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The Evolution of Smart Wind Plants: A Conversation with WindESCo’s CEO
55 Plays3 years ago
In this dynamic episode, we get up close with Blair Heavey, CEO of WindESCo, who has earned guru status in the startup community. Blair brings his wisdom from helping scale companies across diverse industries like software, health tech, fintech, and now clean tech. Listen in as Blair shares the story of WindESCo, a company transforming the renewable energy sector by unlocking hidden value in wind plants and enabling a new generation of smart wind plants. He talks about the challenges of consistent messaging in a noisy space and the surprise fragmentation in the wind market.
We also explore the intricate dynamics between startups and their investors. As Blair paints a vivid picture of Wendesco's future, you will gain insights into his vision for the company's growth and success. He candidly discusses how fostering a culture of content among engineers and subject matter experts is key.
KEY INSIGHTS
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💰 Many wind operators are unaware of the extent of revenue loss they are experiencing, but windesco helps them generate significant annual revenue on each wind plant.
💨 Many companies claim to optimize wind energy production, but most of them are just noise in the market, making it difficult to find a unique and effective solution.
🌬️ Many companies in the renewable energy space are focused on offering point product solutions, rather than considering the best interests of the wind farms themselves.
🚀 Startups thrive when they have a passionate team of experts who believe in their product and are dedicated to delivering it faster and better than anyone else in the market.
👂 Salespeople play a crucial role as the eyes and ears of the organization, quantifying market trends and bringing valuable insights back to the company.
💡 "You gotta push the team as much as you can try to innovate and get efficient with systems and then outsource where you can to outside experts."
💰 Taking investment funding is like entering into a marriage, where transparency and open communication with the investors is crucial for a successful partnership.
🌬️ "Everybody has to do a job...check our egos at the door and play our role so that the team wins." - Emphasizing the importance of teamwork and collaboration in achieving success in the wind energy industry.
🌍 SUSTAINABILITY PODCAST CREATED BY NEW PERSPECTIVE
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This podcast is proudly sponsored by New Perspective Marketing, a dynamic growth marketing agency in Boston, MA, celebrating 20 years in business. We help sustainably focused B2B organizations grow their brands and scale up revenue. If you or your organization is looking to grow, visit npws.com for more info.
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Transcript
Introduction of Blair Heavey and Windesco
00:00:11
Speaker
Welcome, everyone. I'm Nathan Harris, and this is the new respective Launchpad, the show where we talk to leading voices in the startup world to hear their stories and their challenges that they face on their path to rapid growth. With me today is Blair Heavey, who is the CEO of Andesco. And Blair has guru status amongst the startup community. He's helped scale companies in a broad range of industries, including software, health tech, FinTech, and now CleanTech.
00:00:37
Speaker
Blair's worked with over 25 companies as an operating executive and as a board member to help them innovate and to grow. Blair, thank you very much for spending some time with me this afternoon. Great to be here. Thanks for inviting me. Always a pleasure talking to you.
00:00:51
Speaker
So for those who are unfamiliar to set the stage, could you please share for the listeners what Windesco does start, you know, first with, you know, I joined Modua who's the founder of Windesco and really I joined him to, uh, to partner in with, uh, helping Windesco, you know, expand and grow and, uh, in the really exciting renewables energy market.
00:01:12
Speaker
So the Windesco platform unlocks the hidden value of wind plants today and enables the next generation of smart wind plants in the future. So think about it as wind turbines kind of communicating between themselves. And instead of like a standalone wind turbine, in the future, you'll see a thriving community of turbines able to talk to one another, connect one another, and obviously drive increased performance.
00:01:40
Speaker
So the market that we solve is the reduction in power prices globally and reducing operating margins. It's a really, really kind of tight organization and is driving wind plants to be more efficient. They need to drive more revenue. They need to be able to get to their full potential so that the wind operators themselves are fine. The investors who invested in all of these plants are happy and they have smiles on their face.
