Take that punctuality!  November flew by and here we are with another monthly progress report for Good People.  November was tough.  With day jobs and holidays, there just wasn’t a lot left over for Good People.  But don’t despair.  Progress was still made and I’m pretty jazzed going into December.

Ethan is making progress on the supply side of the business, so I think it is time for us to start getting in front of customers.  One of the exciting parts of our first product is the sheer variety of customers, markets, and channels we could sell it to.  But you can’t sell to everyone, especially when you are first starting out.  So, we’ve decided that our initial focus will be on institutional buildings that can use 100s or 1000s of units and, more specifically, colleges and universities.  OGD had some success with colleges and they seem like a natural fit for some early deployments.  Maybe we can interest some of them in helping us study the energy savings too, leveraging engineering, environmental studies, and other students interested in clean technology and energy policy.  I can’t wait to get some real feedback and better understand how we can make it easy for campuses to save massive energy with our product.

Speaking of our product, I have received some criticism that folks still don’t really know what our first product, the Phoenix fan controller, actually is.  That was the driving force behind my November post, Magic Box for Sale.  If you didn’t check it out yet, you should.

Good People Month 3

  • Met with John and Ryan at thINCubator and joined their Refinery program.  thINCubator is officially our Utica office and I can’t wait to spend more time there.

  • Had a great meeting with The Foundation (Herkimer-Oneida Community Foundation) about investing in us as a local benefit corporation–we would be their first investment in a for profit venture directly supporting their economic development mission

  • Settled on a specification and bill of materials (BOM) and sent them to several PCB suppliers for quotes for our first build

  • Continued working with the Herkimer Industries team, reaching out to state purchasers and working out the details of our first build with them

  • Started looking into how public schools make facilities upgrade decisions and what it takes to get a new product category listed in the NYS Technical Resource Manual for uniform calculation of energy savings incentives

  • Talked to Elisa Miller-Out about her experience with being one of the first New York benefit corporations

  • Talked to more local investors

  • Submitted a concept paper to NYSERDA for funding a study using our Phoenix fan controllers and in-line meters to gather data on an institutional deployment

Good People By the Numbers

  • We installed no units and saved no energy

  • We made it easy for 0 new leads, new customers, or new partners to save energy

  • Our team held steady at 3

  • We sourced nothing locally (other than eating at locally owned restaurants)

  • We didn’t really donate anything to the community

  • We brought in $0 revenue and $0 investment (other than a founder’s loan for costs)

  • We spent another $55 or so, mostly on meals

We hope to nail down the details of our first build and get some customers interested in pilot deployments.  If all goes well, maybe we can also get at least a little investment money to make things easier.  But it would be great if we could get things started with some paying customers.

See the original post at: https://www.gdpplnrg.com/single-post/2016/12/02/Good-People-Month-3-Progress-Report

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