into an energy consulting position. I look forward to picking her mind and getting a better idea of how utilities work and perceive the renewable market. Also, to find out how we might partner with them instead of compete against them.

Then in the evening I met up with Magnus and Lasse from the Innovation Center Denmark to attend the Yammer tour event. Yammer is a 3 year old company that develops social networks for enterprise customers internally and externally. I must say the 3 hours of presentations were INCREDIBLY underwhelming! 

I mean wow. How can a three year old startup be SO boring and excited about mundane features. They announced the release of a news ticker (like Facebook), a watered down wiki system called "pages" (I believe) and collaborative same time editing for the pages (pretty useless). I am impressed at how boring and corporate a 3 year old startup can sound. 

Oh and not only were the features more than a little weak they were suppose to be demoing them. However the CEO simply played a pre-recorded video and talked about it! What is that all about. Not a little embarrassing to "demo" live features but not do a live demo for the audience during your big launch. They should keep that in mind next time.

So I am thinking "wow, you have to be kidding" and that I could not possible be the only one thinking how unimpressive this was, but no. I look around to see basically the whole room nodding in agreement and smiling! I must have missed something. I've worked in IT for over 7 years administering systems like this and network infrastructure so I HOPE the big deal is not what they talked about but rather the enterprise AD integration and auditing tools. I hope!

Oh and the company recently received 50 million dollars…yes $50,000,000 for this product. I guess if you say social media and app you get at least 20. I seriously do not understand but I am also not one of their high paying customers. 

Ok. Enough ranting and criticizing yammer. They are obviously doing something right. Besides that was just the first part of the evening. I have to give them two thumbs up for throwing a decent party afterwards. Good food and open bar plus some odd things (see photos) made for an entertaining rest of the evening. We Yammed it up the rest of the evening…we used verb variation of Yammer all evening. :)

Some pics from the night:

Thursday Nov. 10^th:

A good day today. I met up with Niki, whom I was introduced to through two good friends here in the bay area. She has worked in with PG&E for years and had tons of good advice. I meet her for lunch and she answered lots of questions but as the same time made me realize just how little i know about the energy industry. I have a ton more to learn if I want to build a business within this market. She also connected me with a Berkeley professor that has been working a ton on miro-grids here in the USA and China. I will meet him next week Thursday. 

It is crazy how quickly you can get in contact with people out here and the general attitude is very conducive to this. If you show a little interest and are not a jerk then people want to help and will often go out of their way. It does not feel like "networking" so much as meeting really interesting people that you want to know better.

Then it was such a gorgeous day I walked around a bit and snapped a few tourist pictures. Below.

In the evening I met Magnus from the Innovation Center Denmark and we took the  Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) to Berkeley for a panel discussion on clean tech entrepreneurship. Unfortunately, due to some protests or riots in Oakland our train was delayed. This meant a very crowded, warm slow train that put us at the discussion a little late. However we were not the only ones so I do not think we missed much. The three companies represented were working with printing rechargeable batteries Imprint Energy, Tenrehte, and Primus Power. Primus Power has generated lots of startup capital by applying and receiving grants. This strategy should not be overlooked when developing a clean tech business or research based company. Lots of government money out there.

After we grabbed some local and very unhealthy american food. Way too much of it. We definitely are still used to Danish prices and quantity served. There also happened to be an Oakland vs San Diego football game on so the bar was enthusiastic to say the least.

During this trip I have definitely seen how important building, maintaining and expanding a strong network of smart people can benefit you and them. Also, the importance of gaining traction with customers and revenue is so important before pitching to investors. Another key is the ability to "pivot". This could be related to my class in getting to plan "B". Your original plan is simply a set of assumptions and through customer validation you alter your business plan until eventually you, hopefully, get to a successful version. The idea is to go through these "pivots" quickly and cheaply to reduce your burn rate.