Gary L. Hunt
San Francisco Bay Area
925-352-8548
gary@techandcreativelabs.com
Gary Hunt is a strategic adviser on energy technology and market transformation to companies serving the energy vertical. As president of Tech and Creative Labs he helps software, data and information services companies turn intellectual property into high value-added recurring revenue products and analytics solutions.
Gary Hunt is a global business executive with 20+ years experience as a “C’ level trusted adviser on corporate strategy, M&A, and recurring revenue business model product strategies. His focus is the energy and information services verticals.
Gary’s “sweet spot” is go to market product strategies using disruptive innovation technology at the convergence of information and operations technology. As a partner and president at Tech & Creative Labs LLC, Gary leverages advanced analytics software in artificial intelligence, data visualization, social and learning software, mobile and remote data gathering and synching, and visual network analysis to create disruptive innovation solutions to turn strategy into results in the transformation of the global energy vertical. Gary’s Scalable Growth Strategy Advisors consulting practice has been folded into Tech and Creative Labs as the foundation for its energy solutions business line.
As global division president from 2000 to 2008 as the firm grew into Ventyx with a dozen M&A transactions Gary lead its global energy analytics, consulting and advisory products business worldwide. He organized and integrated the Ventyx professional services organization transforming it from a pure business process analysis consulting team into a high performance integrated software, data and applications group providing installation, advanced customer support, business analysis and applications development services across the Ventyx products line.
Gary is a trusted adviser on energy strategy and market issues. His experience includes service as a state utility regulator, utility executive and strategic consultant.
- Gary is an expert in energy analytics and renewable energy project finance. His practice provided independent market opinions in project finance transactions valued at $50+ billion on 90,000MW of power generation assets as President of Global Energy Advisors division of Ventyx; as Vice President, Global Analytics & Data at IHS/CERA, and Regional & Energy Economics Principal at S&P.
- Gary served as a public utility regulator in Minnesota, Illinois and Texas. He directed the public staff in utility rate cases before the Minnesota Public Service Commission and was General Manager/ Chief of Staff at the Illinois Commerce Commission. In Texas where original jurisdiction in natural gas regulation was a municipal function Gary served as the natural gas regulatory official for the City of Austin providing regulatory supervision of Southern Union Gas and Lone Star Gas subject to appellate review of City Rate Cases at the Texas Railroad Commission.
- Gary served as a utility executive in ERCOT, WECC & Eastern Interconnect. As CEO at Massachusetts Municipal Wholesale Electric Company (MMWEC), a wholesale power producer, Gary managed a large portfolio of energy and fuel resources. As Assistant City Manager-Utilities & Finance in Austin, Texas, Gary managed Austin Energy and Austin Water at the peak of their rapid growth and was a key player in Austin’s Conservation Power Plant and its early drive into renewable energy. As Assistant General Manager-Operations at East Bay Municipal Utility District in Oakland, California he managed the FERC hydropower re-licensing, negotiated environmental settlements for the District’s Sierra Nevada watershed and lead the utility’s integrated resource plan through its successful environmental review under California’s CEQA and the federal NEPA processes.
In 2008, he formed Scalable Growth Strategy Advisors to assist cleantech clients with go-to-market strategies to turn their intellectual property into value-added recurring revenue software, services and advisory products.
In 2011, he formed Tech & Creative Labs with partners to leverage disruptive innovation technologies to create fast-to-market, easy-to-use, compelling B2B solutions in in asset management, security, big data visualization, artificial intelligence and predictive analytics, content and knowledge management, social software and mobile data access.
In 2012 Scalable Growth Strategy Advisors was combined into Tech and Creative Labs with offices in Boston and San Francisco Bay Area.
PERFORMANCE ACHIEVEMENTS
Principal in a successful start-up scaled into #1 market share in integrated software services for the information services vertical. Strong P/L results: Bookings: 126%; revenue: 109%; margin: 106%; EBITDA: 182% of plan in final year before Global Energy Decisions was sold to Ventyx which was itself acquired by ABB in a $1 billion transaction in 2010.
Eleven M&A transactions in 10 years to develop fast go-to-market strategies, scale business to market leadership and flip it with successful exit strategies including:
- Due Diligence for IHS acquisition of Global Insight provided due diligence, product mapping, and synergies for integration into one IHS insight business line.
- Strategy Adviser to Emerging Energy Research assisting the CEO position his renewable energy advisory business to be attractive to strategic buyers.
- Go-to-Market Product Strategy for Nexant providing a Smart Grid-enabled product roadmap for R&D for new products driven by a successful $43 million recapitalization.
- Enterprise Software Services for Ventyx as product manager for analytics applications to scale market share for software services we build new lines of business from the value-added leverage of software, data and expertise.
- Ventyx integration combining rivals New Energy Associates and Global Energy Decisions into an integrated Ventyx Energy Advisory Services Group.
- Seven ‘tuck under’ acquisitions in five years to scale start-up Global Energy Decisions to market leadership in integrated software, data and analytics solutions.
