Black Female Founder’s AI Platform Reduces Energy Waste And Is ESG-Focused

Reducing energy waste is big business: $33.28 billion in 2022, according to Fortune Business Insights.

Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria are used to measure a company’s positive human impact in addition to the shareholder value they create. Obviously, all in the energy waste sector deliver environmental benefits, but not so for social benefits and good governance.

For SaLisa Berrien, founder and CEO at COI Energy, ensuring that her company delivers benefits for all three areas was a personal priority.

AI and machine learning drive the COI Energy digital platform. It detects and eliminates energy waste in buildings in real-time—as well as having a portion of every kilowatt saved for allocation to low-income communities.

Putting ESG Into Energy Waste Management

Berrien’s North Star is to eliminate energy waste and repurpose it for good. For her:

• E of ESG is about protecting the environment. “Businesses waste about a third of the energy they consume—that’s $300 million tons of carbon being emitted annually into the environment and not being used,” exclaimed Berrien.
• S of ESG is to support energy equity. “I knew what it felt like to be in the dark,” sighed Berrien. She grew up in Allentown, PA, and experienced energy poverty. Her parents couldn’t afford to pay the electric bill every month. COI customers can pay forward a portion of their energy savings to people whom are energy starved. The gifts are tax deductible. The program is called E2X Exchange (excess energy exchange).
• G of ESG is for governance. You don’t have accountability if you can’t measure savings and show people how your company is saving money.

Listening to Customers: How COI Prioritizes User Needs and Feedback

Berrien has 25 years of experience in the energy industry, including working for utilities, corporations, and startups. She’s an engineer by training, but her career focus was business development.

Through the years, time after time, customers told Berrien that they wanted to improve energy efficiency and the bottom line with complete transparency. Instead, they were told gobbledygook about how complicated and costly it was. “It’s really not that complicated,” she declared.

In January 2018, she launched COI Energy.

“We developed a solution that simplifies the whole process, which is as easy to use as turning on a light switch,” said Berrien. COI has a hardware-enabled software platform that makes it simple to identify waste and address it. It uses AI and machine learning to develop predictive analytics so customers know how they’re utilizing their energy in real time, where they are potentially wasting it, and how they can eliminate it. For every kilowatt saved, a portion can be allocated to low-income communities.

When the company started, Berrien thought it could serve all businesses from the very smallest to the very largest. During the beta test of the platform, she discovered COI’s sweet spot was companies with multiple locations, such as healthcare facilities, groceries, commercial office space, and multifamily units.

During the pandemic, COI helped companies understand, for example, why the energy bill of a building with only 10% had only gone down by 16%. “The platform gave them a clear line of sight into correcting the inefficiencies,” said Berrien.

Allies Open Doors to Investors, Customers, and Talent

When Berrien started the company, she bootstrapped it, but to achieve its full potential, she needed to raise venture capital. No surprise that, as a Black female founder, fundraising was her biggest challenge. “Founders that didn’t have a track record and didn’t have a diverse background were getting funding,” she stated. “We’ve been generating revenue from the beginning.”

In 2021, Black female founders received a measly 0.34% of total venture capital, according to Crunchbase. “It’s been hard to get investment,” Berrien said. Still, she did raise a seed round and is currently raising a Series A.

Berrien participated in several accelerator programs, including Google for Startups, SAPiO, and Morgan Stanley Multicultural Lab. These programs didn’t just open doors to investors but to customers, too. Individuals, such as Lynn Loacker, did as well. She is founder and managing director at Davis Wright Tremaine Project W, the law firm’s accelerator for women. Berrien didn’t go through its program but did speak at an event of theirs.

These programs helped Berrin develop as a CEO. “When I first started, I wasn’t confident as a CEO,” she said. “I had impostor syndrome.” Advisors at Morgan Stanley helped her understand that she had the street creds to have a seat at the table. After all, she was selling COI to multi-billion-dollar utilities. “They strengthened my backbone.”

When Berrien started hiring a team, she used headhunters and posted on job search sites. “I found that word-of-mouth referrals were the best source of top talent.”

COI stands for Circle of Influence, a term introduced by Stephen Covey, the management guru. Using a Circle of Influence can guide you in determining where you need to develop allies.

Within Berrien’s circle were customers, funding, top talent, and leadership skills, among other things. People helped her with them all. “To solve any problem, an individual can’t do it alone; it takes a group of people,” Berrien said.

That is allyship at its best!

Who’s in your Circle of Influence?