The nimble startup company behind New York Energy Week is rapidly growing alongside the innovative event series it launched last year. New York Energy Week creators, Energy Solutions Forum, just completed a corporate rebranding, taking the new name EnerKnol (for energy knowledge) that better reflects their core mission and flagship offering.
Breaking Energy recently interviewed EnerKnol founders Angelique Mercurio and Emily Bjorklund regarding the fast-growing event series and the impetus behind their corporate name change. “In short, it’s [rebranding to EnerKnol] because we’ve evolved as a company. When ESF launched, we were publishing research. We launched our software the following year, and called it EnerKnol. EnerKnol became our core business, incorporating the research into the same platform as the data. Plus, the name EnerKnol, or Energy Knowledge, captures the simplicity and the fundamental nature of our mission to transform the energy industry by providing real-time access to regulatory data,” said Mercurio, CEO & Founder.
“We started as a team of seasoned energy analysts, publishing investment research and providing regulatory insight to investors and decision-makers. In doing so, we quickly discovered a much greater challenge facing market participants, which, as Wall Street-trained policy analysts, we were uniquely positioned to solve by using cloud-based technology and open government data. This led to the creation of EnerKnol, the first such platform to empower market participants with one-stop access to regulatory filings, in real-time. And while expert analysis still drives the value of our platform, we view our data solution as our identity, and as the purpose of our company, Mercurio explained in a statement.
EnerKnol rapidly grew this past year, adding 10 new employees and expanding their research coverage universe, and the week-long energy industry event series they pioneered in 2013 is quickly growing as well. So why did these ambitious entrepreneurs decide to start New York Energy Week amid the hectic demands associated with launching a new business?
“The idea had its roots in the ESF Calendar, one of our first products, which curates energy business events in and around New York. There is a thriving energy community but it’s extremely silo’d, and we are in a unique position to see the potential there was if we brought all the stakeholders together. We launched NYEW in 2013 when both our city and state were waking up to the need for energy innovation in a post-Sandy context. The conditions were perfect to spark New York’s renewed efforts and revived focus on the energy industry,” Bjorklund, EnerKnol CMO and Co-founder, told Breaking Energy.
And while New York Energy Week’s original goal remains intact – essentially cross-sector energy business collaboration to drive investment – its popularity and demand exceeded expectations. “The original goal was to bring everyone together for a week-long cross-sector summit. The energy industry is undeniably fragmented, even polarized, and we stimulate collaboration among the different stakeholders, ultimately to drive forward investment in New York’s energy economy. Over the past year, we organically cultivated a network of energy professionals that now meet year round. What we didn’t realize was just how far-reaching the need and the demand is,” Mercurio said.
And that demand emerged as one of the major challenges the organizers currently face. “Our biggest challenge in the beginning was keeping up with the demand we had for the events. We had over 5,000 requests for invitations last year with capacity for only about 1,000. This year, one challenge was finding hosts who could accommodate even more capacity to meet the growing demand. That demand has only multiplied, so we will continue to be challenged in terms of accommodating the growth. We will be livestreaming most of the events this year so others can experience the content,” explained Bjorklund.
And the pair are nothing if not determined, planning to elevate New York Energy Week to the upper echelons of the energy conference circuit over the next decade. “We see it becoming a global summit for the entire industry, similar to Davos or even SXSW [South by Southwest]. The energy industry doesn’t have that yet. This must-attend industry event is where every player will come together in a collaborative effort to drive technology transfer, innovation and energy industry investment,” said Bjorklund.
“We’ve already received interest from other cities in replicating our model. We have a huge global component this year that’s rapidly growing, especially as the energy economy becomes increasingly global,” Mercurio added.
EnerKnol (formerly Energy Solutions Forum) is an energy policy data company based out of NYC ACRE, New York’s flagship energy technology incubator. EnerKnol’s mission is to bridge the gap between regulators and energy market participants by providing more intelligent and efficient access to government data to ultimately stimulate investment and drive forward energy industry innovation. The company launched New York Energy Week in 2013 to further this mission through collaboration and dialogue among industry leaders across the highly fragmented energy industry. Visit www.nyenergyweek.com for more information.
Full disclosure: Breaking Energy is a media partner for New York Energy Week and the author is on the NYEW Board of Directors.