00:02:09
Speaker
And when we go into our customers, most even don't even know the extent of the revenue loss that they're having until we
Challenges in Renewable Energy Messaging
00:02:17
Speaker
get in there. And then we help them to generate anywhere from two to $8,000 per megawatt annually, which is in the low millions of dollars of annual revenue production on each one of these little wind plants that they didn't even know that they had. But I thought we might start by digging into some of the challenges that Windesco has been facing recently.
00:02:38
Speaker
And if there's any in particular that you feel like you've got a good handle on, that might be fun to hear about as well.
00:02:45
Speaker
I don't know whether we've overcome these challenges, so I'll hit you with a couple that I know we're trying to overcome right now. One is around that thought leadership, which is consistent and crisp messaging. I think we're iterating and evolving towards that, so we're certainly getting a lot better. But I don't think we've cracked the code fully there. It's a tough space, but I would say it's a noisy space.
00:03:12
Speaker
um in that there's a bunch of different companies that you know will will say that they can help either optimize on the top line revenue or gonna optimize on the bottom line let me help you predict that your turbine or something in your wind farm isn't going to produce and most of that stuff that you know we've seen in the market is is pretty much noise in the market
00:03:36
Speaker
But with noise, you've got to dig through all of that stuff and define where do you play, what space do you own, and what is your unique differentiation as we go into the
Market Fragmentation and Competition
00:03:53
Speaker
market. Looking back for a moment, what's been one of the biggest surprises that you've had over, say, the last six months?
00:03:59
Speaker
I think probably the fragmentation of the wind market. So I've had a lot of experiences across multiple markets and scaling companies across those markets, but I don't have any renewable experience until Windesco. And that's what the teams experience plus my ability to scale.
00:04:21
Speaker
our goal is one plus one equals three there, but I didn't think that there was as many players in this market that speak to similar things and just kind of throw those things out there without, you know, as many proof points. The proof points that, you know, we've delivered all of these things to the market
00:04:44
Speaker
And not only do we deliver it for those wind farm operators that we have today, you know, we have 22 customers and growing, but they want to see a trusted kind of platform that certainly has all of the algorithms and analytics and data that's there, but also is kind of forward looking of, you know, I want to kind of
00:05:07
Speaker
You know, hit hitch my wagon to somebody that has data has expertise, you know, can help me improve today, but also in
Trust and Value in Windesco's Growth
00:05:17
Speaker
the future. So that's why you know when we think about like all of these wind turbines, you know, communicating with one another's you know these, you know, smart wind plants or smart social, you know, kind of plants. That's why they want to work with us is like, hmm.
00:05:32
Speaker
you've you've become trusted because you did what you said you were going to do. We like that we're going to expand with you because of that and nobody's talked to us about you know kind of what we can continue to do in the outer years on wind plants you guys did and you're going to keep providing more and more of these things and you become that platform of choice I think
00:05:56
Speaker
what I've seen in past lives because you have trust, you're growing the platform, you're delivering more and more value rather than just a point product solution that I think from my fairly limited time and the renewable space and the wind market spaces is most of the people out there are just trying to give a point product solution and not kind of looking at the best interests of the farm itself, the investors,
00:06:24
Speaker
and the companies that are working with them. Blair, I'm curious what it's been like for you to foster this culture of content that when Desco's demand generation
00:06:34
Speaker
is heavily reliant on with a team of engineers and subject matter experts who maybe haven't had experience like this prior. What's that been like for you? Yeah, it's interesting that they have incredible subject matter expertise and incredible attention to detail. And how do we package that with kind of both business messages and market messages that are more easily digestible?
00:07:00
Speaker
So we talk a lot in the group with Windesco is, we want to be a little bit more kind of Silicon Valley-like than Boston, where we're based, right? And they kind of scratch their heads when they first brought that, like, what the heck does that mean?
00:07:19
Speaker
We need to be visionary. We need to be bold. We know that we're going to deliver the best product platform out there and need to be proud and a little bit bold about the messaging that we have to that market. I think the guys are really realizing that.
00:07:41
Speaker
That makes sense to them. I think it's out of their comfort zone a little bit, right? Because we are a Boston-based company. Yeah, we are, but we need to have a little bit more there. So imagine for a moment that money grew on trees, and it was not a concern for Winesco.
