Max Dunn's Web Site

Resume

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 18:08:18 Z

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Max S. Dunn II

Profile

Driven by my passion to move the world towards clean energy, I have immersed myself in the study of peak oil, climate change, sustainable energy and electric vehicles. Combining my people and technical skills, I have been responsible for the financial results of four companies and have 15 years experience starting, managing and selling high-tech companies and 20 years of experience managing development teams both within the U.S. and offshore.

Lifelong Learner: Received MBA in Sustainable Management. Participant in numerous conferences and classes in electric vehicles and sustainable energy. Prodigious reader.
Technology Industry Knowledge Knowledgeable in renewable energy, battery technology and electric vehicles. Expert in web technology, drivers, hardware interfacing and user interfaces. Managed development projects that utilized Ruby on Rails, J2EE, JSP, Java, Postgres, Tomcat, C++, Pascal.
Fundraising and M&A Proficient at writing business plans and working with capital-funding networks of VC, angel, and institutional investors. Talent for finding buyers of companies and negotiating mutually agreeable M&A terms.
Visionary Proven ability to identify technologies and solutions that meet market requirements. Concept and development of five software and hardware products that created the core of four successful high-tech companies.
Executive Leadership Highly proficient at building and motivating a broad set of functional teams. Expert in time management, leadership and management techniques. Extensive experience with offshore development teams accommodating cultural differences while maximizing communication and productivity.
Relationship Building Skills Excellent interpersonal skills with an ability to develop strong relationships at any level, including a talent for working with engineers and others with technical backgrounds. A good listener with a sincere objective to resolve issues that lead to win-win results.
Third Party Relationships Initiated contact with Oracle and SAP that resulted in $3.5 million sales. Licensed technology to IBM. Managed successful third party relationships with SAS, Blackboard and Stellent.

What I Am Looking For

My ideal job would have this weighting:

30% Passion. My passion is to help the world move towards clean energy, especially electrifying our transportation
30% Challenge. I need to be challenged in my job and learn new things
30% People. I enjoy working with talented, emotionally intelligent people
10% Pay. I want to be paid fairly

Timeline

Education

Presidio School of Management

MBA In Sustainable Management: May 2011
Concentration: Electric vehicles and vehicle-to-grid (V2G)
Activities: Student Representative, Entrepreneur Club Chair

Projects:

University of California, Santa Cruz

BA Computer and Information Science: Graduated with Honors

University of California, Berkeley

Engineering Physics: Three years of study

Other Educational Experiences

Professional Experience

RealMealz

RealMealz helps people eat healthier by providing online meal planning for fast, easy and healthy meals.

CTO: May 2011 to present

Roles: Responsible for creating the site architecture, database schema, server deployment and scaling.

Achievements: Created the site using Ruby on Rails, JQuery, CSS and MySQL. Did scaling tests on Amazon EC2, RackSpace and Heroku. Deployed on Heroku using Amazon S3 for picture storage and Amazon CloudFront for static asset caching.

Xythos Software

Xythos develops simple document and file management software, designed to reduce the cost and improve the security of managing and sharing enterprise information.

Vice President of Product Management: September 2003 to April 2005

Roles: Responsible for the direction of all existing Xythos products, conceiving new product ideas and guiding the development, testing and release of the company's products.

Achievements: Turned around the product planning process from being developer driven to focusing on customer and market needs. Designed a more mature development process that included feature specification and development and release milestones. Directed the release process for WFS 4.2, which was the company's first on-time release. Established a user interface committee and initiated a customer forum. Researched various compliance regulations including Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), HIPAA, Sec Rule 17, 21 CFR Part 11, Common Criteria EAL, DoD 5015.2 and wrote specifications on what functionality was needed to be fill these requirements. Independently learned and wrote Java code using a new installer technology that was lauded and adopted. Rewrote the Xythos product demos to focus on benefits and real business use cases which became the company standard. Managed relationships with SAS, Blackboard, Stellent and other consulting partners. Identified, researched and guided acquisition of the technology behind the Xythos workflow engine. Participated in trade shows, gave webinars and spoke at seminars.

Vice President of Client Technology: July 2002 to September 2003

Roles: Responsible for the development of the WebFile Server Client product. Managed a full time off-shore development team, provided product direction, technical sales support and managed OEM relationships.

Achievements: Coordinated the OEM customization for Stellent and managed the relationship resulting in $750k of license fees from 2002 to 2004. Reinitiated contact with Oracle and SAP that lead to a technology license of $3.5 million. Managed an offshore team of 7. Identified and mentored my replacement who successfully took over all responsibilities of the client technology.

TeamStream, Inc

The mission of TeamStream was to connect virtual teams online. TeamDrive, the company’s flagship product, turned the Internet into a securely shared hard drive. Sold all assets to Xythos in 2002.

Founder and CEO: February 2000 to September 2002

Roles: Conceived product, raised funding, directed offshore development, managed local team, sold assets to Xythos.

Achievements: Conceived product, name and slogan. Negotiated, reviewed and assisted writing various legal agreements including: asset purchase, license, escrow, joint development, etc. Directed offshore development team of 7 which saved approximately $600k. Raised $365k. Guided TeamStream through the dot-com crash by cutting expenses drastically and maximizing every revenue potential while not missing a payroll and eventually selling the company for terms which preserved the investors investments.

