Article by Forbes Magazine
This article was written in 2015...but it tells you how much they've accomplished over the last 9 years!
An In-depth Look At Energous, Its IPO, And Its Disruptive Approach To Wireless Power
George Holmes had decided he was done with wireless power companies when a friend asked him to check out a little startup based in Pleasanton, CA. “It’s the best wireless power deal on the planet,” his friend said.
“I don’t think so,” Holmes said. “I’ve been there. I’ve done that. I’ve got that T-shirt.”
Holmes, a veteran sales executive, had left a top job at Lucent Microelectronics (now Agere Systems) to work with smaller companies, including two wireless power startups. He had a knack for picking companies and shaping sales teams that delivered triple-digit growth. But the wireless power companies hadn’t taken off, and Holmes thought he knew why.
“If you can’t power four devices simultaneously at fifteen feet, then you don’t have anything,” he bluntly told Michael Leabman, the founder of Energous, which at the time was called DvineWave, after he finally agreed to make the call.
Holmes thought he was ending the conversation. No one had been able to develop a workable system to send wireless power to smartphones at a distance. The only commercially viable solutions involved placing a phone directly on a pad. Companies like Intel and Qualcomm were struggling to transmit power a few inches so that the transmitter could be hidden underneath a desk.
“I think I can do that,” Leabman said quietly. Holmes was dumbfounded. Then Leabman explained.
Leabman, a soft-spoken engineer, is one of those very smart people who manages to combine genuine decency with relentless drive. Starting as an undergraduate at MIT, Leabman spent more than a decade learning everything he could about electromagnetic waves. His knowledge wasn’t just theoretical. Over the years, he has launched companies that delivered better WiMAX and offered broadband Internet service to aircraft in flight and cruise ships at sea. Energous was his fourth venture. Based on a foundation of mathematical algorithms developed over more than a decade, Energous was Leabman’s biggest and boldest idea yet.
Even among the small number of wireless power researchers, Leabman’s experience made him an anomaly. If he could do what he said he could, Energous might well have what Warren Buffett likes to call an economic moat—a long-lasting competitive advantage based on its intellectual property.
Leabman’s approach hadn’t been proven, but it made sense. He was going to take advancements that had been made regarding voice and data communications, apply them to the transmission of wireless power, and push things forward one or two orders of magnitude. Instead of four or eight antennas, his transmitters would have hundreds. Devices on the receiving end would sport tens of tiny antennas. The math involved was mind bending, but Leabman assured Holmes it was doable. He showed him an early prototype—a transmitter the size of a box fan that could power a phone five feet away.
Holmes went back to the bankers at MDB Capital Group who had initially called him about Energous. It was a good deal, he told them. There were risks, obviously, but Leabman had a shot at success.
A combination venture capital firm and investment bank, MDB specialized in helping early stage companies with disruptive technology. But unlike traditional venture firms who typically wait until a portfolio company reaches $100 million in revenue before taking it public, MDB offered a few handpicked companies the chance to go public immediately, even if their revenues were zero. They called this approach “public venture funding.” There was a logic behind it. The bankers wanted to give ordinary investors the chance to take the same outsized risks for the same massive rewards as the most elite venture funds.
Companies who successfully raised public venture funds could find themselves in a stronger position than their venture-funded peers. Being able to offer publicly tradable stock at relatively low valuations made it easier to attract engineers. Stakes of the founding team were not diluted by repeated rounds of funding, and media interest was much higher. “There are a lot of advantages to being public as you are developing the growth phase of your company,” said Ankur Desai, a member of the team at MDB that championed Energous.
In Energous, Desai saw “a ubiquitous solution that changes the way we think about energy.” Earlier that year, MDB had invested $5.5 million in the company. Desai was now helping Leabman hire an executive team. He wanted to know if Holmes had any recommendations.
