Comments on: Tom Siebel’s $100M big data energy startup C3 finally emerges as a player

By: Clifford E. Kirchof

Clifford E. Kirchof — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 09:00:52 +0000

I don’t see any news or anything revolutionary here. The company started with completely different business model and has been changing it every year. It had major exodus of management and sales team, has little or no domain knowledge, and like another startup, Hara, has no idea what business it is in. The rumor is also out that is looking for a buyer and had talks with Oracle. Oracle did not see any value.

Fortunately, there are already many other vendors in this market with well tested solutions. Past performance in CRM or ERP software space is no guarantee for success in energy and environmental resource management.

Sorry Katie, but just reads like an elevator pitch to sell abortive venture.

By: Trisha B

Trisha B — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 02:30:03 +0000

“a loyalty program that gets customers to engage in energy efficiency behaviors in exchange for coupons and points at retailers like Amazon”

Sounds a lot like MyEnergy.com

By: Bruce Cleveland

Bruce Cleveland — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 18:51:14 +0000

C3 makes money from utilities that want to help mitigate their customers’s energy spend. In a perverse twist of capitalism, regulated utilities are incented to suppress their customers’ energy consumption so the utility does not need to invest in capital intensive projects such as building a new dam, nuclear power plant, etc.

C3 offers three products – SaaS applications.

The first one enables the utilitiy’s own customer service agents to work with their large customers – eg Best Buy – and identifies each location’s energy spend, equipment, etc and then the app suggests ways for Best Buy to cut spend and exactly how much they can expect to save by taking the steps to reduce their energy spend. c3 uses data sources from a variety of databases to do this.

The other 2 SaaS apps are targeted to SMBs – your hair salon, for example – and consumers to help them identify easy ways to reduce energy consumption. Again, these apps are paid for by the utility company on behalf of their customers.

The original market C3 attempted to pursue never materialized as the company had envisioned. To Tom’s credit, he asessed the situation 18 months ago and completely retargeted and reorganized the company to pursue this market which appears to be working.

Full disclosure: I am an investor in C3, on the C3 Advisory Board and formerly a member of Siebel Systems’ executive team.

By: Joe

Joe — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 02:54:38 +0000

That’s Tom, Can talk big and paint a rosy picture and throw around billion dollar figures..

By: exsiebel

exsiebel — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 14:25:38 +0000

Not clear what they sell and how they make money.

By: Stuart

Stuart — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 10:36:52 +0000

The author assumes a lot. What is C3 doing exactly? The article is shrouded in buzz terms and doesn’t answer what makes C3 special

By: Buy Mailing List, Email List

Buy Mailing List, Email List — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 10:21:52 +0000

haha… That is the fact, everyone wants make money whatever they did. If any business company doing some good thing looks like for the people, even their intention is somewhere to make the branding or making money to their business is ultimate.