Euclio s.r.o.

An offshore development company located in the Czech Republic that developed hardware and software computer security products, web utilities and Internet virtual drive technology. Sold to Xythos in 2002 and became Xythos Czech s.r.o.

Owner: 1999 to 2002

Roles: Founder and owner.

Achievements: Researched locations for an offshore company and selected the Czech Republic because of its good infrastructure, availability of technical people and low costs. Recruited the initial manager and development team. Setup financial controls and communication methods. Successfully sold the hardware IP developed there along with the development staff. Later, sold the company to Xythos which continues to grow this company and use it for product development, QA and international marketing.

MaxLock

MaxLock developed computer and Internet security products. Its popular WebPasskey program, which automatically filled in password and contact information on web pages, was sold in 2000 to iChoose and the rest of its assets, including its high-performance IP core products, were sold in 2001 to CAST.

Founder and President: 1997 to 2001

Roles: Founded this company and managed its development, sales and marketing. Found buyers for its technology and negotiated their sale.

Achievements: Conceived WebPasskey, MaxLock encryption board and high-performance PCI cores. When the lead hardware developer left, took over debugging of MaxLock board and successfully completed it. Moved development offshore to Euclio, which saved approximately $300k. Transitioned hardware developers from schematic entry to VHDL. Licensed Netscape form-fill technology to IBM. Sold WebPasskey to iChoose in 2000. Sold IP core to CAST in 2001.

Micro System Designs, Inc

MSD developed and marketed several software and hardware solutions for floppy disk duplication. It was the leading supplier of PC-based floppy duplication products in the 90s. The assets were sold to CopyPro in 1999 while the staff formed the basis of TeamStream.

Founder and President: 1988 to 1999

Roles: Founded this company and initially did all the work including conceiving and developing its products, designing its sales and marketing programs and doing its accounting. As the company grew, hired and managed staff to perform these functions, then negotiated its sale.

Achievements: Conceived DiskDupe software and the Allegro controller board. Wrote most of the code for DiskDupe using object oriented techniques and low-level hardware interfacing. Managed the creation and production of the Allegro controller. Developed the world's first quad-speed simultaneous double-sided (4xSDS) floppy drive controller. Solicited and negotiated OEM licenses with the majority of diskette autoloader manufacturers worldwide including Trace, CopyPro, Rimage, Champion, Ashby, Mission Six and LSK Data Systems.

InsMark

InsMark provided life insurance illustration software to life insurance companies and agents.

Director of Operations: 1985 to 1988

Roles: Responsible for the development, support, QA, and production of the company's products. Assisted with trade shows, seminars and prospect presentations.

Achievements: Was the fourth employee of InsMark and participated in the growth to over 30 employees and $5 million in revenue. Rewrote product in Turbo Pascal and developed a template mechanism to facilitate creation of new illustrations. Built and managed a team of 9. Hired, trained and mentored the person that eventually became the president of InsMark.

Business

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 17:59:58 Z

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Business

Max Dunn studied Engineering Physics at UCB before completing his undergrad degree in Computer Science degree from UCSC. He then founded, ran and sold four high-tech companies ranging from floppy disk duplication to internet document management. Afterwards, he took some time off to be with his kids, surf, learn Ruby on Rails, take classes, read books and study clean tech. He then completed his Sustainable MBA degree at Presidio Graduate School and is now working at RealMealz.

Timeline

It can be hard to look at a list of dates and understand how they combine to make an entire timeline. So here is a graphical representation of what I have been doing.

What I Am Looking For

My ideal job would have this weighting:

30% Passion. My passion is to help the world move towards clean energy, especially electrifying our transportation
30% Challenge. I need to be challenged in my job and learn new things
30% People. I enjoy working with talented, emotionally intelligent people
10% Pay. I want to be paid fairly

Blog: Linus Pauling Letter

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 20:54:16 Z

Today I stumbled across this letter that the famous scientist, Linus Pauling, wrote to my granddad back in 1949 asking for some chemicals. Pretty cool!

Professor Max S. Dunn
Department of Chemistry
University of California at Los Angeles
Los Angeles,
California

Dear Professor Dunn:

As part of our researches on the structure of proteins we are starting a systematic quantitative chromatographic determination of the peptides and other products which result from the partial hydrolysis of proteins. Preliminary to the investigation, it will be necessary to collect data concerning the behavior on the chromatographic column of a very great variety of simple peptides of known composition. It occurred to me that as a result of your long experience in the preparation, purification, and characterization of amino acids and peptides you might have in your laboratory samples of simple peptides, small quantities of which could perhaps be made available to us. Although we should probably require 100 milligrams or more of a peptide in order to explore thoroughly its chromatographic characteristics, we could get a great deal of very helpful and valuable information from amounts as small as 10 to 20 milligrams.

I recall that at one time it was possible to purchase small quantities of amino acids specially prepared and purified in the UCLA Laboratory. I wonder if this is still possible, and if so, whether it extends to preparations of peptides.

I shall indeed be grateful for any help you can give us, or for any suggestions you may make concerning possible reliable sources of well-characterized peptides for this work.

Sincerely yours,

Linus Pauling

OpenTOK

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 04:07:49 Z

Bios

Mon, 26 Sep 2011 17:39:54 Z

Bios

Here are a few different bios of varying lengths.

