BOSTON, MA, August 00, 2012– BSGTeam Ventures (BSG) today announced the appointment of Todd Hand (www.talentbench.net/company/principals/) as Managing Director of TalentBench (www.talentbench.net), a division of BSG. Todd has more than 15 years of search experience in the same innovation-driven industry sectors asBSG. “I’m excited to have Todd join us to run the TalentBench brand,” said Clark Waterfall,BSG Managing Director. “Todd has been an industry colleague and friend for more than 15 years. The synergies run deep.”

Before joining TalentBench, Todd was Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Altela, the leading company in water treatment for the oil and gas industry, where he was responsible for identifying new business sectors and driving revenue in the U.S. and international markets. Prior to Altela, Todd was COO at CleanSwitch Solar, a photovoltaic engineering and integration company. He also raised venture capital financing for Talent Capital Group, an executive search firm that recruited leaders to drive the success of innovative companies in the technology and renewable sectors. Previously Todd built management teams for both Idealab, a creator and operator of technology companies, and the Yankee Group, the global technology market research firm.

Todd serves on the board of directors of Coronado Ventures Forum, an organization focused on educating and connecting entrepreneurs with private equity financing. He is a graduate of Pennsylvania State University and attended the Babson MBA program. “TalentBench expands our recruiting services,” said Todd, “and helps emerging technology companies who want the quality of an executive-level retained search for their key individual contributor through to their Vice President-level roles.”

Conservation Services Group (www.csgrp.com) is the oldest and largest energy efficiency services company in the US, focused on the residential home market. The company engages in the design, development, and delivery of energy efficiency and renewable energy programs. It offers various services, such as appliance recycling, commercial building performance, renewable energy, clean energy market development and generator representation, solar electric power design/installation and service, and other residential energy efficiency services.

Based in Westboro, Massachusetts, CSG was founded in 1984 by current CEO Stephen Cowell and 4 others to change the way utilities perceived of and operated their power generation facilties on behalf of rate payers across the country.

Today, CSG is in 22 states with 6 regional divisions, and has grown from the original five founders to more than 800 employees and $100M in revenues.  Given the initial pioneering economics of CSG’s value proposition, it was founded as a not-for-profit, and remains one today.  However, the entrepreneurial spirit runs deep, and CSG has benefited from this, growing particularly rapidly in the last 5 years.

With clients across the country like NStar, National Grid, Con Edison, Alliant Energy, Nicor Gas, San Diego Gas & Electric, and NYSEG/RG&E, Conservation Services Group has firmly established itself as the market leader in residential efficiency services.

Reporting directly to CSG President Tina Bennett, the Executive Vice President of Software & Technology will play a senior leadership role as part of the senior executive committee, overseeing all software development and technology infrastructure across the enterprise, holding leadership responsibility for a team of 70+ technologists building and maintaining internal and external software, data, and systems that interconnect CSG, their residential field auditing teams, the utilities and their rate-paying residential customers.

More…

Measuring & Delivering Energy Savings

Our client  is a leading energy software company founded in 2007. Based in Boston, MA and privately held, The Company has developed patent-pending technology that enables them to retrieve utility data on behalf of virtually any household in America. Utilizing that technology, the company is the richest residential energy efficiency platform available today, and serves both customers and a variety of institutions that care about energy efficiency with its platform and the technology that underlies it. Its platform helps people to understand their energy use and be incentivized to save, as well as enables individuals to interact with and track their electric, gas, and water usage online.

The Position

The CTO/VP Engineering’s role is to oversee day to day activities of the software product development team for all of Company offerings. The role will build out and directly supervise a team of architects, software developers, quality assurance, and business analysts; identify risk and opportunity areas; and coordinate all software development activities.

This role will also work closely with Product Strategy and manage the Lead Technical Architect to envision and define features in the product roadmap and be accountable for the features development, deployment and support.  In addition to the technical leadership of the team, this role will have full management responsibility and oversight for a cross-functional group of engineering and quality assurance personnel.

Reporting directly to the CEO, the VP Engineering shall:

The successful candidate must also have the ability and experience to lead a multi-disciplined organization in a multi-location environment.

