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Chicago-area entrepreneur Tim Stojka picked up his utility bill 18 months ago and had an “a-ha” moment.
“I said I’m an engineer and I can’t understand this!” Stojka said most consumers just pay their electricity bills with little thought for or recourse against inefficiency.
He founded Agentis in 2009 on the premise of giving businesses “more visibility on energy.” After about a year of marketing directly to business owners, Agentis started to focus on utilities.
Today four utilities are piloting their software, which synthesizes electricity usage records with market data and other statistics. Stojka said the personal recommendations that result help the utilities manage demand and improve efficiency.
“The great thing about businesses is their goal is clear — they want to make money,” he said. Agentis helps them target inefficiency to cut costs, an approach Stojka has literally grown up with.
“I focus on business to business opportunities,” he said. Even as an industrial engineering undergraduate at Northwestern University, Stojka sold t-shirts and Wildcat stuffed animals.
In 1994 he founded Commerx — one of the first e-commerce businesses to take advantage of a blossoming internet’s potential for enhanced communication.
“I enjoy pioneering and building new businesses. I’m really compelled by this,” he said.
During the Clean Energy Challenge, Stojka said Agentis has had an opportunity to clearly articulate what the company does for clean energy. The company estimates at least a 1 percent improvement in energy efficiency for businesses and utilities using the software. With two thirds of energy usage in the business sector, this is no small feat for a single intervention.
As smart meter technology expands and state mandates for energy efficiency take shape, Agentis’ ability to recognize patterns in energy usage and deliver custom recommendations could become increasingly useful.
But Stojka is careful to remind himself that being an entrepreneur is all about adaptability.
“You think you have a solution, but many times the solutions and the problems change. You have to be stay a step ahead.”
The Clean Energy Trust is dedicated to promoting the region’s most innovative minds in clean energy. Visit us on Facebook or at our blog for weekly profiles of the area’s brightest innovators, including Challenge finalists, rock star researchers, and industry leading CEOs. Each profile takes you into the entrepreneur’s experience, including video of their pitch at the Clean Energy Challenge.