Bio 1

I studied Engineering Physics at UCB before completing my undergrad degree in Computer Science degree from UCSC.I then founded, ran and sold four successful high-tech businesses ranging from floppy disk duplication to internet document management. Afterwards, I took some time off to be with his kids, surf, learn Ruby on Rails and study clean tech. I then completed my Sustainable MBA degree at the Presidio Graduate School and am now starting up a vehicle-to-grid (V2G) company, Grid REVolution.

Bio 2

Max Dunn studied Engineering Physics at UCB before completing his undergrad degree in Computer Science degree from UCSC. He then founded, ran and sold four successful high-tech businesses ranging from floppy disk duplication to internet document management. Afterwards, he took some time off to be with his kids, surf, learn Ruby on Rails and study clean tech. He is now halfway through a Sustainable MBA degree at the Presidio Graduate School.

Bio 3

I guess you could call me a serial entrepreneur since I started, ran and sold 4 high-tech companies. I sold my last company and worked as an employee for 3 years before retiring in April 2005. Now I discovered Ruby on Rails so I am returning to my first love programming.

I like RoR so much I am organizing an RoR Camp on November 9th in San Jose, California. http://www.rubyonrailscamp.com

Oh, and I like to surf, mountain bike, and just hang out with my family. http://www.maxdunn.com

ED: EVS in the Smart Grid

Fri, 09 Sep 2011 01:04:13 Z

Electric Vehicles in the Smart Grid

-- Special Speaker: The Honorable George Shultz, Former US Secretary of State

Mr. George Shultz will address national security implications of relying on (and the importance to reduce our reliance on) foreign oil, and the need to focus on innovation and technological progress as a means to reducing that threat.

-- Moderator: John Addison, Author, Publisher, www.cleanfleetreport.com

-- Rob Bearman, Director of Global Alliances, Energy & Utilities Group, Better Place
-- Richard Lowenthal, Founder & CTO, Coulomb Technologies
-- Trae Vassallo, Partner (Fisker Automotive), Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
-- Saul Zambrano, Director Integrated Demand Side Management Product Portfolio Lead, PG&E
-- Mike Wojcik, Enterprise Data Sales Director, Verizon Wireless

Electric Vehicles (EVs) coming to the Smart Grid is inevitable. Political support, technology maturity, and cost structures are converging to propel EVs into the mass market. Yet, questions around the ability of the Smart Grid to reliably handle EVs remain unanswered. Furthermore, for EVs to be successful, wireless communications networks, technology and applications will be required.

With EVs consuming double the energy per year of an average home and requiring charging infrastructure to be deployed, how will the growth of EVs impact the Smart Grid?
How will wireless networks and applications evolve to support the EV industry and the needs of their owners?
With the EV market expected to grow exponentially over the next few years, how do entrepreneurs take advantage of the opportunity? What enabling capabilities and conveniences can be delivered by wireless technologies?

WCA presented a panel of EV and Smart Grid experts representing electric vehicle manufacturers, EV infrastructure visionaries, service providers, and other stakeholders and discussed the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead. The Honorable George Shultz gave his presentation, followed by "Electric Vehicles in the Smart Grid" panel discussion.

Rob Bearman, Better Place

Cell phone model, own the battery and sell miles
Battery swapping the exception, most only switch a dozen times a year. This is not the most integral part of their business model
The core of BB is the smart charge algorithm
- Communication in real time with every asset of infrastructure: Cars, battery, charge spots, battery switch stations. Balance needs of charging with the energy grid supply and pricing.

Trae Vassalio, Partner Kleiner, Perkins

Kleiner invested in Fisker, Silver Springs. OPower, EnPhase

Saul Zambrano, PG&E

Coastal utilities, in particular, are concerned with clustering of EVs
Without smart charging, PG&E will have to start overinvesting to beef up their grid
PG&E has been precluded from integrating with EVs

Richard Lowenthall, Coulomb

Coulomb provides everything you need to provide EV charging services
High growth rates: Currently manages 140mWh in July 2011, 1GWh in 3 years
170M cars can be charged without adding power plants by using peak load management (DOE)
V2G and vehicle to home
Their charging stations have 6 interfaces: Zigbee to talk to smart meters, mesh to talk to each other, CDMA to talk to Coulomb servers, RFID to talk to smart card, NFC for cell phone authorization.

Panel Discussion

Trae: 0.5 to 5M EVs by 2015
Rob: EVs great way to stabilize the grid since each one is about one house worth of load and is flexibly charged
Saul: Cost PG&E $70k to upgrade neighborhood transformer to handle 2 Teslas.
Richard: Actually, electrician will need to upgrade panel and then PG&E will be alerted and won't allow it until transformer is upgraded

Continuing Education

Fri, 09 Sep 2011 00:29:54 Z

Continuing Education

Here are some classes, seminars, conferences and workshops I have recently attended:

