White House Energy Datapalooza: Honest Buildings

Honest Buildings is a startup that aggregates information about building's energy use and green characteristics from sources that include owners, green building technologyservice providers, and public databases.

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Riggs Kubiak:
Welcome.

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I'm Riggs.

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Thank you for coming.

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Thanks for making this happen.

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We are excited about this.

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We kicked off Honest
Buildings about a year ago.

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We encountered a few
huge problems in the real

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estate industry.

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One of which is, it is
incredibly hard to find

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information or data
about buildings.

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The other is that the real
estate industry is the most

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fragmented opaque, off line
industry that exists today.

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[laughter]

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So when I looked at it's city,
inside the real estate industry,

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I said, well, there
is a huge problem,

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but there is also a massive
opportunity to bring these

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things together.

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So as cities today are
becoming incredibly populated,

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50% of the population of the
world today lives in cities.

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It is supposed to be 75%
of the next 25 years.

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200 years ago that was 3%.

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2000 years ago that was 3%.

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You think about the
trend moving forward.

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This is the fundamental most
significant shift in the history

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of humanity.

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Big changes are happening.

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Every single one of
us has a smart phone.

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And most of us have multiple.

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So what if we could take the
power of the Internet and the

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scale and the global reach of
what we all do everyday on our

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smart phones and take that to
actually attack problems in

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cities which are fundamentally
composed of hundreds of,

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if not hundreds
thousands of buildings?

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Put those two things together
and create a network of

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transparency around data and of
people that can come together to

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interact, collaborate, and
transact inside of buildings.

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So 40 years ago, the
Internet didn't exist.

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Today every single one of us is
connected in hyper local fashion

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as we are exhibiting today,
broadcasting on line.

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We all have Twitter accounts.

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We all have phones.

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We all have computers.

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McKinsey said, "This isn't just
an interesting opportunity.

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This is a trillion dollar
opportunity to make enterprises

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more efficient through
using social technology."

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So not using Facebook, but using
Facebook-esque applications to

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enhance your own productivity
of your own business.

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So our business is trying to
enhance productivity in the real

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estate industry, enhance
productivity around buildings.

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So thousands of years
ago, cities were actually

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incredibly revolutionary.

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People moved out of the fields,
came together for the first

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time ever.

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They communicated, they
collaborated, they transacted,

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they split up work.

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Incredibly opaque
off line network.

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As cities continued to grow,
technology was introduced that

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enhanced the power of cities.

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They enhanced the
industrial revolution,

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they enhanced technologies
that were actually making cities

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work today.

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In the last 50 or 100
years or even 200 years,

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technology has exploded.

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Technology is what is driving
what we are talking about today.

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Technology is what is driving
data and it is what is driving

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cities, which is where we all
live and interact everyday.

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So one of the first ever
social media technologies

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was transportation.

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The rail line.

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This went from nothing to
blanketing the United States,

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to bring ideas together.

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Take people out of the fields
and into cities just like it

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happened 200 years ago
or 2,000 years ago.

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So by the mid 1800s, there was
a 140,000 train stations in the

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United States.

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These were in a
very literal sense,

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aggregated networks of places
where ideas came together to be

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shared from city to city,
from company to company,

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to accelerate the adoption of
what you could say then were

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high performance ideas.

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This is what we are trying to do
to the real estate industry to

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accelerate high performance
ideas into buildings.

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Today, the most populated
train station is in Tokyo.

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Three million people
pass through here daily.

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So just as transportation did
this for our ancestors of the

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past, the Internet
is revolutionizing

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industries today.

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So 40 years ago, the
Internet didn't exist.

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But when the Internet
died in the Dot Com Crash,

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there were 350 million users.

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There's 2 billion users today.

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The Internet is what can
actually take all of this data

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and get it out to
every single one of us.

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There is 800 million people
that are connected by Facebook

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every day.

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Imagine, if we could take this
conversation to the next level

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and allow all of this data that
we have, the government has,

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that each of us have as
organizations or companies and

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allow all of that data to inter
connect through the Internet.

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We will get there.

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It will be an accomplished goal.

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So the other thing about the
Internet is that it is happening

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incredibly fast.

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So it took the television
industry 13 years to get 50

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million subscribers.

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It took Twitter nine months.

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This is happening faster
and more efficiently than

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ever before.

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And it is all happening
through technology.

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So what I think is fantastic is
looking at industries that have

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been fundamentally
changed by the Internet.

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Everyone knows Amazon.com
started as a book company.

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For the first time ever you
could order books on line.

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People said that is
never going to work.

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Now you never go to book stores.

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Airbnb, people said
that is a crazy idea,

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you are never going to
lease out of your house.

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You are never going to
rent something on line.

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Now, everyone uses it and there
is huge lawsuits happening

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around, all kinds
of different things.

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[laughter]

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Zipcar happened in the same way.

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Zipcar happened in the same way.

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I would never share a car.

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That doesn't make any sense
until it is parked right outside

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of your apartment and you
don't have to pay $400 a

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month to park.

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No one would buy shoes on line.

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It wouldn't happen.

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Until the Internet came
along and made it incredibly

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efficient, extremely
time, time saving.

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And all of a sudden, you had the
security that you could send the

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shoes back if they didn't fit.

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The real estate market
has not experienced this.

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The real estate market is where
all of us spend all of our time.

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People, humans spend 90% of
our time inside this incredibly

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opaque off line industry.

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So we are trying to bring what
the happening in all of these

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other industries to scale up
each one of these different

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incredible technologies that we
have talked about and utilize

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data from the government and
from hundreds of other different

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streams of data to accelerate
the adoption of high

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performance buildings.

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And the reality is that in
the real estate industry,

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there is many problems.

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One of the problems is that
you don't know who to use.

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So there is all kinds of
different things even just

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in this room.

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If we are going to get
a new LED retrofit down,

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tough to figure out who to use.

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If you want to figure out how to
get your building a new energy

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retrofit, or an energy audit,
not sure who to use unless,

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unless SWAP is
sitting in the room.

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If you want to use energy,
energy moderating solutions not

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sure who to use, unless
Michael is sitting in the room.

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Our objective is to bring all
of those folks together into one

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centralized platform, like a
Google for buildings to take

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each one of those pain
points out of the market.

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So just to flow through, what
if the service providers of the

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same point could get in front
of owners much more quickly than

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they can today?

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What if brokers could highlight
the best buildings that they

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represent in a centralized sort
of linked in for buildings type

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of platform?

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What if tenants could do the
same without having to rely on

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their broker?

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And most importantly, what
if governments could take the

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hundreds of millions of dollars
they spend at energy efficiency

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on a local scale, on a state
scale, on a federal scale,

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on a global scale, and highlight
all of those examples on one

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platform that could pull
over into the private market?

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All of this is happening
today on our platform.

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So today we are, we are in
an extremely siloed place and

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tomorrow we'll be in an
interconnected place.

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So I will just leave you with
thinking about this statement,

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which seems so obvious but at
the same time is really what I

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think unites all of us and what
we are hoping to do with an

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interconnected network platform
that can truly accelerate the

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adoption of high performance
buildings by utilizing the power

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of the Internet.

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To take what Google has
done for information,

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do that for buildings.

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And take what Linked In has
done for connecting with

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professionals, and do that
for the real estate industry.

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So that's us.

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Thank you.

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[applause]