Eco-Friendly Power Supply Business

Eco-Friendly Power Supply Business Sunny Gault: Hi, welcome to Dog and Pony. I'm Sunny Gault Gault. You can say goodbye to multiple power supplies for your laptop, cell phone, iPod, and other electronic devices. The company Green Plug has developed a power adapter hub to simultaneously power these devices, maximizing resources, and minimizing solid waste. Frank Paniagua is the CEO of Green Plug. So tell me a little bit about Green Plug. You started this company, this was your idea. Tell me about this chip that you guys have. Frank Paniagua: Actually it gets sold through the consumer electronics manufacturers, such as Hewlett Packard or Apple, or Panasonic, or whomever. They will buy the chip and put it into their power supplies. Sunny Gault: Okay. Now why is this important? Why do we need something like this? Frank Paniagua: Ask anybody if they like power supplies. I mean on this little jaunt down here from the bay area, I carried four with me. Why do I need to do that? Why can't I just stay at the Hilton here, and just plug in and it recognizes my devices and charge it. Why do I have to go through security and pull all this stuff out, it's a pain. Where we predict a Green Plug enabled power supply built by a company, let's say Belkin or Westinghouse announced that they're going to build power supplies based on our technology. They can do a three port for the traveler, which would be small and very cool. They could build one that has ten ports for your home office, they could build one that has twenty ports. The technology's totally scalable. Sunny Gault: Now this is more than just a matter of convenience though, this is actually helping the environment. Frank Paniagua: Gartner estimates 3.2 billion power supplies will be designed, shipped, and subsequently discarded in 2008. And they're nasty little fellows, right? There's copper and all kinds of bad little things that go in them. We don't want our children, or our children's children having to deal with this stuff. We should take care of it now. I mean we put a man on the moon in 1969, we can't fix this problem? Sunny Gault: So how did you build Green Plug into the company it is today? Frank Paniagua: I put my own money in, I raised about a million and a half dollars with my own money and some friends and family money, angel money. And then last December I went out for some venture capital. I picked a firm, it's a boutique firm, a small firm on Sam Hill Road called Peninsula Equity partners, just because I felt great DNA with them. We raised some more money there, and then we'll be going out 2009 first quarter for what we hope to be the last round of money that we'll ever raise and need, because revenue will begin to come in. Sunny Gault: What happens if your company fails? Frank Paniagua: Oh failure is not an option. Look at me. I'm five foot seven, I'm too small to go to jail, and failure is not an option. I have conviction of the heart, and we're rolling already. We've got our first adopter in Westinghouse, stood up at PG&E headquarters. We have PG&E solidly behind us, other utility companies, Southern California, Edison and Sempra, we're starting to begin dialogs with these folks as well. Sunny Gault: So what's next on your list? Guys like you don't just you know, stay with small stuff, they get bigger and bigger and bigger. So? Frank Paniagua: Slay dragons. Sunny Gault: Yeah. Seriously, what is your dragon? Frank Paniagua: I really can't look you in the eyes and tell you what my next dragon's going to be. But I can tell you in my career I've slayed a lot of dragons, that's why I look so bad at you know, 49 years old. But I'm a dragon slayer, what can I tell you. And I get a lot of joy out of fixing things that are broken. Sunny Gault: And where ultimately do you see your company going? Frank Paniagua: If you're asking about a liquidity event, I think that we've spent more than seven figures, way more than seven figures on our patents, and I think our patents are very, very good. I think we'll probably be acquired by a large company, or a bigger chip company. I don't want that to happen too soon, because I'm having a ball. Sunny Gault: I was going to say, you're having a good time with all this. Frank: Oh man, I — Sunny Gault: Kid in a candy store. Frank Paniagua: I'm just having a ball. I wake up every morning thinking I have the luckiest job in the world. Sunny Gault: So what advice do you have out there for people that want to start perhaps a company similar to Green Plug, or entrepreneurs in general? I'd say go for it, you know, you got to have a well thought out business plan. You got to bounce it off you know, smart people. You don't want everybody that says oh yeah, that's great, that's great. How many people said Frank you know, it's a big idea, but you know, who's going to get behind you? You know. So you got to take all that you know, negativism in as well, because it's constructive and it's good. And if you think the odds of what you're doing, and other smart people say you got a shot, and a shot's better than a coin flip, go for it. Sunny Gault: Well Frank, it was a pleasure talking to you. Frank: Pleasure. Sunny Gault: Thanks for joining us today. And as always, if you have questions, comments, or ideas for guests, please email info@dogandpony.com. I'm Sunny Gault, thanks for watching.