September 8, 2011
EVs in the Smart Grid
July 14-17, 2011
Cleantech Academy 2011
July 12, 2011
TRIO Utiility Energy Symposium
Spring 2009 - Fall 2010
Presidio Sustainable MBA
November 3, 4th, 2010
GreenBeat 2010
September 28-October 29, 2010
GCEP Symposium 2010
July 27th-29th
Plug-In 2010 Conference
July 23-25, 2010
CleanTech Academy: Day 1, Day 2
May 5, 2010
Electric Car 2.0
April 7, 2010
Electric and Fuel Cell Vehicle Showcase
February 2nd, 3rd, 2010
Grid ComForum
December 2, 2009
Nissan Leaf Electric Car
November 13, 2009
CleanTech Conference: SmartGrid
September 30-October 2, 2009
GCEP Symposium 2009
June 25, 2009
PlugandPlayTechCenter: CleanPlay Conference
April 9, 2009
PARC: Google Clean Energy
March 19, 2009
PARC: ElectraDrive - The Case For Electric Traction
February 26, 2009
PARC: Distributed Solar Generation
February 13, 2009
Long Now Foundation: Social Collapse Best Practices
January 20, 2009
VLAB: Upside of the Downturn
January 16, 2009
Long Now Foundation: Climate Change Recalculated - Saul Griffith
Fall 2008
Sustainable Design
Fall 2008
Woods Institute - Energy Seminars
November 18, 2008
VLAB: Electric Vehicle Infrastructure
October 20, 2008
Sustainable Stanford and tour of Y2E2
October 1-3, 2008
GCEP Research Symposium 2008
Summer 2008
Sustainable Energy
July 21-25, 2008
Plug-in 2008 Conference
July 16, 2008
Social Entrepreneur Workshop
Spring 2008
Resource Wars
Spring 2008
Woods Institute - Energy Seminars
May 1, 2008: All day
Stanford Energy Crossroads Conference: From Vision to Action: Sparking Global Change
May 7, 2008: 1 - 7pm
Berkeley-Stanford Clean Tech Conference: Big Solar - Utility Scale Solar Power Generation
Winter 2008
Compass Journey
May 2007
Ruby on Rails Conference

Blog: MaxBars

Sat, 27 Aug 2011 18:59:57 Z

I used to eat a lot of Balance Bars but got tired of paying $1 each. So I came up with my own recipe for gluten-free bars and, naturally, call them MaxBars. Sometimes they actually turn out okay and occasionally friends will ask for the recipe, so here it is:

Ingredients:

2 cups non-gluten oats
2 cups corn meal
2 cups protein powder
1 cup sugar
1/3 bag of chocolate chips
2 cups peanut butter
Some soy milk

Directions:

Add all the dry ingredients to a powerful mixer and mix them up a little. The actual amount is not very important and you can substitute freely. Use more sugar for tastier ones; eliminate the chocolate chips for more utilitarian bars you will only eat when really hungry.

Next, heat up the peanut butter until runny and blend it in. Finally start adding the soy milk slowly and stop just when the mixture starts to ball up. It is important to not add to much soy milk, otherwise, the mixture gets sticky and hard to work with. Enough soy milk has been added when the mixture will just hold together when squeezed.

Butter a cookie sheet, cutting board and square or rectangular cookie cutter. Mold the dough on the cutting board about 1 inch thick. Cut out the pieces and move to cookie sheet. Bake at 225 for one hour.

Comment

A new record! 15 minutes from start to end, including cleanup (but not baking time). It costs about $10 in ingredients to make them versus buying BalanceBars for about $30. So the $20 savings for 15 minutes of time works out to $80 per hour - not bad!

CTO: Academy 2011

Sun, 17 Jul 2011 00:56:58 Z

Cleantech Open Academy 2011

Geoffrey Moore

New Book: Escape Velocity
The world is moving on and we're stuck
Each of the technology stages require a different model
- Models: Solutions, products, systems, maintenance
Scale: Complex vs volume both have sweet spots but energy falls outside
Startups always starts with complex model: direct sales force, custom solutions, etc
Arc of execution needs to go: Project -> Solutions -> Products -> Systems
Cross chasm: Find mission-critical segment-specific customer, create solution, domain expertise and high price

Randy Komisar

Partner: Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
Books:
- Getting to Plan B
- The Monk and the Riddle
Silicon Valley has embraced a culture where failure is learning
Many businesses make the mistake of sticking to their plan rather than looking at what assumptions were wrong and correcting course.
If VC involved in a business, they will be driving to liquidity, which might be totally opposite from how we want to run our business
Don't ever take money from someone that hasn't had to make payroll
MBA investors bet on the numbers, he bets on the people
Debt is "hamburger helper". However, with too much debt you can't course correct because the bankers are in control.
(Randy's last year presentation about Plan B has some great info too)

Business Plan Essentials

Speakers:

Tom Kosnik: Stanford Technology Ventures, teaches entrepreneurship at Stanford
Elizabeth Sumary Rubio: CEO StorWatts, was in Cleantech Open last year
Adam Rentschler: One of 3 judging co-chairs, 3rd CEO gig, high tech, some VC

Discussion:

