Good People Month 6 Progress Report
Funny thing about progress reports, they can get deprioritized when you feel like you don’t have enough time to make progress. They are also much more difficult to write two months later. But let me tell you about February 2017.
We did, indeed, get started with thINCubator’s refinery program. It was great to have roundtable discussions with other entrepreneurs, exchange ideas, and have regular contact with Ryan and the thINC team. One highlight preceded the regular meetings when Ethan actually lugged a fan coil to the pre-meeting and we demonstrated the product to Ryan and John. It was fun to watch them really connect with the technology and what it could do. While I’m not sure that “a dimmer switch for fans” quite captures it, it was great to see them “get it” and get excited about it.
Sadly, the video Ryan shot during the demo didn’t really come out. But it spawned the big idea that came out of the Refinery program for us. We need to get a short video pitch for the product put together and available on a dedicated landing page that we can use for some test marketing to the various customer segments we are considering. It is a brilliant, lean startup kind of strategy that could let us start collecting some real data to check our hypotheses about customers, markets, and messaging.
On the supply chain side, we were still struggling with the lack of specifications and documentation at a level that electrical suppliers are comfortable with. It’s super frustrating and we need to fix it, but neither Ethan nor I have the time or engineering chops to really get it done. We kept hoping to find a supplier who might be up to the task.
Good People Month 6
Joined a cohort for thINCubator’s Refinery program
Great meeting with Human Technologies about potential supplier, customer, or more strategic relationship
Continued working with the Herkimer Industries team
Continued working with electrical suppliers on quoting the PCB
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 2, but we would really like to find an engineer
We ate at local restaurants, but that’s it for local sourcing
We didn’t really donate anything to the community other than time
We brought in $0 revenue and $0 investment (other than a founder’s loan for costs)
We spent another $40 or so
Not to spoil things, but since I am writing this in April, I already know what happened in March. Hopefully, it won’t take me another two months to tell you about it.
