Empower Equity (EMPEQ)

Our UnFinancing program with Empower Visibility can underwrite your commercial energy efficiency project in a matter of hours.

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Upstate New York Startup Is Awarded $500,000 for Novel Business Model to Provide Clean and Efficient Energy Solutions

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July 18, 2019, New York, NY – EMPEQ, Inc. (https://empeq.co), an energy-efficiency fin-tech company, has been awarded $500,000 by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) (www.nyserda.ny.gov), for EMPEQ’s novel business model which proliferates cleantech solutions. EMPEQ provides swift, safe, and simple financing for small and medium-sized businesses for operational equipment upgrades.

Herbert Dwyer, CEO of EMPEQ, provided the following commentary: “Receiving the grant contract through this opportunity presented by NYSERDA has allowed EMPEQ to hire strategic leadership team members, secure vendor partnerships to grow the business, and further the fin-tech platform that is the engine behind EMPEQ. Our partnership with NYSERDA continues to be a catalyst for our growth and their commitment to our region is one of the biggest reasons why Central New York is such a great place to do business.”

The aim of NYSERDA’s Novel Business Model and Offering funds is to promote novel business models and commercial service or product offerings, such as EMPEQ’s, that enable scaling of the deployment of clean energy technologies for companies. The grants intend to empower novel models and offerings to proliferate clean energy in a market that is frequently met with resistance due to high startup costs and uncertainty in financial returns.

Alicia Barton, President and CEO, NYSERDA said, “Novel business models enable proven clean energy solutions to be more rapidly deployed by helping to navigate market barriers to growth and I congratulate EMPEQ on this award. As New York continues its leadership position on climate and clean energy issues under Governor Cuomo’s nation-leading goals, it’s imperative we maintain our support for bringing solutions to some of our most pressing challenges to market quickly to help us address the impacts of climate change head-on.”

Founded by three Upstate New York natives, EMPEQ allows small to mid-sized businesses in any sector to upgrade their essential building equipment, such as HVAC or lighting, with simple and swift financing through their fin-tech subscription model. There are few financing solutions that can approve an organization for a financial solution with just two pieces of information without need for a personal guarantee, and EMPEQ is one of them.

Learn more about EMPEQ at: https://empeq.co

Veteran-Led Startup, EMPEQ, Is Awarded $100K Through NYSERDA’s Exclusive Ignition Grant to Provide Seed Capital

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EMPEQ was awarded the Ignition Grant through eligibility as a “Client Company” in NYSERDA-Sponsored Clean-Energy Incubators.

June 20, 2019, New York, NY – EMPEQ, Inc. (https://empeq.co), an energy-efficiency fin-tech company,  has been awarded $100,000 by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) to support the next stage of growth for the startup company. EMPEQ provides swift, safe, and simple financing for small and medium-sized businesses, nonprofits, and municipalities for building equipment upgrades. NYSERDA provided funds through its Ignition Grants, available for client companies of NYSERDA-sponsored clean energy incubators that require seed capital to achieve technical or commercialization objectives that will help achieve near-term outcomes.

“Receiving the Ignition Grant contract propelled EMPEQ into the next stage of growth allowing for increased capacity in all facets of the business,” said Herbert Dwyer, CEO of EMPEQ.

The aim of the Ignition Grants is to best position the client companies working with NYSERDA-sponsored incubators, such as EMPEQ, to attract and secure sufficient follow-on capital to commercialize clean energy innovations and accelerate their time to market. NYSERDA’s strategy for the Ignition Grants initiative is to make highly targeted, timely seed investments in incubator client companies that will directly impact near-term outcomes for these ventures, such as raising investment capital, securing corporate/strategic partnerships, and engaging potential customers/partners.

EMPEQ allows small to mid-sized businesses in any sector to upgrade their essential building equipment, such as HVAC or lighting, with quick and easy financing through their fin-tech subscription model. There are very few financing solutions that can quickly approve an organization for a financial solution with just a few pieces of information without the need for a personal guarantee, and EMPEQ is one of them.

