We’re back after a short hold for some contracting (to refresh the coffers). Now with a new project (with a refreshed mind). I have a new team, new project, but same mission – to fight global warming!
Premise: We believe that most people working in energy, solar, and climate change have been making a big mistake — that money, fear, and kilowatt-hours motivate people.
We have a different hypothesis.
Based on deep behavioral research, we discovered that people are more motivated to save energy and install solar when they see data in the form of CO2 — and the message needs to be simple: one number, one color, in real-time. We’re building that number.
Team:
- Teamed up with Katie Patrick, an environmental designer and influencer.
KPIs/Core Metrics:
- Marketing Spend: $0 (Katie’s 19,000 Twitter followers helped).
- 100 users of Chrome extension / Firefox Add-on in last week
- 55% retention after 1w
- 235 followers of Twitter bot
- WoW growth of users: N/A yet
- Revenue: $1,200 (from electrade.app still, but that’s another story)
Product:
- Launched Chrome extension and Firefox add-on and iterated multiple versions to add animations, reward effects, etc.
- Built & launched Twitter bot that tweets out California’s emissions graph regularly, and eventually built in more personality, wit and irregularity to the tweeting algorithm.
- Due to retention of the intial tests above being good, we’re investing in a “personalized” and premium home-energy Chrome extension / app with the PG&E ShareMyData API. Pre-order here.
- Electrade.app is on the back-burner, but I was lucky to find a talented writer making new content and posting it to the platform, to further build out SEO.
Experiments/Hypothesis run:
- People will download a Chrome extension (true)
- People will keep opening it up (after positive feedback, week 1 retention is still around 55% daily)
Help Wanted/Asks:
- Introductions to businesses interested in climate/team programs
- Introduction to angels interested in supporting climate solutions. This team’s looking to focus on this concept for a few months.
Next month
- Launching Home Energy Lollipop (so not California-wide emissions, but your home’s emissions!) through PG&E Smartmeter API. This should give the user more agency to actually change the number and create a tighter feedback loop.
- Launching Office Energy Lollipop (instead of California’s emissions, your office’s emissions!) through PG&E Smartmeter API. This should give the users more agency to actually change the number and create a tighter feedback loop. Also, it’ll build community within the office for the teams.
- Starting to raise an angel round from people who care about climate change, so Katie and I can focus on this project for a few months. Also applying for YC, etc.
- Presenting to businesses, to see if business case is there (see ask – introductions to businesses interested in sustainability programs much appreciated).