Scalable growth recurring revenue strategies from market analytics applications creating high value-added solutions used to support more than 200 utility, integrated energy companies and investment banking clients.
- Ventyx recurring revenue product champion for Ventyx Suite advisory products: http://www1.ventyx.com/advisory/energy-advisory-services.asp . As a software company we sought to scale our market growth by developing repeatable solution applications to make our analytics products faster, cheaper and easier to use for our clients. These recurring revenue products helped scale our business to #1:
- Power Market Advisory Service (2000-2008) While competitors did simulation analysis as custom consulting jobs, we “productized” our regional market analysis to create an independent, consistent, transparent long term regional expected price energy forecast service for 76 price zones in North America and Europe updated twice yearly long term and monthly short-term creating a ‘#1 market share killer app” with recurring revenue sales from more than 250 clients.
- Power Generation BlueBook (2002-2008). A portfolio screening and risk solution for investment banks, we leveraged the power market reference cases to produce a high value-added cash flow analysis screening tool for banks, hedge funds and portfolio managers with coverage for more than 6000 electric power generation plants across North America from 2002 to 2008. This was one of the early software as a service (SaaS) solutions.
- Renewable Energy: The Bottom Line (2005) We were among the first to provide consistent, independent analysis to validate the market potential for renewable energy with this pace-setting study of nine technologies across 12 markets. Our methodology and transparency made this study a baseline for credit analysis and project finance market opinions among the major investment banks and rating agencies.
- Putting Competitive Power Markets to the Test (2005) As utilities divested power generation in exchange for stranded cost recovery we tracked the transition performance of those power plants comparing bore and after results to provide an independent analysis of the impact of wholesale across regional markets. Our work was included in testimony before FERC’s Electric Energy Markets Competition Task Force in Docket No. AD05-17-000 and cited by Congress as independent validation that wholesale power competition delivered cost effective benefits to consumers.
- Can Coal Deliver? (2006) To independently validate the changing fortunes and potential for coal, we produced this analysis of North America’s coal productive capacity, transportation, changes in regulations, technology and other factors affecting the use of coal for power generation. Our work product was a benchmark in the portfolio analysis of clean coal technology.
- Global Fuels Advisor (2000-2008) Many consultants do fuel forecasts but most are tied to forward price strips that often lack sufficient liquidity to be valid. We created an integrated fuel modeling framework based upon fundamentals that included our Coal Reference Case, Natural Gas Reference Case, and Emissions Forecast each using our power model fuel demand for power generation and expected prices as inputs to model fuel volume and expected flows for a tightly integrated resource planning solution.
- Global Energy Horizons (2003-2008) Our investment banking clients wanted to stress test portfolio options across alternative scenarios. We designed Global Energy Horizons as a crowdsourced platform as a service (PaaS) to provide simulation analysis of portfolio options across alternative scenarios of the electric power industry future. The service allowed users to modify basic assumptions like fuels prices and rerun the simulation to reflect their changes. It was quickly adopted as an independent benchmark and starting point for integrated resource planning by investor owned utilities and state regulators.
CORE COMPETENCIES
“C” Level Global Business Trusted Advisor
Energy Market Strategy & Risk Advisor
Deep Information Services Domain Knowledge
Renewable Energy Market Expertise
Corporate Strategic Planning Expertise
Enterprise Software Product Management
Cleantech Business Models
Go-to-Market Product Champion
M&A Due Diligence & Integration Expert
Analytics Consulting Practice Leader
Recurring Revenue Business Models
Global Market Analysis
Quantitative and Qualitative Analytics
P&L Management Performance
CAREER HISTORY
Founding Partner, President & Managing Director-Energy Solutions, Tech&Creative Labs
(09/2011 to current)
TC Labs is a disruptive innovation pioneer—a new kind of company leveraging proven game-changing technologies seamlessly integrated to create innovative, fast-to-market, easy to use enterprise scale solutions without the enterprise software cost or hassle. I lead TCLabs product strategy and development in the energy vertical. Our clients are energy and utility companies, Fortune 1000, and investors needing strategic analysis and insight, content and end-to-end solutions for:
- big data organization and analysis,
- visual network analysis and security,
- artificial market simulation and data visualization,
- social networking and community collaboration
- knowledge capture and pattern analysis and
- remote data gathering and access access solutions.
President, Scalable Growth Strategy Advisors,(now a unit of Tech & Creative Labs)
(02/2008 to current)
Independent strategy adviser to energy technology and information advisory company CEOs focused on smart grid, renewable energy and power generation portfolio strategy and risk. I help companies leverage their assets and turn intellectual property into actionable recurring revenue solutions that help scale their business growth such as:
- Smart Grid Go-to-Market Software Product Strategy for a Silicon Valley-based software company developing smart grid-enabled meter data management, energy efficiency tracking and dynamic pricing solutions needed help sharpening it product roadmap for a $40+ million recapitalization.
- Emerging Technology Positioning Strategy for a Cambridge, MA based global renewable energy research advisory firm seeking to attract strategic buyers and enhance its valuation in the resulting transaction.