Learn more about EMPEQ at: https://empeq.co

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About EMPEQ

EMPEQ solves the three biggest problems that stop small to mid-sized organizations from taking advantage of energy efficient equipment:

1. Upfront cost

2. Time-consuming loan review

3. Decision-makers having to personally guarantee corporate loans or leases

With EMPEQ, a multi-family, commercial, nonprofit, or municipal organization can use energy efficient equipment, such as LED lighting or an air source heat pump system, without upfront cost by providing just their corporate name and address for financial review. Within 48 hours, approved organizations can simply sign a service contract with EMPEQ and then an approved contractor will perform the installation. EMPEQ uses its unique financing model and proprietary FinTech platform to help channel partners like contractors and utilities to overcome the equipment financing challenges faced by their customers.

EMPEQ MEDIA CONTACT: Herbert Dwyer, Co-Founder and CEO, at herbert.dwyer@empeq.co

EMPEQ – Proud to be a Cup of Water in an Ocean of FinTech

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This past week, I had an opportunity to attend events on back-to-back nights in New York – Empire Startups March FinTech Meetup and Rise NY VC Advice: Launching, Scaling and Fundraising a FinTech Startup – and I could not be more proud to be a part of such an inspiring community of entrepreneurs.

The more people I met, the more impressed I became with how financial services is transforming right before our eyes. Whether it was in payments, virtual banking, or regulatory tech, every story I heard only drove home the fact that, with technology shifting ever so quickly, there is a seemingly bottomless opportunity to make our financial lives simpler and easier. I’m happy to say that, even though we’re bringing more speed and simplicity than ever before to commercial underwriting, EMPEQ does not have the market cornered on improving the customer experience for financial institutions.

empeq-derek-fintech-meeting

Honestly, in the purest sense, it made me proud of our country’s characteristic American ingenuity. Just like me, every entrepreneur in attendance noticed an inefficiency in the market, knew that he/she could find a better way, and, most importantly, took the initiative to dive in head first into solving the problem. And this is despite the fact that, in all of these cases, founders eschewed safer, more comfortable lifestyles in pursuit of creating something that will make people’s lives better.

After participating in these events last week, I’m confident that fintech’s future is bright; in fact, my parting thought both nights was the same: I can’t even imagine how much improvement is coming to financial services in the next ten years. Technology really is going to make our lives better – and this group won’t rest until it does!

What’s going on with the Small and Midsize commercial energy efficiency market, anyway?

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Even though technologies are well-established and value propositions are compelling, the adoption rate of commercial energy efficiency remains low. As shown on in the figure to the left, the vast majority of US buildings built before 2008 still utilize the same energy equipment they did on the day that they opened. Among the most popular energy efficient upgrades, not one vertical could boast a penetration rate of more than 21%. In fact, this same study also found that an astonishing 61.2% of all buildings 50,000 square feet (sqft) and smaller built before 2008 have never been renovated or improved in any way. Not only is this equipment assuredly grossly inefficient, it will have undoubtedly suffered major degradation through the decades.

The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) lists the primary reason for this stagnant market is money. Up-front costs and the lack of well-aligned financial solutions have doomed the market.

Regarding up-front costs, entities have only so much cash available for capital projects and energy efficient upgrades routinely have not been deemed a priority. In a study of small and midsize entities, only .35% of business owners said they planned to use their available cash to “Be proactive” – the category that includes energy efficiency. This has even been in the case of failing machines well past their useful lives; building owners have preferred to pay the high and increasingly frequent service costs just to avoid the up-front capital expense of replacement. Ultimately, with limited capital insufficient for all of a business’s needs, building owners are opting to not replace items that can kept in a current suboptimal state for a fraction of the up-front cost.

While there are financing structures available to small and midsize entities that do not require up-front payment, all of the current options have substantial drawbacks. Leases, loans, and lines of credit all carry with them substantial sales friction points like time-consuming underwriting, personal guarantees, and/or a negative affect on the customer’s ability to borrow money for other projects and priorities. The most attractive solutions, specifically, those that do not affect the customer’s borrowing ability, do exist in the market; however, the high costs to underwrite customers have limited third-party ownership structures to buildings larger than 50,000 sqft and often above 250,000 sqft. Yet the market below 50,000 sqft represents 93.9% of the commercial buildings in the United States. In other words, the major players in our industry like Johnson Controls, Siemens, and Honeywell neglect 19 of every 20 commercial buildings in the US.