Qualifications

Essential Job Functions/Responsibilities

Ideal Candidate Profile

The diagram below illustrates the intersection of competencies critical in the position:

How & What Growth-stage CEOs Are Ending 2011 & Planning for 2012

Below is the hyperlink to take the Q4 CEO peers speed-survey, exclusively for growth-stage CEOs. This survey focuses on “How & What Growth-stage CEOs are Ending 2011 & Planning for 2012″

This shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes of a busy CEO’s time–

We here at BSG Team Ventures periodically take the temperature of the markets we serve. The survey is no more than 15 questions, most simple multiple-choice.

These surveys are created and compiled by BSG Team Ventures as a courtesy to our executive ecosystem with the belief that knowledge is power. Aggregated peer-provided knowledge is “actionable power.”

To compare how you’re feeling a year later with the survey results from Q4 2010, titled “CEOs Plan for 2011”, go to http://www.bostonsearchgroup.com/blog/q4-2010-ceo-survey-of-growth-stage-companies/

We make an effort to survey only those who fit the category (in this case, sitting CEOs or board member/founders of technology/science-driven growth-stage companies). [Note, if you don't fit the aforementioned description, please refrain from responding.]

Feel free to forward to the qualified CEOs in your sphere of influence. The more data generated, the more accurate the trend lines.

All responses are anonymous due to the web-based survey technology employed.

We will forward the survey results within the next two weeks to the email address on file. Please let us know if there is another email address you wish us to send the results to as well.

BSG Team Ventures is pleased to have assisted in the recent search for Telkonet’s new Executive Vice President, Sales & Marketing.

Subscribing to the renewable energy industry mantra, “Efficiency is the first fuel,” Telkonet provides energy efficiency systems for residency intensive buildings.

BSG Team Ventures completed the search in 90 calendar days.  Key success attributes for the executive sought included deep experience and credibility with the ESCo (energy services company) industry, power purchase agreements, and energy performance contract creation within the commercial sector, including hotels, government, and education.

Telkonet, Inc. (www.telkonet.com) develops, manufactures, and sells energy efficiency and smart grid networking technology products and platforms in the United States and Canada. Its powerline communications technology (PLC) utilizes a building’s internal electrical wiring as a data communications network, turning power outlets into data ports while leaving the electrical functionality unaffected. The company offers Telkonet SmartEnergy products, including thermostats, sensors, controllers, and wireless networking products, as well as Networked Telkonet SmartEnergy platforms that incorporate Recovery Time technology for the monitoring of climate conditions and automatically adjust a room’s temperature accounting for the presence or absence of an occupant. It also provides smart grid networking technology products comprising Telkonet iWire System and Telkonet Series 5 PLC products, which include gateways, extenders, couplers, and ibridges to transform a site’s existing internal electrical infrastructure into an Internet protocol. In addition, the company offers high-speed wireless Internet access solutions and technology to the hospitality industry. It serves the hospitality, education, healthcare, and government/military markets.

For the full Telkonet corporate press release, see  http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/Telkonet-Appoints-Gerrit-Reinders-New-Executive-Vice-President-for-Sales-Marketing-OTCQB-TKOI-1405366.htm .

BSG Team Ventures has been retained to recruit the UK Managing Director and Advisory Board Directors  for a new British energy generation business that targets the commercial customer with a unique onsite co-generation solution that reduces their cost of heat and power while at the same time requiring no up front capital expenditure nor addition of employee overhead.

You can think of it as an “On-Site Utility” offering clean electricity, heat, hot water and cooling to hotel, healthcare, and multifamily housing properties in the United Kingdom. The company sells the energy produced on-site as an alternative to the outright sale of energy equipment; designing, installing, owning, operating and maintaining the complete CHP system. Customers pay only for the energy they need and use, at a rate guaranteed to be below their local utility rates, via a prenegotiated power purchase agreement.

Reporting directly to the President of the parent company, the UK Managing Director is responsible for all activities of the subsidiary.

Essential Job Functions/Responsibilities

Below is a Venn diagram of the success attributes for the Managing Director position–

Energy Efficiency Systems for Residency Intensive Buildings

“Efficiency is the First Fuel”

Our client develops, manufactures, and sells energy efficiency and smart grid networking technology products and platforms in the United States and Canada. Its powerline communications technology.