Moving from traditional business plan to worksheets submitted online
Executive summary most important, most VCs won't read more than 2 pages, they don't even want to see a business plan
However, globally, you need a full business plan
Guy Kawasaki: "The Zen of Business Plans"
- Focus on executive summary
- Have the best author write it and get input from team. Don't assign sections because it will look choppy.
- Do the pitch first
- Keep it clean: don't use acronyms and
- Limit financial projects and key metrics to one page. Just cash flow statement for 5 years.
- Write deliberate: pretend we are sure of the future, don't say we are going to adapt or pivot.
Judging
- Market validation and Understanding
- Product/Solution
- Business Model
- Industry Atractiveness
- Team
- Presentation Quality (10%, rest are 18%)
Exec summary
- Cut out words - make it short
- Fire your biggest shots
- Start off with a compelling story of pain
- Don't summarize plan
- Highlight IP
- Shine light on team, quickly tell education but also significant milestones
Business plan
- Avoid jargon, choose verbs carefully, avoid adjectives
- Review with multiple audiences
- Commit to memory
- Market size is key investment criteria
- Competitve advantage chart must tell investors why you will win
- "Bottom up" more important than "top down"
- Product: the more real the more credible, show it, photograph it, demonstrate it!
- The business model is the business plan
- Financials can't help you - they can only hurt
- Early year financials, don't build and account system - just be able to answer questions
- End state financials must approach market benchmarks
- Know Plan B financial projections
Winning plans
- Get out of building and talk to stakeholders
- A big opportunity
- Credible team
- Technology or execution differentiation
- Identified customers
- Go-to-market strategy
- No red lights
- 10 or 20 pages, rest in appendix
Pitch
- Whats the problem?
- How do you solve it?
- How big is the market? (Get it right)
- Show me!
- Risks and mitigation
- Other: Defensibility, team, how to get there, summary of numbers, summary of capital need
- Let team introduce themselves and answer questions

Patents and Trade Secrets

Speakers from Wilson Sonsini

Suzanne Bell: IP Technology Transactions, Clean Tech
Peter Eng: Patent Counseling

Discussion:

Issues: Conflicts with rights of former employers, assignment of founder's rights, other contributors, third party rights.
Trade Secrets: Need confidential markting, agreements, physcial, data.
Patents: Apparatus, process, business methods, designs.
Provisional patents are not examined but are simply placeholders. A utility patent needs to be file later.
Patent filing timing is critical: if you miss the year deadline it is gone
However, if you don't know how to get to the end results, don't file. Wait until you have a high-level of confidence that solution will work.
A provisional patent needs as much technical detail as a utility patent
Canada and US has 12 month grace period, rest of world there is no grace period
If you blow it, can file an improvement patent
Demonstrating or showing a product without an NDA constitutes use
Patents cost $5k to $10k
Patents are a right to exclude but not a right to practice. If there is a super-set patent, it can trump it.
Government grants
- Generally don't require IP rights. Large businesses need a waiver. Small business need to disclose and file patent, otherwise the government has the right to file.
- The government retains right to license back, but this is usually not an issue. March-in rights haven't also been practiced
- There is usually a US manufacture clause, but this can be worked around
- If using subcontracter, need to have them assign rights to us

Finding and Understanding the Customer

Speakers:

Christina Ellwood: Founder/CEO, Moreland Associates
Tom Kosnik: Stanford

Market traction milestones
- eureka (idea),
- cha-ching (first sale),
- Two thumbs up (first applause in target segment),
- momentum (explore multiple segment, pick one),
- building buzz,
- market traction
Beachhead should be large enough to matter and small enough to dominate
Make list of buyers in pain that my product will solve
Cardinal rule for startups: Think big. Start small. Move Fast.
Your target market segments are not those that could buy and use your product. Rather, those that require your key differentiation.

Building an Investor-worthy Financial Model

Speaker: John Pimentel, Whiate Hat Renewables (with input from Steve Vassallo of Foundation Capital)

Key elements
- Build store from bottom up -> why is it a good idea and how will it make money
- 5 year projections
- Monthly perspective to Cash Flow Break Even
- Shows expected additional capital raises
- Calls out key assumptions and risks
Specifics to include
- Sales forecasts
- Growth rate
- Gross Margins
- Free Cash Flow
- Headcount staffing plan
- Balance sheets
Context of Business? Traditional margins? Why are we better?
CFBE = Cash Flow Break Even
Call out important issues on financial spreadsheet
Sensitivity analysis: Prices, unit volumne, COGS, financing
Sanity Check?
- Is market large?
  - Are multiples attractive?
  - Is market share assumption reasonable?
- Reasonable growth rates for revenues?
- Thoughtful and complete breakdown of costs?
- Benchmark margins to comparables?
- Identify risks and how to mitigate?
Layout assumptions and summaries up front

Term Sheets

Speakers: Armando Castro, Matt Oshinsky

Raise enough to hit milestones so next valuation is 3x previous one.
#1 term is "liquidation preference" meaning they get paid before anyone else. Most deals it is 1x, where they get paid what they put in. In distressed situations, could be more.
"Participating" means after liquidation, then continue to get paid
Cumulative dividends rare on west coast, more common on east coast
Adjustments
- Anti-dilution
Who controls?
- The faction that controls the board controls the company.
- Investors will always be open to strong, independent directors
- Sometimes can negotiate a board observer in non-voting capacity
Blocking Rights: Stockholder
- Future financines
- merger
- redemptions/dividends
- modifying the board
Other stock terms (refer to your attorney)
- Optional and mandatory conversions
- Redemption rights
- Pay to Play
- Registration Rights
- Financial Reporting and Inspection Rights
- Pro Rata Participation Rights
For small rounds ($500k) investors mght ask for super pro-rata rights
Should I take this personally?
- Vesting
- Rights of first refusal & co-sale
- Drag Along
- Lock-ups
- Employment agreements, Non-Competes and Non-Solicits
Closing the deal
- Expiration
- No Shop (Usually required, means shopping the term sheet)
- Syndication (Ride along financing, usually agreeable)
- Due Diligence
- Definitive Documentation (takes 2-4 weeks from term sheets to deal)