The only way that we can begin to address this major issue in our market is by providing a scalable, well-aligned financial solution to these small organizations. This is why EMPEQ exists: to provide a simple, swift, and safe financial solution to the small and midsize commercial market. Our proprietary Empower Visibility platform trims time and effort from the process by evaluating 81% of customers with just their corporate name and address. And EMPEQ’s UnFinancing program is a no-money down solution that never requires personal guarantees and does not affect a customer’s ability to borrow capital for other priorities.

At EMPEQ, we believe strongly in the power of energy efficiency. And it is clear to us that animation of the financial marketplace to bridge the most important gap for this currently dormant section of the market is an important first battle in the critical war of the next fifty years: the fight against climate change.

1 – https://www.eia.gov/consumption/commercial/data/2012/bc/cfm/b6.php; Retrieved November 8, 2018. And EMPEQ calculation of the data therein

2 – Ibid, and EMPEQ calculation of the data therein.

3 – https://aceee.org/topics/energy-efficiency-financing; Retrieved November 8, 2018

4 – “2015 Business Funding Survey: SMEs”, British Business Bank, Feb 2016. And EMPEQ calculation of the data therein

5 – https://www.eia.gov/consumption/commercial/data/2012/bc/cfm/b6.php; Retrieved November 8, 2018.

The State of Upstate New York: The Reports of Its Death are Greatly Exaggerated

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Even in blizzard-like conditions, it’s always good to be home in Buffalo.

Last Wednesday, I was one of about 30 intrepid souls that braved the wind, cold, and snow to attend Upstate Capital Association’s “State of Upstate” event last Wednesday. The event was held at the Buffalo Curling Club – an organization which makes its home in a retrofitted industrial building on the southside of Buffalo. In fact, the building’s former tenant, Buffalo China, once employed my father as a laborer at the location for a short time in the late 1990s.

From the moment I arrived, I could not help but feel a deep sense of pride. I felt as though I was at the epicenter of something truly incredible. From the ashes of an industrial facility that once employed so many of Buffalo’s famed blue-collar workers just like my father, I saw a phoenix rise.

This phoenix came in the guise of the inspiring individuals in attendance: the innovative, fearless Upstate entrepreneurs and the passionate facilitators of the successes of these businesses. I was humbled to represent EMPEQ alongside the men and women who are remaking Buffalo and all of Upstate New York in a new image – one that many would have found difficult to believe just a decade ago. Considering that this comes on the heels of another inspirational entrepreneur-focused Buffalo event, hosted the previous week by our magnificent supporters at Launch New York, the narrative of the New Upstate is hard to miss.

This anecdotal evidence was only further corroborated by the keynote address of Gary Keith, a regional economist from M&T Bank. (To bring things full circle, M&T is another company that put food on my table as a young man by employing my mother as a teller for 43 years.) Gary painted a much rosier picture that, even as big of an Upstate cheerleader as I am, surprised even me. We learned that Buffalo’s Per Capita Real GDP growth between 2007 and 2018 nearly doubled national growth during the same time period. Further, Gary noted that it’s certainly not just New York’s Queen City that has experienced success recently, as both Rochester and Albany have enjoyed growth in the same time. This success is largely thanks to the replacement of much of the region’s industrial economy with industries built on the precious natural resources – students – that schools like SUNY Polytechnic Institute, University of Rochester, and Rochester Institute of Technology produce every May.

It’s an exciting time to be an entrepreneur in Upstate New York and I feel blessed that EMPEQ gets to be a part of the renaissance we’re all witnessing.

On my walk back to my car that night, as I was getting pelted by snow and accosted by winds, I couldn’t help but think how appropriate the weather really was. After all, for nearly a half-century our region has been forged by economic hardship. However, on this night, it became clear to me that the difficult lessons learned of decades past were bearing the fruit of a prosperous tomorrow.

Veteran-Led Upstate NY Startup, EMPEQ, Is Selected to Join the Founder Institute’s Exclusive Veteran Founder Lab Program

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EMPEQ joins the largest entrepreneur network in the world for veteran-led startups
January 31, 2019, Palo Alto, CA and Ithaca, NY – The Founder Institute (http://fi.co), the world’s premier pre-seed startup accelerator, and EMPEQ (https://empeq.co/), an Upstate New York NYSERDA and LaunchNY Portfolio Company join forces to help fund and scale EMPEQ’s energy efficient project financing business globally. Veteran Founder Lab is a fundraising program that is part of the Founder Institute’s Veteran Founder Initiative. Through this initiative, EMPEQ will gain access to free programming and resources within the Founder Institute’s Global Network while receiving hands on acceleration support from Vet-Tech, a startup accelerator in Silicon Valley that helps fund and scale Veteran-led startups. With Vet-Tech headquartered at the Plug and Play Tech Center, EMPEQ sits at the intersection of two of the largest startup organizations in the world whose combined networks span over 200 Cities and 11,000 Mentors.