The Position

The Vice President of Sales for the Smart Energy division will report to the CEO, and be responsible for all revenue generating activities within the division.

Essential Responsibilities

• - Divisional revenue ownership
• - Sales team-building
• - Sales & marketing strategy (sales, marketing, operations)
• - Sales leadership and sales pipeline management
• - Developing and managing detailed budgeting & forecasting
• - Developing sales and distribution plan
• - Developing partnerships in upstream indirect sales channels
• …

Ideal Candidate Profile

The diagram below illustrates the intersection of competencies critical in the VP Sales position:

Compensation

Compensation is competitive with the position’s requirements.  In a performance-based environment, this will include base salary, incentive bonus structure based on both individual, department, and corporate qualitative and quantitative MBOs, and a stakeholder position in the company.

“]

Rob Day, Black Coral Capital | Michael Balmuth, Edison Ventures | Alexis Borisy, Third Rock Ventures

Once or twice a year we as a firm gather CEOs from the Boston innovation ecosystem to share thoughts amongst themselves.  Often, the format is lubricated by a panel to kick things off.  Always, the format is lubricated by an open bar and dinner.

 This Fall’s CEO gathering in early November brought together 50 or so CEOs around the topic of planning for 2011, and what to expect as a CEO. 

Whether early-stage venture, or mid-stage growth, investors are adopting a different approach to what they are looking for, how much they are putting to work, and what they expect to see as an end result.  This is proving true not just in the tech sector, but cleantech, medical device, and biotech.

 If CEOs are looking for more investment, whether growth equity, seed capital, or something in between, what are the “new normals” to think about going into 2011.  And if CEOs aren’t looking for money, but looking for exits, what are the expectations of investors in 2011 and beyond? 

 We assembled a panel of venture capital investors who all had raised new funds in the last year or so.  These investors also represented a different flavor than traditional venture capital.

 On the panel? 

• Michael Balmuth, General Partner, Edison Venture Fund
• Alexis Borisy, Partner, Third Rock Ventures
• Rob Day, Partner, Black Coral Capital

 What were the “new normals” CEOs and VCs talked about?

 Here are a few that got some air time:

2011 is likely to be an economic “ground hog year.”  The current economic cycle of “flat is the new up” is here to stay for the medium term;  In taking a flash vote of the room, the overwhelming majority felt that the economic conditions in which companies are being created are not going to change for the better any time soon.  Simply turning the calendar over from 2010 to 2011 is not likely to yield a more fertile or forgiving economic climate in which to grow innovation-stage companies.  In our recent survey  of growth-stage CEOsfor Q4 2010, we noted in a prior blog post that the vast majority of CEOs had already shifted their strategies or were planning to in the near future as a direct result of an expectation that 2011 might look a lot more like the end of 2009 or 2010 than ’07 [see CEO survey pie chart below]

Seed rounds are becoming pervasive compared to prior quarters.  And these aren’t for Web 2.0 companies only.  CB Insights in their Q3 2010 summary demonstrated that this is a trend that is occurring in cleantech / greentech as well as healthcare IT.  All 3 investors on the panel agreed that seed funding makes sense.  Alexis Borisy, Partner at Third Rock Ventures, talked about their approach to seeding, saying that they tend to help start the companies, not just fund them, often taking an interim role on the executive team to incubate to a point of value inflection.  Michael Balmuth mentioned that although Edison Ventures doesn’t do “seed stage investing” per se, he loves to see companies that get seed rounds, as it often is an effort to drive toward profitability faster.  At that point, Edison may be more interested in a seed-funded company that achieves an early positive cash flow position than a typical heavily syndicated, multi-series venture-backed portfolio company.  Black Coral’s Rob Day added that he felt that investing in capital-efficient companies, even in the cleantech sector, was something he has advocated for a long time.  [see CB Insights graph of growth in seed round funding over last 5 trailing quarters, 2009-2010]

• As an asset class, venture funds have lost money for a while now.  Limited partner investors in venture capital and even private equity believe that they still have to invest in this asset class because it does make money during economic or industry sector bubble periods, and to invest once a bubble has been established would mean missing the upside.  During other times, LPs try their best to pick the funds that outperform their peers.

