Posts from Aneesh Chopra

The Green Button

Green buttonThis past Sunday afternoon I had the pleasure of being on the judges panel at the NYC Cleanweb Hackathon at NYU ITP. There were thirteen hacks presented to the judges. Of them, probably half had incorporated the "green button" for getting your utility data into their app.

The Green Button is an initiative promoted by Aneesh Chopra, the CTO of the United States. In a speech last fall, he challenged the utility industry to come up with a simple way to allow consumers to access their utility data. Last week, three big California utilities announced they had made the Green Button available on their websites.

And by sunday, the green button was in a half a dozen web and mobile apps that had been created over the weekend. This is the kind of innovation that gets me excited. The Green Button is like OAuth for energy data. It is a simple standard that the utlities can implement on one side and web/mobile deveopers can implement on the other side. And the result is a ton of information sharing about energy consumption and in all liklihood energy savings that result from more informed consumers.

The Green Button follows on the success of the Blue Button, a similar initiative that allows veterans to get at their medical data.

I'm a big fan of simplicity and open standards to unleash a lot of innovation. APIs and open data aren't always simple concepts for end users. Green Buttons and Blue Buttons are pretty simple concepts that most consumers will understand. I'm hoping we soon see Yellow Buttons, Red Buttons, Purple Buttons, and Orange Buttons too.

Let's get behind these open data initiatives. Let's build them into our apps. And let's pressure our hospitals, utilities, and other institutions to support them. I'm going to reach out to ConEd, the utility in NYC, and find out when they are going to add Green Button support to their consumers data. I hope it is soon.

#Web/Tech

Startup America

On Monday , the White House announced Startup America. The CTO of US, Aneesh Chopra, blogged about it on Techcrunch.  My friend Brad Feld was there and blogged about it.

I have no involvement with Startup America, at least yet. But I am a fan of it for one simple reason – they are paying attention. Let me explain.

For years, entrepreneurs in NYC, particularly tech entrepreneurs, labored largely in silence. The city government was focused on the big employers and real estate. Tech entrepreneurship was something that happened elsewhere. It was largely ignored.

Then a year or two ago, the city woke up. Our mayor, himself one of the best tech entrepreneurs of his generation, woke up. They started paying attention to the emerging tech sector. The Mayor started coming our our events. The city took our calls. And they are now working with the tech sector to make things easier and support good ideas. I tell them privately and publicly that I don't agree with all that they are doing and wish they would do other things. But at least they are doing and listening. That is a huge step in the right direction.

Now it appears the White House is paying attention too. They've got smart experienced people like Steve Case, Carl Schramm, and Brad Feld advising them. They've got programs in place and more on the way.

Do I agree with all that they are doing? No. Just like NYC, I wish they would do other things. Just like NYC, I will blog about them.

One thing that jumps out to me is the focus on what is working (tech entrepreneurship) and the lack of focus on what is not working (health care entrepreneurship, energy enetrepreneurship, community entrepreneurship). I'll make sure they hear that criticism, from me and from others.

But this effort gives us an opening. We can get things like visa reform on the White House's agenda through new channels. We can push back on nutty ideas like regulating VC firms so that my blog posts would have to be signed off on a compliance officer before they go public. We can shine a light on areas that need help and those that are doing "just fine, thank you."

I live and work in startup america and I am glad the White House is paying attention to us now.



#VC & Technology