- Utility Strategic Growth Plan focused on expanding its growth potential from leveraging its transmission assets, strategic location and back-up generation potential to expand investment opportunities in renewable energy and unconventional oil and natural gas plays.
- Energy Industry Strategy and Issues Blog Commentator for SNL Financial Services providing industry and market insight on events and trends affecting investors in the energy and information services verticals.
- Scalable Growth from Insight Services for a large information services company seeking to integrate its numerous acquisitions into one insight business line that re-purposed components from all its companies to create new, high valued added products and services. I provided he product mapping, synergy analysis and a roadmap for creating new products from existing components across its business lines.
- Competitive Positioning Strategy for a large solar firm competing in a market with rapidly falling imported photovoltaic panel prices seeking to differentiate itself from commodity resellers by offering value-added products and services.
Vice President, Global Analytics & Data, IHS/CERA,
(04/2008 to 11/2008)
Strategy consultant providing due diligence in M&A transactions and product R&D for solutions for evaluating sustainability risk in a power generation portfolio:
- Alliance pilot for IHS environment products in SAP enterprise solutions,
- Acquisition of Global Insight and its integration in IHS Insight business line.
- Third Party Arbitrator, Valuation, Beaver Valley Nuclear, First Energy (IHS/CERA)
President, Ventyx Global Energy Advisors Division, Ventyx, an ABB Company
(05/2000-02/2008)
Officer for integrated software, data and advisory services company providing power market and risk analysis, integrated resource planning and market opinions in project finance deals.
- Power Generation Strategy and Risk Adviser to investors and portfolio managers.
- Market forecast adviser to more than 200 energy industry clients.
- Structured project finance transactions valued at $50 billion on 90,000MW of assets.
Director, Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA)
(05/1996-09/1999)
Research director and strategy consultant, my results included:
- Principal investigator in CERA Electric Power Scenarios development process;
- Product Manager for CERA Retail energy Forum Strategic Advisory Service
- Engagement manager for major energy client projects worldwide.
Assistant General Manager-Water & Power Operations, EBMUD
(05/1993-/05/1996)
Chief operations officer responsible for day to day water and power power operations, portfolio supply & risk, system reliability, and environmental compliance:
- Managed completion of long range integrated resource plan;
- Negotiated hydropower relicensing settlement with FERC and interveners.
- Directed hydropower and water service operations serving 2 million customers
Principal, Regional Economics, Standard and Poor’s
(05/1990-05/1993)
Principal in regional economics practice at S&P/DRI for utility and government clients:
- Demand Drivers, Econometrics, and Regional Economics Services for utilities;
- Cost-benefit analysis of economic strategy investment options for States.
General Manager, Massachusetts Municipal Wholesale Electric Company
(04/1988-05/1990)
Turnaround CEO for wholesale power producer with 1000 MW portfolio of assets and contracts to serve municipal distribution utilities across New England. Results:
- Settlement with Seabrook joint owners to cap to-go costs and end litigation;
- Restored investment grade credit rating following suspension;
- Developed a long term power supply plan to guide future resource negotiations;
- Served as member of NEPOOL Management and Executive Committees.
Assistant City Manager-Utilities & Finance, City of Austin, TX,
(01/1985-04/1988)
Senior executive in charge of Austin Energy, Austin Water regional utilities and corporate finance in this fast-growing state capital of Texas. Accomplishments included:
- Growth management adding 25,000 meters/year for 3 years stressing the system.
- Doubling T&D capacity in four years with major transmission construction;
- Debt management and capital finance capacity to meet growth demands;
- Negotiated long term water supply agreement with LCRA to assure reliability;
- Managed and championed one of the nation’s most successful renewable energy and efficiency programs which made Austin a leader in cleantech.
Chief of Staff/General Manager, Illinois Commerce Commission
(09/1980-01/1985)
Deputy State Director of Public Service, State of Minnesota
(05/1979-09/1980)
I served as a state public utility regulator in three states first at the Minnesota Department of Public Service, then Illinois as chief of staff and General Manager for five years at the Illinois Commerce Commission managing utility rate cases and regulatory proceedings. As Assistant City Manager in Austin Texas I served as the chief regulatory officer for the Austin City Council in its role having original jurisdiction of rates and regulatory supervision for Lone Star Gas and Southern Union Gas companies subject to appellate jurisdiction at the Texas Railroad Commission. I also represented Austin regulatory policy interests in matters before the Texas Water Commission, ERCOT, and the Public Utility Commission of Texas
Professional City Manager
I began my career as a professional city manager serving as assistant city manager in Albany, OR (1971-73) and Overland Park, KS (1975-78) and as City Manager in Lincoln City, OR(1973-74) and New Brighton, MN (1978-79)before shifting my focus to the energy and information technology verticals.
EDUCATION
MPA, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas, HUD Graduate Studies Fellow
B.A., Wright State University, Dayton, Ohio
LINKS:
LINKED-IN Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/gh8431
Gary Hunt’s Blog: TCLABZ Trends
Gary Hunt’s Digital Resume: http://garylhunt.wordpress.com