• Using investment banks to raise equity capital  should be done selectively.  If the industry is a small one, and the network is well established (like biotech investing Alexis pointed out), using an i-bank at an early stage is not the best idea.  However, in the cleantech sector where there are more total number of investors, they are internationally distributed, the industry is younger and less well-networked, and there is an imbalance in demand-supply (more money chasing fewer good deals), the investment banking solution may be just the right one.  One CEO, Larry Letteney of Second Wind in the cleantech sector, shared just such a recent positive experience in going out for their next round. 

• Seek out funds that have real capital to invest, preferably “fresh.”  Each of the three funds represented on the panel had all raised funds in the last twelve months or so.  But there are a lot of funds that are at the end of their last fund.  Many are unlikely to raise another fund.  Many investors are taking meetings, but setting the bar exceedingly high because they have only an investment or two left, and they don’t want to get caught making a bad one given the challenge in delivering returns to LPs in the most recent investing vintages.  There was also a “beware” comment about funds who are making seed round investments at the end of their funds.  They are more likely to do so, as it is an easier story to message an investment mulligan to LPs if you can just say, “It was just a small seed investment, so no biggie.”  Caution was also expressed that an investor at the end of a fund making a seed investment will be less likely to have additional capital to invest even if the company is doing well.

We hope to post a video snippet of the the VC-CEO dialogue for a flavor of the evening’s conversation in the near future.

Each quarter we survey growth stage CEOs who are running innovation driven companies.  This quarter,  we had more than 60 CEOs responding.  CEOs were running companies in broadly defined technology (software, hardware, semiconductor, telecom), Internet (e-commerce, media, social, entertainment), medical devices, biotech, and cleantech / renewable energy sectors.

A note on methodology.  We send these surveys only to those who fit the category (in this case, sitting CEOs or board member/founders of technology/science-driven growth-stage companies).    All responses were anonymous due to the web-based survey technology employed. The majority of respondents were in the United States, with the highest concentration on the East and West coasts (New York, Boston, and San Francisco/Silicon Valley areas).

For prior survey results from Q2 2010, titled “Impact of Economy and Renewed Growth”, go to http://www.bostonsearchgroup.com/blog/ceo-survey-results-q2-2010-%e2%80%93-impact-of-economy-renewed-growth/ .

ECONOMIC CLIMATE

The first set of questions was around the economic conditions in which each CEO felt s/he was operating.    One question we continue to ask and re-ask over the last six quarters or so targets the turbulence in the macro- economic climate.  It is interesting to compare CEO responses to the same question, “Do you anticipate a double dip in the near term future?”

* In Q3 2009, more than half  (54%) of CEOs polled were expecting a double dip, and planning accordingly

* In our Q2 2010 survey,  again 50% felt a second economic correction was likely, the biggest percentage of those CEOs believing it would be in either Q3 2010 or sometime in 2011.  The other half  of CEOs felt the specter of recession was behind them

* Currently in Q4 CEOs were consistent with prior quarters with a bit more than 50% indicating they didn’t feel a double dip was likely, and the other half of the CEOs saying either a 50/50 probability or greater (16% feeling more likely than not)

So less than 1 in 5 CEOs feel another economic dip is likely.  No CEOs selected the ” greater than 75%” probability.

It’s interesting to do a meta graph of the changing CEO sentiment on this question.  Surprisingly, the graph would be sloping downward, but not as much as many would hope.  The high point was certainly back in Q3 2009, but even throughout 2010, as many CEOs were fearful of a negative correction as those who felt it was behind us.  No doubt this “lack of confidence” index doesn’t inspire the CEO with a swashbuckling, damn-the-torpedoes-full-speed-ahead attitude toward growing their companies.  Rather, it makes CEOs think in short-term windows, perhaps 3 months at a time, with little appetite to make medium or long-term bets.

Those CEOs who felt another downturn was likey referenced several factors that might tip the scales negative–  gridlock in Congress due to midterm elections and likelihood that Democrats lose congressional majority, a belief that a bad Q4 holiday retail shopping was likely, and the persistent overhang of ongoing commercial and residential loan defaults.

