Enertiv Closes Electricity Monitoring Deal with the New Haven Public School System

Enertiv’s proprietary electricity monitoring system, the Enertiv One, will enable Ross Woodward School to intelligently reduce electricity consumption.

New York, NY, November 7, 2011 – Enertiv, Inc. (Enertiv), an electricity monitoring solutions company, announced today that it won a public bid with the New Haven Public School System to monitor electricity usage at the Ross Woodward School. Enertiv’s strategic partnership company, AFB Construction Management, is responsible for construction, facilities and energy management at New Haven Public Schools. AFB will utilize Enertiv’s data and web-enabled electricity management software to reduce electricity usage at the school.

Enertiv is a privately held cleantech company that designs, manufactures and markets proprietary electricity monitoring systems, develops related software, and provides installation and implementation services globally. Enertiv’s systems monitor electricity consumption at the circuit level, collecting real-time data on up to 42 circuits per system.

Al Barbarotta, President and CEO of AFB Construction Management, said, “I’m excited to engage the technology and professional services of Enertiv. Together, we believe we can pinpoint electricity savings across our schools that will far exceed implementation costs for Enertiv’s solution. The tools provided by Enertiv will allow AFB to save school districts valuable dollars in their operating budgets by reducing electrical consumption in every school we manage.”

Enertiv was founded in January 2011 by two Babson College graduates, Connell McGill and Pavel Khodorkovskiy. Headquartered in New York City, Enertiv offers a simple and affordable approach to electricity monitoring that is ideal for commercial and institutional buildings. Enertiv’s flagship monitoring system, Enertiv One, uses web-enabled electricity management software to track and measure the actual electricity consumption of equipment while it is operating. With all its products manufactured in the U.S., Enertiv aims to have a positive environmental impact by helping facilities use resources with optimal efficiency and operate more sustainably. Enertiv’s monitors are sold through a direct sales force as well as through trusted partners and resellers. For more information, please visit www.enertiv.com.

With the odds of winning at around half a percent, we weren’t counting on taking home the grand prize. While winning would be awesome, we joined with several other objectives in mind. First, we wanted to bring our team closer together, at the time I was living at home with my parents, just outside of Philadelphia, and Pasha and Olesya were in Manhattan. We figured that if somehow I could find a way to move to the city (I’ll blog about this story eventually), we could take Enertiv more seriously and grow much faster. Second, we wanted more structure, and with serious deadlines nearly every other week from Stern, it forced us to constantly get together to work on our business concept, which eventually led to a full blown business plan and an investor presentation. Lastly, the competition would give us great exposure to other entrepreneurs in NYC (especially other CleanTech players), the media, experienced mentors, and investors (angels and venture capitalists).

We spent the next several months working together on the various pieces of the competition, doing everything we could to meet Stern’s deadlines, while also working diligently to complete our pilot project with the Connecticut Public School System, and transition the pilot project into our first large sale – a balancing act that would impress any veteran circus performer. First we made the quarter finals, then the semi-finals, and eventually we made the finals. It’s funny, in the beginning we never had any idea we would make it this far, but with each step we became more and more confident that we were either going to win the competition, or give the winning company a serious ‘run for their money’.

The finals, aka the final investor pitch-off was on April 29th, at 3:30pm. As usual, Pasha, Olesya and I had been up the night before practicing our presentation until around 3, or 4am — at that time, one hour makes little difference anyway. The following day, we were back in our office by 9 am to practice our respective pieces of the pitch one last time. Fast forward 4 hours, I’m ironing my shirt when my cell phone rings, it’s our partner company, an energy management firm in Connecticut. When I picked up the phone, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing… just two hours before taking the stage for the final pitch-off at Stern, they informed us that our first big project had been approved. Wow! The timing couldn’t have been any better, and after several minutes of high-fiving Pasha and Olesya, we started realizing that we now had very good chances of winning the competition.

That afternoon we couldn’t wait to get out in front of the judges, introduce them to Enertiv, and tell them the breaking news about closing our first big deal. All of our parents, several close friends, and even one of our partners was in the audience cheering us on. We pitched really well – all of the judges in the room would have backed me up on this. However, the grand prize ended up going to another awesome company called Course Horse. Sure, we were pretty upset about the outcome, and still wish we had managed to clench the grand prize, but finishing in the top 5 of 230 companies certainly says something about the progress we made, our team and our company. I would highly recommend this competition to other entrepreneurs who wish to take their companies to the next level, as we certainly did.

NYU Stern New Venture Competition