00:07:57
Speaker
What would you like to be doing differently if you could? I think there's probably like two main things that if I had all the money at the right valuation, Nathan, to do, that I think we'd add to our R&D and customer success teams to advance that product faster. As I said, time is the enemy.
00:08:19
Speaker
And we need to move as fast as we can on product innovation
Visionary Culture at Windesco
00:08:24
Speaker
that we're driving, as well as really the love and value that we get back from customers because of the customer success team. So making sure that we have enough people to do that would be one. I'm super excited about the team and what we're able to put together in the roadmap. And the best part is the team
00:08:48
Speaker
energized and aligned behind that. And in my experience, you aged me and dated me with all the 25 different companies, but I've been around the block a few times and it's that team excitement and enthusiasm that drives innovation because that's what you want in a startup. And we have,
00:09:12
Speaker
a great team of PhDs and engineers that are super passionate about the space, super passionate about the customers, and are driving probably harder than they've ever driven in their careers because they believe in the product, they believe in the customers.
00:09:31
Speaker
And they want this to be delivered faster and better than anybody else can do it in the market. And that's what's great about startups and innovation in my experience is those kind of almost rabid teams that are bound together to go solve a gnarly problem and do it in a really, really quick way.
00:09:57
Speaker
Blair, what advice do you have for a startup that's struggling to get their sales teams and their marketing teams to align? I know you have a lot of experience here. I'm interested in the words of wisdom that you have to share.
00:10:10
Speaker
I think it's making sure that they understand kind of what that crisp message is, understand that there are a lot of the things, the eyes and the ears of the organization, and they need to kind of understand kind of that.
00:10:27
Speaker
and a lot of ways early startup guys on the sales side are kind of like Swiss Army Knifes and you know I refer I think I've talked to you about this before you know the Navy SEAL versus the Army Infantry person right and you know in an early stage startup you know we're still fighting we're learning we learn every day and we need to bring that in
00:10:50
Speaker
So the Navy seal can adapt like a Swiss army knife, right? And here's what we think is the plan, salesperson X, it steps one through 10. And if it blows up at step three, right? That person knows how to adapt, right? Based upon kind of the structure and then also eyes and ears to quantify what's happening within that market and bring it back into the company.
00:11:16
Speaker
versus somebody who hears steps one through 10, I am going to kill one through 10. Even though if I might get killed in the process and that isn't as effective, I think is for startup stuff. How about on the hiring side, Blair? How do you approach the difficult decisions around when to onboard new team members and when it makes the most sense to hit the timeout and wait?
00:11:41
Speaker
it's a really tough one because you don't want to overhire because then it burns your cash faster than you thought and you got to go back with that potential surprise to the investors like remember I told you I wasn't going to come back here for two years but I'm coming back before you know usually they don't they don't like that so what I try to do with with our teams is
00:12:04
Speaker
is stretch as much as we can without killing people. But we're a startup, and we work hard, and we try to play hard and have fun as well. But you've got to stretch out. Try to maximize the nickels and the dimes with infrastructure, making sure that you have systems that machines can do what people could, if you can.
00:12:30
Speaker
And I try to have flexible outsourced partners that you can kind of turn off and on, that hopefully have a lot more experience than your team, that they can get things done in a much faster and shorter period of time, that you can kind of flex in and out of that when you need it to be.
00:12:49
Speaker
But you have to have a core amount of the right people around the table to help to drive the organization. And it's an interesting balance act, but you've got to say, push the team as much as you can, try to innovate and get efficient with systems, and then outsource where you can to outside experts.
00:13:18
Speaker
you know, on the, I would say more on the go to market and finance side, you know, I never say outsource the product or the tech, you know, people have their their own lives as well, you know, which sometimes kind of does get blurting and in COVID when you can jump on a Zoom anytime and
00:13:35
Speaker
I think people more and more want their own personal space at
Funding as a Partnership
00:13:39
Speaker
some point. So, you know, we try to do as best we can, you know, balancing between work time and, you know, kind of off work, home time.