Investor Pitch - The Essence of Telling Your Company's Story

Speaker: Andrew Chung, Principal, Lightspeed Venture Partners

What to present to a VC?
- Mission statement
- Management team
- Market
- Technology
  - Overview/value prop
  - Competitive differentiation
  - Economics
  - Timeline
- Operations
  - Sales pipeline
  - Distribution
  - Policy/regulation issues
- Financials
  - Projections
  - Fundraising needs
Can be in different order
Mission
- Introduction to who you are
- Why should they care
Management team
- Can be up front of in back
- Should show balanced skillset (at least over time): deep technology, industry execution, entrepreneural
- Problem if not diverse, like 4 MBAs
- Don't go too simple or too complex: Include relevant, but complete, info: academic, positions, accomplishments
- List key hires needed
Market
- Lightspeed looks for a market that supports a $500M company with a $1B+ market
- High growth
- Potential to dominate
- Ability for startups to compete
- Don't spend too much time explaining a familiar market
- Have clarity on targetted segments and true addressable market
Technology
- What is the product you are offering?
- Concise, but sufficient background
- Technology that is IP-rich and defensible
- Clear value prop to customer
- Make sure product is described clearly, early
- Be sure to tailor the technical depth to audience
Tech differentiation
- Approach, performance, cost, stage
- Thoughtful understanding of the competition
- Make sure not a me too technology
- Don't assume our approach is unique
Economics
- Does product make economic sense? Production cost, capex
- For incremental tech, ability to compete with existing
- For displacment tech, ability to achieve significant cost improvement
- Be aware the industry costs are moving targets
- Be sure to understand sensitivities with feedstock price, subsidies, etc.
Timeline
- Development roadmap
- Technical progress made to date
- Key future milestones and risk assessment
- Key capital requirements needed
- IP portfolio development plan
- Many investors don't like time-to-market greater than 3 eyars
- Don't like lengthy design-in time requirements
- Don't like dependence on other emerging technologies
Ops: Sales and Distribution
- What is go to market strategy.
- Review of sales pipeline, MOUs, etc
- Potential engagement with channel partners
- Don't like long sales cycles
- Don't like long payback/ limited ROI for end-customers
- Fragmented customer base
Ops: Policy/regulations
- Which drive our business?
- How will they evolve?
- Associate risks and sensitivities
Financials
- Recent results
- 3-5 projections
- Debt
- Problem if too aggresive or too conservative
- Know sensitive to externals
Fundraising needs
- How much and why?
- Funding history
- Total target raise
- Amount available to new VCs
- Use of proceeds and milestones
- Board seat?
- Valuation?

CTO: Academy Day 1

Fri, 15 Jul 2011 21:41:26 Z

CleanTech Open Academy Day 1

July 23rd, 2010

Academy Resources

Creating Sustainable Clean Tech Ventures

Nancy Fell
Morgan Rider
Richard (Dick) Franklin

Getting to Plan B

Randy Komisar: Partner, Kleiner Perkins

Financial spreadsheet necessary for success but won't get us there
Start with a problem. He often sees people walk in with a solution to no problem.
Define problem in a crisp sentence
Solution needs to be unique and defensible
Analog - Antilog. Analogs - similar things that worked (Sony Walkman), Antilog - similar things that failed (Napster)
Clean tech like efficient A/Cs not usually brought in for sake of efficiency, normally adopted for more comfort (or monetary savings)
Leaps of Faith: If they are wrong, your business will fail
- What are the important things I need to know about my business?
- How do I test them cheaply and fast?
- Identifying and understanding these 1 to 3 issues are crucial and when one is solved others will arise
Dashboard: How to manage and share
- Leaps of Fait
- Hypothesis
- Metrics
- Results
- Response
Plan A people will be lost if hypothesis don't hold. Plan B can roll with it to get to a better plan.
He invests in people that can: Take in information, course correct, have integrity with their team, work with him
Zen Capitalism: Passion, purpose, people, potential, profit. (Article)

Business Plan Essentials

Randy Hawks: Managing Director, Claremont Creek Venturers

Business plan is to be read and needs to be enticing - being exact, complete and boring not effective
First, business plan is for entrepreneur, next for the VC
Business plan are expected to evolve, to start a discussion rather than lock-in conclusion
VCs all have ADD, will have 25 mins (if you are scintillating), will interrupt you, like a little sucking-up
They see 1,400 business plans, have 400 first meetings, get serious with 25 or 30, will fund 4 to 6 a year. (Their firm is 3 partners, 7 investment professionals.)
Nat's Nevers
- Take out assumption that financials are "conservative"
- Don't say "If we only get 2% of the market" and be careful how market size is positioned
Products and Services
- The more real, the more credible
- Try to show something physical: demonstrate, photograph, mock-up, etc
Fallacy of the "10% better mousetrap"
- It is hard to predict consumer switching behavior with small improvements
- Order of magnitude impact better

