Every home and business should have access to “timely, useful and actionable” energy information, said a group of close to 50 companies — including Google, General Electric, Intel, Silicon Valley venture firms, smart grid startups and research groups — in a letter addressed to President Obama on Monday. The group used the letter to ask the federal government for more clarity, leadership and incentives on how to help consumers have better access to energy information.
Google, which is leading a summit in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday focused on consumers and energy information called “Power in Numbers: Unleashing Innovation in Home Energy Use,” made the letter public on Sunday night. That event is being co-sponsored by The Climate Group and features speakers like Carol Browner, Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change, and Charlene Begley, president and CEO of GE Home & Business Solutions. (We’ll be highlighting this theme at our Green:Net conference on April 29 in San Francisco).
The letter has been signed by various groups that have been promoting the idea that consumers should have open access to home energy information, including: consumer electronics manufacturers Best Buy and Whirlpool; broadband service providers AT&T, Verizon and Comcast; energy information vendors eMeter, EnergyHub and Tendril; venture firms Khosla Ventures and Kleiner Perkins; and research groups Environmental Defense Fund and The Climate Group.
Google, which seems to be spearheading the effort, has been particular outspoken about setting energy information free. Google has also been supporting policies in California state that would require the state’s big utilities to give near real-time pricing information to every smart meter-enabled customer by the end of next year. And it’s developed the energy information management tool PowerMeter.
The companies have a vested interest in selling gadgets and services based off of energy information to consumers and utilities, but if more aggressive policies and incentives are implemented the energy savings could be substantial. The letter says:
[I]f all U.S. households saved 15 percent on their energy use by 2020, for example, the greenhouse gas savings would be equivalent to taking 35 million cars off the road and would save consumers $46 billion on their energy bills, or $360 per customer each year.
Google’s official blog post can be found here.
Social media management app Postling has achieved a measure of startup success, rethinking its user base and closing a $350,000 angel round, all within just a few months.
A member of Philadelphia-based accelerator DreamIt Venture’s fall 2009 class, Postling helps small businesses navigate the social web and manage their brands’ presence online. The product is a simple-to-use, all-in-one dashboard that rounds up the usual APIs. Users can even manage multiple brands from one account.
The company soon plans to add a real-time tracking feature, according to Co-founder Dave Lifson. “We’ve done a partnership with Collecta where local businesses will look at search terms and see any mention of those results in social media, blogs, mainstream media… we’re tying together the results to create a steady stream, and with a single click of a button, you can tweet it, comment on it, reblog it. It’s an amazing curation engine. No one is doing anything like this.”
Lifson also revealed that one week later, Postling will launch an RSS feed reader, a homegrown product they’ve built along the same lines and with the same featues using using XMPP . “We want to solve problems for people we really care about – small businesses,” Lifson said. “The number one thing they want is to know what people are saying about them online right away.”
In addition to real-time technologies, Postling hopes to integrate geolocation data — increasingly vital to small and local businesses — in the near future.
The differentiating factor between Postling and its competitors is that, instead of peddling their wares to marketing agencies, the Postling team has recently decided to cut out the middleman and give the product directly to small businesses who wish to take control of their own social media marketing. This decision, said Lifson, is a large part of what helped them get the funding they needed — and get it quickly.
Funding via AngelList
Hot on the heels of a $150K friends and family round earlier this year, the team became the second-ever startup to be funded by
AngelList, a VentureHacks-founded team of investors that also found funding for a Y Combinator stealth-mode team a few weeks ago.
Here’s how AngelList works: Startups fill out applications; if one makes the cut, the application is circulated among the angel investors involved, and e-mail introductions are made between interested parties. In the case of Postling, several introductions were also made at South by Southwest Interactive in Austin last month. The result was a cool $200,000 round of funding secured in a few meetings held over the course of six days.
The all-star team of investors for this round include Dave McClure, who invested in Mint (
).com; Chris Yeh, who invested in PBWorks; Paige Craig, who invested in Plancast; David Rose, who invested in Gowalla (); and Gary Vaynerchuk, who founded Wine Library TV.
So, how did they do it? With a team that included two Etsy co-founders, the company’s personnel foundation was solid. The product was marketed on a freemium basis, which means Postling had a revenue stream out of the gate — something investors generally like to hear.
And when the team realized they were competing in a crowded space, they gave their product a different spin — working with small businesses rather than ad agencies — to ensure Postling would stand out in the market