“Being selected for this highly competitive program is quite an honor. The best part is that we aren’t forced to relocate to Silicon Valley or New York City to access world class investors and advisers. These types of impactful resources enable EMPEQ to more efficiently create jobs and invest capital right here in Upstate NY,” says Herbert Dwyer, CEO of EMPEQ, US Marine Corps veteran, and Ithaca, NY resident. “Many Upstate NY startups believe they must leave our region to access the necessary resources needed to become successful. With programs like the Founder Institute, this is simply not the case.”

Derek LaClair, CFO of EMPEQ and native of Buffalo, NY said, “I’ve lived my entire life in a 75-mile radius here in Upstate NY and I am thrilled that EMPEQ’s inclusion in this program will allow for that trend to continue. There is no better place in our country to live and raise a family.” He continued, “We are fortunate to be counted among the countless successful companies that have found their start with the Founder’s Institute.”

As part of the Veteran Founder Initiative, veterans receive:

Funding Assistance Through Founder Lab
Founder Lab (http://founderlab.com) is a virtual advisory program that helps early-stage startups raise seed funding. Over the course of this regimented 3-month program, participants will work closely with the Founder Institute and Vet-Tech teams in Silicon Valley to improve their pitch materials, build an investor pipeline, pitch to angels, negotiate terms, and generate strong investor interest.  

Scaling Assistance
Veteran-led startups will gain access to the combined global networks of the Founder Institute and Vet-Tech to scale their companies utilizing corporate partnerships, customer introductions, and a network of startup talent as part of the Initiative’s expansive global network.

The Veteran Founder Initiative was conceived by Ryan Micheletti, Director of Global Operations at the Founder Institute and Co-Founder of Vet-Tech. “EMPEQ is empowering businesses by helping them access commercial energy efficiency projects in a quick and scalable manner. This is a win-win for the both environment and the bottom-line of the businesses they serve”, says Ryan Micheletti.

Learn more about the EMPEQ at: https://empeq.co/

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About the Founder Institute
The Founder Institute (http://FI.co) is the world’s premier pre-seed startup accelerator. In the Founder Institute, you can build a company alongside a critical support network of local startup experts that are invested in your success, and through a structured and challenging business-building process that has helped our alumni raise over $700M. Leaders of the world’s fastest-growing startups have used the Founder Institute to raise funding, get into seed-accelerators, generate traction, recruit a team, build a product, transition from employee to entrepreneur, and more. Based in Silicon Valley and with chapters across 200 cities and 60 countries, the Founder Institute’s mission is to Globalize Silicon Valley and empower talented and motivated entrepreneurs to build companies that will create one million new jobs.  The Founder Institute was founded in 2009 by Adeo Ressi and Jonathan Greechan. It is operated out of Palo Alto, California.

About EMPEQ
EMPEQ solves the three biggest problems that stop small to mid-sized organizations from taking advantage of energy efficient equipment: 
1. Upfront cost 
2. Time-consuming loan review 
3. Burdening the balance sheet
With EMPEQ, a multi-family, commercial, nonprofit, or municipal organization can use energy efficient equipment, such as LED lighting or an air source heat pump system, without upfront cost by providing just their corporate name and address for financial review. Within 48 hours, approved organizations can simply sign a service contract with EMPEQ and then an approved contractor will perform the installation. EMPEQ uses its unique financing model and proprietary FinTech platform to help channel partners like contractors and utilities to overcome the equipment financing challenges faced by their customers. 

EMPEQ MEDIA CONTACT: Herbert Dwyer, Co-Founder and CEO at EMPEQ (herbert.dwyer@empeq.co)

FOUNDER INSTITUTE MEDIA CONTACT: Jonathan Greechan, Co-Founder at the Founder Institute (j@fi.co)

PRESS KIT: http://fi.co/press