00:13:49
Speaker
So let's talk for a moment about the relationship and communication between leadership teams and say the investment group for those companies who are in the early stages of their growth and they've received maybe the first or the second round of investment funding. Could you share some tips on how to effectively manage this relationship between
00:14:08
Speaker
between themselves and those that they're receiving funding from? That is a very kind of delicate subject. Once you take money from people, it's like entering into a marriage, right? You have a partner, whether you like that partner or not, you now have a partner that you have to be transparent with, open with, and also have them kind of
00:14:35
Speaker
do their job as well, right? They're not just there to, you know, kind of give you the money and then take off. They have roles in early stage startups to, you know, go help you, introduce you to certain customers that you didn't know. Maybe help you with a marketing message. Maybe it's a technical person and they can kind of help you with some of the product thinking there. But it's really important that, you know, for a seed series A, series B stage kind of,
00:15:04
Speaker
team to align with those investors on this is where we're going, this is why we're going there, this is what we're doing, these are the steps I'm going to kind of to go take you through and this is what I need from you to be successful that you're all aligned because it is a big macro team and I think too too often
00:15:24
Speaker
the startups that I've advised in the past, people thought they won because they got the investment. No, that's just the starting process. Or they thought that they didn't have to listen to the investors once they got the money, right? This is my money, I'll do with it what I want.
00:15:45
Speaker
No, you've entered into a marriage, right? And that's a transparent, hopefully honest, upfront kind of team and partnership that you need to do. So alignment with those folks and understanding roles and keeping kind of crisp on what you're doing so that they understand and
00:16:04
Speaker
in a board member or an advisor or an investor, never wants to get surprised. Hopefully I'm not as grumpy as Bill Belichick, but I do believe in his plan, which is everybody has to do a job. We're all on one team. We all understand our roles on that team.
00:16:22
Speaker
And we can kind of check our egos at the door and play our role so that the team wins. And outside of the grumpy part of it, that I think the Windesco team has really done that well. So now look into your crystal ball, right? Have you got it?
Future Outlook for Windesco
00:16:40
Speaker
And if you're looking into the latter parts of 2021,
00:16:45
Speaker
What does the year look like from Winesco? What are you most excited about? It's really kind of developing that future smart wind plant, right? It's having the ability to track from an up market wind turbine
00:17:02
Speaker
you know, what are the wind conditions, what's happening within the flow, communicating all the way downwind to the turbines that will do two things for the, two major things, I would say, for the wind farm operators. You know, one is I gotta go capture more revenue. So how do I adjust my turbines, you know, kind of dynamically and on the fly? Okay, great. The second is maybe some of these turbines, you know,
00:17:30
Speaker
where we're getting so much energy from the market and the power prices aren't where we want them to be, maybe we can shut down a couple of these turbines based upon what they're telling us that sustain the life or extend the life of those turbines so you can help them on the bottom line as well. I think it's a super exciting time. Product is going into a new vision or expanded vision on a new vision.
00:17:58
Speaker
Messaging, we're getting much much crisper on and our go to market strategy is getting much more traction and we're building out that team. So from the time I've been with the company for just about six months now, a little bit under that.
00:18:15
Speaker
And we will, by the end of 2021, we will over triple the size of the company as far as people goes and greater in terms of revenue and product adoption. So it's a super exciting time.
00:18:31
Speaker
And it's exciting kind of mission too, because we're making the world a better place by allowing these wind plants to become more efficient, drive more revenue, and reduce our carbon footprint, not ours personally, but the world's because more and more of wind energy is being used. Excellent. So if someone wants to get a hold of you, what's the best way?
00:18:56
Speaker
I'm really good on email, so it's blair at windesco.com. You know we're small and growing when we can still use our first names, although Blair is pretty unusual, so that's okay. Or give me a call on my cell, my work cell, 617-494-0811. I'd really like to thank Blair Heavey for being my guest on this episode of Launch Pad. I'm Nathan Harris. Until next time.