As for when another economic dip might occur if it were to occur, the vast majority of CEOs pointed to Q1, 2011, with Q4 of this year and Q2 2011 tying for second at 18% each.

STRATEGY

Almost 50% of CEOs polled said that they had either made a shift in strategy in 2010, or were planning to in the near future.  Granted, growth-stage companies are prone to shifting strategy until they land upon the best formula for significant and sustainable growth.  However ~50% is a big number, and clearly a chunk of those companies have been driven to rethink their strategies because of the challenging economic climate, the concern over the future, and the possibility that 2010 might represent “the new normal” where with no economic “rising tide” no help generated to float all company boats as in periods of economic expansion in the past (1997-2000, 2005-2008, etc).

CASH FLOW

The majority of CEO survey respondents (49%) indicated that they were still planning on burning cash over the next 2 quarters.  24% indicated they would be profitable.  CEO comments regarding this question indicated an overwhelming drive toward cash flow break even.  That was the big push and focus for their companies in 2010, and if they hadn’t achieved it yet, they were gunning to by end of the first quarter of 2011.  CEOs also commented that they were trying to run their companies at break even, with any extra EBIT being reinvested back into the company for additional growth.

COST REDUCTION PLANS

When asked what were the top 3 areas CEOs were targeting for cost reduction, the following table summarizes their responses, representing a combination of spend reduction and staff reduction in non-core areas.  There was a preference by CEOs to favor non-staff cuts over cutting headcount if at all possible, but many acknowledged that in order to make meaningful cuts, staff had  to be considered in the equation.

CEO responses when asked about increasesin spend were logical.  The top three in order were sales, marketing, and R&D.  Many of the comments about this question noted the fact that outside of directly growing revenues, additional spend was hard to build in when many CEOs are driving toward a minimum cash-neutral mandate and economic uncertainties are driving CEOs to think conservatively rather than expansively.

[Click on "more" below for remaining 8 slides and narrative from Q4 2010 CEO survey]

More…

As Chair of this year’s 2010 Finals, I would like to welcome you to the 6^th Annual Ignite Clean Energy Competition here at Babson College.

There are two simple messages I would like to share this year.

The first— We have reunited West Coast and East Coast cleantech competitions this year to create now the oldest and largest cleantech competition.  Ignite Clean Energy Competition is now the Northeast regional competition for the national CleanTech Open (www.cleantechopen.com ).  The CleanTech Open now has 5 regional competitions that feed regional winners to a national finals held this year out in Northern California in November.  Participating regions in addition to the Northeast include Rocky Mountain based out of Denver, North Central based out of Minneapolis, Northwest based out of Seattle, and California anchored in the Bay area.  We’re excited to be part of what is a growing organization, and we welcome all interested to participate in any of the other regions and/or spread the word to those you know share our passion for cleantech innovation at the seed stage.

The second message  is a simple “thank you.”  And that thank you is to all volunteers in ICE over the past 6 years, competitors, mentors, sponsors, and other passionate supporters who have sustained our success through the unprecedented growth of the cleantech sector.   From our first year of the competition to 2010, we have seen the New England cleantech ecosystem grow from a small yet unorganized band of passionate visionaries, to a veritable army of well-organized constituents of a new industry sector and connected ecosystem.  The Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, headed by Patrick Cloney, is the latest evolution of our anchor underwiter for Ignite Clean Energy.  Across those 6 years they have made ICE possible, organizations like the New England Clean Energy Council was born and under Nick Darbeloff and now Peter Rothstein’s leadership, they have become the nucleus to no less than a dozen other cleantech-related organizations in New England from the Massachusetts Hydrogen Coalition (http://www.massh2.org/ )to the Clean Economy Network (http://www.cleaneconomynetwork.org ), from New England’s own cleantech-focused angel investing group, Clean Energy Venture Group (http://www.cleanenergyvg.com ) to a website dedicated exclusively to cleantech ecosystem events CleanTech Boston (www.cleantechboston.com).

Is it a fad?  A bubble? Unlikely.  Sustainable energy solutions are a fundamental part of making the 21^st century not our last century of civilization as we know it, but rather a bridge to sustainable centuries of civilization, innovation, and evolution that lie beyond.