Hi, everyone! Thanks for tuning in last week as Erika starts getting us all smarter about managing our runway. It’s important that all of us understand where we are as a company, what risks we’re taking together, and why. And thanks, Erika, for helping us up the learning curve.
It’s been hard for me to sit down and write anything lately, both because my head is in the NYC Accelerator RFP, which would be a great boon for us to win, and because of the general sense of bewilderment and chaos in the political front.
I feel like we need to be open about what effect all of that will have on our work, so here are my current off-the-cuff thoughts on it:
Despite the over-all anti-progressive (and some literally illegal) bent of the stuff in the news, there are some confusing signs about what’s going on with housing specifically. The housers seem to be disposed to attempt to work with the new HUD secretary and there is a bi-partisan effort to make some of the tax credits permanent that used to require periodic reauthorization; on the other hand, of course, the executive order to stop payments on all federal grants is a huge deal for affordable housing developers, so it’s a mixed bag. I believe that on the whole, it probably tends toward shittiness for our sector, but possibly slowly. For climate tech, on the other hand…. The hardware folks who got a boost over the past 4 years of federal innovation money are all having some difficult days – I just spoke with one who had just received a $2M grant, which they may never see. Hard tech VCs are probably about now finding out which side of the vote their economic interest was really aligned on, if they were confused on that front.
As for us: prior to the election, Marc and I said that our core business will go on, both because cities and states like New York that have been building climate action muscle over 20 years are going to carry right on, and because renovation is core real estate business. I think that is still right. New York State and New York City both have strong climate laws in place and no political groundswell to undo them. Utility-related decisions are by nature long-lived, and it’s been more than 10 years already that NY PSC has been aggressive on climate. So if our jobs didn’t get easier, they’re no harder than on January 19. For now.
That said, our eggs are now very much in the govtech basket. As Marc has been saying, it’s time now to really pay attention to our actual users – the consultants and building owner/managers. We’ve won a measure of stability thanks to the government work, but if we don’t figure out the end-user value add really well, we will be vulnerable in no time flat!
One other passing (and happier!) thought: this time last year, many of us were together in NYC and meeting each other in person for the first time! Working with you all is like being able to hole up in a nice warm cottage while there’s a crazy snowstorm going on outside. Thank you!
Any missing highlights? Please share in Slack comments.
Looking out for icebergs: What are the risks on the horizon that we’re watching for and navigating around?
All the same from last week:
team_buildings, but what other time bombs are lurking in the code? Is it time for a round of minesweeper?Same ones as last week:
Same as last week:
Reporting, compliance and insurance focus this week (EP)
Please note your reaction to this update in the Slack channel. It helps us to know what is resonating, what is unclear, etc. Thanks!
Who named it NYSERDATA? I thought it was called Building Data Platform (BDP). I want to make sure we don’t cause internal or external confusion.
I appreciated Erika going through the definitions last week, it’s made all of the numbers and metrics make a lot more sense!
Sorry, NYSERDAta is my proposal for a portmanteau word for the NYSERDA Data RFP. I’m all for standardization, so should Building Data Platform be it? I’d prefer not go to an acronym if possible.
I’ve seen a bunch of attention on trying “to know what will be in the release” and I don’t get it. There was one time at a previous gig where it mattered a lot because someone asked me when I thought something would be done and I offhand said “like two weeks?”. The marketing team organized about $50k in ad spending around the new feature banking on the feature being out in two weeks - but nobody told me. So at the water cooler one day it happened to come up and I learned that my offhand comment had become a hard deadline! We ended up getting the thing built and shipped on time, but only by the skin of our teeth! Generally, I’m used to sprint goals being useful for planning, but knowing what will be released to the public on a given date doesn’t have value. Do we need to be putting effort into knowing what will be in the next release? If so, I have no objection. I just want to make sure we’re stying focused on the things that add value.
@Jeremy (Coder) I don’t know what you’re reacting to, but your note led me on this train of thought: we’ve sort of painted ourselves into a corner of playing catch-up with existing customers because we so woefully underdelivered last year. It’s not the same as a situation where no one knows what’s coming – people are waiting for things that they know are coming, but don’t know when. Also, because we have been forced to build-rebuild stuff multiple times, we’re not able to deliver the full set of features that users actually need to be able to get a job done (instead of steadily building on what came before, we’re spending time tearing it out and redoing), and that means that we can’t get the utilization we need to work up traction. We started out with quite a lead on the market, and now every day, there are more players nipping at our heels. A random OEM just launched a LL97 chatbot that provides the stuff we give in the building data. box, for example. There are 5 new players that applied to Clean Fight that describe their features in largely the same terms we do. Last year was expensive in more ways than one. (edited)
So I think you’re saying when we accurately tell our customers when features are coming, we’re adding value. So it’s worth putting some portion of our effort into making those forecasts. Is that right? (edited)
I think once we are able to make forecasts generally, we can actually schedule in user features (like we used to be able to do) between new builds