Leif Langersand: Clean Tech Industry Partner, Halo Fund

Exec summary:
- Most important section, many VCs will not read rest
- Don't summarize the bus plan
- Fire your biggest shots
- Answer "What is in it for me?" for the VC
Market analysis
- For $3 to $5 million investment range need market size of at least $100 million (Randy: Some VC firms will do $300k to $500k)
- Don't confuse industry size with market size
- Summarize key points, put details into the appendix
Management and Ownership
- Top 3 criteria for small stage companies are: management, management and management
- Don't be innovative in company structure and ownership: C-Corp, one class of stock
Financials
- Can't help you - can only hurt you.
- Show that you understand business and have a grasp of drivers to get to profitability
Winning plan
- A big opportunity
- Credible team
- Technology or execution differentiation
- Identified customers
- Go-to-market strategy
- No red lights
Keys to a great pitch
- What's the problem (3 min)
- How to solve it? (Technology and team) (3 min)
- How big is the market (3 min)
- Show me! (More than 5 min if they are interested)

Patents and Trade Secrets for Early-Stage Clean Tech Ventures

Suzanne Bell: Technology and IP, Clean Tech, Wilson Sonsini
George Willman: Technology and IP, Clean Tech, Wilson Sonsini

Finding and Understanding the Customer To Shorten Time to Market Traction

Christina Ellwood: Founder/CEO, Moreland Associates
Richard Nieset: Sales/Marketing Executive

Market Analysis: How big is it?
Marketing: How do I create demand?
Market size
- TAM: Total available market, how big the universe
  - Avoid stating percent of market we expect to get,
  - Use bottom up instead and talk about how to construct market: how many sales people, how big quota, etc
- SAM: Served available market, how many can I reach with my sales channel
- Target market: who will be the most likely buyers
Market segments
- See each other as credible references (mothers)
- Accessible to each other
- Needs and requirements are the same
- Require your key differentiation
Cardinal rule for startups:
- Think big
- Start small
- Move fast
Good target customer
- Has critical job, and current solutions don't do it
- Negative consequences if job doesn't get done
- Whole product gets job done
- Can afford
- Respected
- Willing to tell others

Business Models

Steve Blank: Serial entrepreneur, Professor Stanford and CAL

Book: "The Four Steps to the Epiphany"
Is it build-able now? How much R? and how much D?
How do you know it is a vision and not a hallucination?
Your idea itself does not have value
First-Move Advantage is usually wrong (scout in front of the stage coach comes back with arrows in him)
Fast followers usually make the most money
Question: Technology Risk, Market Risk, or Both?
A business plan is a series of tested hypothesis
- Interesting part is how you test them
- Then how you execute them
How big market is can be translated into "So if you succeed, do I care?" Usually $100 million
Business plan: "A document your investors make you write that they don't read." Useful place to collect your guesses. An organizing document to gather everything you know at this point in time. No business plan survives first contact with customers
Business model: Way to keep score after you start talking to customers and reality intrudes.
- A diagram that shows all the flows between your company and its customers
- How to create and deliver value
- On a single sheet of paper
The startup that succeeds is the one that learns the fastest outside of the building, in other words, to get product-customer fit that fastest.
All startups that succeed has a major pivot
Book that shows this: Business Model Generation
A startup is a temporary organization to find a repeatable and scalable business model so you can be a large company
Customer Discovery: Stop selling and start listening, test your hypothesis, continuous discovery
Customer Validation: repeatable and scalable (and profitable) business model
Pivot: move between the previous too
Next step: Customer Creation, Company Building
Reduce the VC Risk:
- Start with your original idea
- Tell them why it was wrong when you tested with real customers
- Then tell them what you learned
Cardinal rules for startups:
- Think big
- Start small
- Move fast

Ed: Trio Symposium

Fri, 15 Jul 2011 16:13:10 Z

Trio Symposium

Explore how the utilities can help you speed your idea to market at the Technology Resource Incubator Outreach (TRIO) Symposium scheduled for Tuesday, July 12 at the Mission Bay Conference Center at UCSF in San Francisco. Symposium participants will learn how to work with California utilities to get their product to the market place. This event is a must attend for investors, entrepreneurs, technology transfer officers, researchers and others working on creating the future for energy efficiency in California.

How the Utilities Work

Moderator: Randy Wong – Emerging Technologies Program Manager, Pacific Gas & Electric Company

Speakers:

Dan Bowermaster - Manager, Customer Energy Solutions, PG&E
Robyn Zander - Manager, Contract Support Services, Regulatory, SCE
Alok Singh - Manager, Design and Engineering Services

Alok Singh, SCE

Manager, Design and Engineering Services

<%= email 'Alok.singh@sce.com' %>
626-633-7162/42162

Dan Bowermaster, PG&E

Works with EVs
Half of all solar installations are done in PG&E's territory
Says V2G is technically viable but many other roadblocks such as battery warranty. He thinks by the time it becomes viable there will be better battery storage. However smart charging with aggregation could be important.
He is available to talk more about EV programs
(Gave hime business card, he will send contact info)

Robyn Zander, SCE

Head of TRIO program
TRIO tries to pull cost efficient, proven, emerging technologies.
Teach people how to do a 3rd party solicitation to the utilities
If we have utility or CPUC questions, she can direct us where to get answers
(Gave her business card, she will send her contact info)

Utilities Emerging Technologies (ET) Program

Moderator: Paul Fox, Principal, CalCEF Clean Energy Angel Fund

Panel:

