Tag Archives: cleantech

Why We’re Excited About The Cleantech Open

Nick, Dip, and Yoel celebrate at the CTO Boston Kickoff.

The Cleantech Open (CTO) is one of the world’s largest cleantech accelerators, and ecovent is proud to be a semifinalist in the Northeast region. That means we’ll be heading to New York next week for the CTO’s East Coast Academy to meet up with other leaders in the cleantech community.

ecovent is no stranger to tech accelerators. (In fact, you can read my previous post on the benefits of techstars here.) So we’re pumped up and ready to make the most of this five-month experience at a key stage in our company’s growth. Here are just a few things we’re looking to get out of the process.

Healthy Competition

We hear that the Cleantech Open isn’t about the competition. (At least that’s what it says in the CTO overview video.) But a grand prize package worth up to $200,000 in investment and services sounds pretty good to us. And let’s be honest, we want to win.

Expert Mentorship

We’ve been involved with CTO for a while now. In fact, ecovent was an audience choice at the CTO Boston Kickoff event in March. We’ve been getting great advice from phenomenal CTO mentors like Mitch Tyson, a cleantech entrepreneur, advisor, and co-founder of the New England Clean Energy Council. As regional semifinalists, we are ready to expand our network even further. Every semifinalist has already been matched with mentors, and we’re certain we’re not the only ones psyched about ours.

A Great Platform At NY Energy Week

It’s not a coincidence that the CTO Eastern Academy coincides with one of the biggest energy events of the year: New York Energy Week. We are excited to take advantage of this great platform to meet cleantech leaders, especially during Wednesday night’s Cleantech Startup Showcase. We’re looking forward to presenting and getting inspired by our fellow energy entrepreneurs, as well as meeting potential collaborators, investors, and customers. The buzz for NY Energy Week builds every year, and if you haven’t requested your tickets, get on it.

Over the next few months, we are laser-focused on getting the resources we need to build the outstanding product our customers expect. CTO will be a big part of that, and we’re proud to be in on the action. See you in New York.

For more information, visit www.cleantechopen.org, or follow CTO on Twitter and Facebook. They’re good people.

Leave a reply

Thinking Big, Starting Small

Dip and I recently read this post by Rob Day, who goes by the handle @cleantechvc on Twitter. We think that Rob really nailed it when it comes to the next phase of cleantech. Here are a few of his points that really resonate with us at ecovent.

Customer experience: Simpler. Easier. Better. This is our mantra. We’re always thinking about the customer experience. There’s technology out there that can fix every HVAC problem under the sun, but it isn’t easy. It’s like you need a dozen advanced degrees to just set the temperature you want and keep it consistent from room to room. It shouldn’t be that way. We wanted to design something so simple you install it yourself in a single afternoon.

Execution: You can make a product with all the features in the world, but it doesn’t matter if no one wants to buy it. And that comes down to execution. Nothing could be more critical. We’ve got beta testers knocking down our door to try out our system, and we want to make sure we deliver the very best possible product at the end of the day.

Start Small, Think Big: Couldn’t agree with this one more. We’re starting with an unloved, overlooked piece of home hardware that hasn’t changed in decades. The vent. But if we make one homeowner more comfortable, we’ve achieved our goal. When we’re thinking small, that’s our mission. But when you start to consider about the levels of energy savings, peace of mind, and fine-grained control we can offer, it’s easy to see the big picture.

3 Replies