Holmes suggested Stephen Rizzone as CEO. Holmes had met Rizzone in 1999, when Rizzone had stepped in as president and CEO of Ortel, an optical components company. At the time, it was Rizzone’s second CEO position, but he was already developing a reputation for helping unlock shareholder value. Together, Rizzone and Holmes, who was then vice president of worldwide sales at Ortel, sold the company to to Lucent MicroElectronics for $3 billion.
After taking each other’s measure, the men took separate paths. Rizzone joined the short roster of seasoned managers that large investors turn to when they want someone new to run things at their companies. Holmes became the go-to guy for sales expertise, building teams in sectors ranging from enterprise search to solar. But Holmes and Rizzone kept in touch. They knew who could get the job done if another big opportunity came along.
Rizzone agreed to take a look at Energous. “I saw Michael’s first-generation prototype, and I instantly was all in,” he recalled. “In the whole wireless revolution, wireless charging is the last problem to be solved.”
Blue-eyed, blond and dapper, Rizzone lived in a house in Newport Beach overlooking the harbor. He was polished, well mannered, unflappable and focused. Rizzone exuded credibility and could also be disarmingly direct. At his first meeting with Leabman, Rizzone laid out his management style. “You’re the founder, and I know that’s important,” he said. “I’ve had experience with founders, and I’ll let you know that it’s going to be a partnership. And part of that partnership is you are going to hear things you might not like. I am not going to hide anything from you.”
Leabman had already spoken with four or five other CEO candidates. None had been so brutally honest about the relationship between founder and CEO. He liked Rizzone.
As a young technical founder, Leabman was used to being told by venture capitalists that his companies needed seasoned business leadership. He had also grown used to seeing VCs and the management they hired put their personal interests ahead of the companies’ they funded. When Rizzone assured him Energous’ interest would come first, Leabman believed he meant it. But Leabman also planned to protect his company by going public immediately. It was why he had accepted funding from MDB. He intended to ensure that everyone’s interests would be aligned.
This strategy suited Rizzone just fine. “Given the potential here, we wanted to make sure everyone was completely focused on building a world-class company,” he said in an interview with Forbes.com more than a year later. “We wanted access to the public markets, and we wanted that access to be based on our ability to execute.”
Rizzone also knew Energous’ success would be dependent on its engineering team, which at the moment consisted solely of Leabman. Having public shares would be an invaluable recruiting tool. Energous would be able to offer a small company environment where an engineer could have an immediate impact, along with an early employee equity package that, when it vested, would be liquid.
Rizzone wanted the job, and he had the perfect candidate in mind to head sales and marketing: George Holmes. “From a sales and business development perspective, George is one of the best enablers that I’ve had the good fortune of working with,” he told Forbes.com.
Rizzone also hired Thomas Iwanski, an executive he had worked with at multiple companies, as a financial consultant as the interim financial officer. At the same time, Iwanski was also advising Medbox, a company that was seeking to commercialize marijuana vending machines. The relationship with Iwanski would prove to be short-lived.
In October 2013, the new team got down to work. Over the next six months, they would rename the company, which was officially launched as Energous in January 2014, hire dozen of experienced engineers and raise $27.6 million in a successful IPO. On March 28, 2014, the stock’s first day of trading on the Nasdaq stock exchange under the symbol “WATT,” it soared from $6 to $9.5. This was a remarkable performance for a company that had no history of operating revenue and had warned it would need additional capital to achieve its business goals.
Desai, now a founding partner of Liquid Venture Partners, said the IPO was targeted at investors who were comfortable risking capital on an early-stage company. He described investing in Energous today as akin to investing in companies like SnapChat or Uber that initially raised money at modest valuations and are now worth billions of dollars. “The public market investors deserve the opportunity to invest in these sorts of companies,” Desai said.
“The model is not that different from biotech, when companies go public very early in their life cycles,” explained Ben Padnos, an independent investor who has participated in both VC and public venture investments. “For the average Joe investor you need to go in with your eyes wide open. This is for the high-risk allocation of a diversified portfolio.”