Abdullah Ahmed - ET Program Manager, Sempra Energy Utilities
Bruce Baccei - ET Program Manager, SMUD
Edwin Hornquist - ET Program Manager SCE
- <%= email 'ETProgram@sce.com' %>
Randy Wong - ET Program Manager, PG&E
- <%= email 'rkw1@pge.com' %>

Randy Wong, PG&E

Main web site www.ETCC-CA.com
- Has a form to fill out for new products that they will send out to utilities to gauge interest
Options to get utility support
- Emerging Technologies Program
- Use existing rebates
- Use customized incentives
- Use existing 3rd Party Program
- Respond to RFP
- Equity / In-kind Support (Sempra only)

Questions

Requirement is demonstration of UL approved, sustainable energy savings by independent 3rd party
SMUD is not under CPUC
20% ($240 million) of SCE energy savings budgest goes to 3rd parties, for savings of kWh
Utilities see 200 or so ideas a year and 30 or 40 make it to assessment then 50% of so of products make it into the program.
"M&V" means measurement and valuations, can mean field measurement of savings, in ET means 3rd party evaluation at scale, with customers of new technology
Programs:
- This TRIO Symposium
- TRIO Roundtable
- Open Forum
- Energy Summit
Hot technologies?
- Cooling technologies: evaporative, etc.
- Efficient motors: Novatorque
- Plasma lighting
- Solid state lighting
- Wireless controls that do DR and energy efficieny (EE)

UC Davis Energy Center

Speaker: Andrew Hargadon - Professor and Chair in Entrepreneurship at Energy Efficiency Center at UC Davis

Nexus Work: not playing chess, but rearranging the chess board. iTunes.
- Find disruptable spaces
- Know your value proposition and where
- Find your key partners

CEC/PIER Funding

Chris Scruton - California Energy Commission (CEC) Team Lead for PIER Buildings End Use Efficiency

$86 milion public goods charge from IOU ratepayers
Fund programs that typically wouldn't be funded and/or are too small for others
7 areas: environmental, energy systems integration, renewable energy, advanced generation, transportation, Industrial water
Energy Innovations Small Grant Program provides up to $95k grants for energy projects targetted at a PIER R&D area with a straightforward application process

Innovative Company Success Stories

Moderator: Susan Preston - General Partner, CalCEF Clean Energy Angel Fund

Presentors:

Richard Bourne - Founder and CEO, Integrated Comfort
Pritesh Ghandhi - Found and CEO, Ambient Devices
Ed Koch - CTO, Akuacom (Honeywell)
Patricia Nealon - Director of Corporate Marketing SynapSense

Ed Koch - CTO, Akuacom (Honeywell)

OpenADR, open automated data response,
Akuacom’s open and interoperable Smart Grid messaging infrastructure is used by utilities and ISOs to automate the delivery of DR price and reliability signals to aggregators and to commercial and industrial facilities.

Pritesh Ghandhi - Found and CEO, Ambient Devices

Spun out of MIT Media Labs

Richard Bourne - Founder and CEO, Integrated Comfort

Effective cooling system by cooling water on roofs at night
DualCool evaporatively cools condensor air in a A/C unit and precools air, saves 25%
Working with Walmart

Patricia Nealon - Director of Corporate Marketing SynapSense

From UC Davis
Wireless environmental monitoring and energy management
Focused on data centers, saves up to 35% cooling energy

Networking

Henrik Westgard, CEO, Smart Grid Billing
- In Cleantech Open
- Doing demand response
- Getting into EV smart charging
- Talk to them to see if there is some synergy (Bink's favorite word!)
Mahnoosh Alizadeh, EE Grad student at Davis
- Working on a green energy system.
- Looks at when wind will blow and sun will shine and energy markets and lets customers schedule to get green energy
- This is software only
- Talk to them about interfacing with us to control EV charging
- They need a company to say they are interested in order for UCD to pay for patents
- Her email is <%= email 'malizadeh@ucdavis.edu' %>
- Advisor is Anna Scaglione email is <%= email 'ascoglione@ucdavis.edu' %>
HemBus, Helios Energy Management
- Doing home area network (HAN) and solar to DC.
- Green Van Buren, COO, <%= email 'greenievb@hembus.com' %>
- Talk to them about interfacing to EV chargers and smart charging

Reference

PG&E business incentives
- PG&E business demand response

PG&E Demand Response

Most programs have a minimum demand of at least 200 kW to qualify.

Best Effort Rates and Payments

Customers that have elected to curtail load on a Best Effort basis will receive energy payments for PeakChoice events if they successfully and reduced at least 50 percent of their nominated Best Effort Load in any specific hour (BEL HR).

Best Effort rates are based upon the amount of notification time elected before an event is called. Customers will be paid at the rate for the event they confirmed to participate in and successfully reduced load.

Event Notification Time        Best Effort Rate HR
Two (2) calendar days              $0.40/kWh
One (1) calendar day               $0.50/kWh
4.5 hours                                $0.60/kWh
30 minutes                              $1.00/kWh

Committed Load Base Price

The Committed Load Payment (CLP) is determined on an hour-by-hour basis relative to how a customer performs in a PeakChoice Event.

Event Notification              Time $/kW-month
One (1) calendar day            $ 5.00
Two (2) calendar days           $ 4.00
4.5 hours                             $ 7.00
30 minutes                          $10.00

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Thu, 07 Jul 2011 18:45:54 Z

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