At the same time, Padnos, who has blogged about his investment in Energous on Seeking Alpha, believed Energous offered one of those rare opportunities that is usually only available to a handful of the most elite venture capital firms and their clients. It had strong intellectual property—to date it has filed 170 patents, and its licensing model eliminated the cost of maintaining inventory and the risk of manufacturing. One day, billions of devices would be charged by wireless power. If the leadership team executed, there would be an enormous market for Energous’ technology.
Rizzone had sought to quickly put together a strong executive team, but one hire was not working out. In June, Energous ended its arrangement with Iwanski after Medbox became embroiled in charges of accounting improprieties. Rizzone said he knows Iwanski to be a person of high integrity, but that he needed to do what was best for Energous, which meant ensuring the company had no continuing connection to Medbox, which was involved in a growing scandal. (Rizzone and Holmes, who has also worked with Iwanski, asked me to clarify that they do not believe Iwanski to be involved in any questionable activities at Medbox but that they were concerned his dual roles would cause Energous to be associated with Medbox when in reality the two companies have never been connected in any way.)
Energous had a narrow window to introduce its technology to consumers who were anxious to reduce electronic clutter and cords, Cell phones that charged themselves when laid on special charging mats had been available for several years, and the technology, known as inductive charging was beginning to gain broad acceptance. Toward the end of 2014. Starbucks began embedding charging mats in countertops around the United States, expanding to London in early 2015. In 2016, PCs will come with built-in wireless charging courtesy of Intel, and, if all goes well, Energous’ WattUp system for mobile charging will hit the consumer market.
Energous’s move to rapidly commercialize its technology puts it ahead of other startups focused on charging devices at a distance like Ossia, which is based in Redmond, WA, or Wi-Charge, based in Rehovot, Israel. Like Energous, Ossia delivers power to multiple devices using Wi-Fi. Ossia recently raised $9.3 million from Recruit Holdings, a Japanese venture firm, and other investors. But its transmitters are still considerably larger than Energous’ transmitters. Wi-Charge wants to power devices via the infrared spectrum, which offers short wavelengths, higher frequencies and higher power, but it is still pulling together media demos.
Rizzone’s plan is to focus first on battery backpacks and wearables, thanks to the speed of their product cycles. But those rollouts will only scratch the surface of what’s possible. With WattUp, keyboards, wireless mice, remote controls, game controllers, and children’s toys —basically any low-power device—will no longer require a constant supply of fresh batteries. “We believe this technology is well-timed and is going to be well-received by the consumer because it moves charging a device from an active to a passive process,” Rizzone told Forbes.com.
The technology is already well-received by manufacturers. By November, Energous had over 100 active partner engagements. The list added up to a Who’s Who of consumer product companies, Rizzone said. The company had planned to ink two to four joint development agreements in 2014. Instead, Energous had twelve JDAs, and four were with major global players.
“What we witnessed has been a strong market demand from all corners of the mobile and battery power devices market,” Holmes told investors attending a conference call on November 11. “The demand has been impressive and even quite overwhelming,” Holmes added. “When Global 100 players are contacting you directly, it confirms that you are doing the right things.”
This sounded like good news. But the truth was there was more demand than Energous’ engineers could handle. Rizzone told investors on the conference call that the company was at a crossroads. Energous could maintain its current rate of development and strategic partner engagement, but it would have to pass on a number of potentially high-profile opportunities. In that case, “we will likely lose a number of potential strategic partners to other wireless solutions,” he warned. Or, Energous could risk alienating its investors. It could issue more shares and use the additional capital to expand its development and support team. Rizzone announced he was planning to do the latter.
The next day, Energous opened at $9.63 and closed at $8.66. Over the next six weeks, the stock would fall as low as $7.11.
But behind the scenes demand for Energous’ stock was intensifying. The secondary round closed on December 15. Energous had raised an additional $20 million at a per share price of $7. The offering had been two times oversubscribed. Rizzone’s gamble had paid off.
Meanwhile, Leabman and his engineers had overcome some key technical hurdles. A solution that had been mostly theoretical had been successfully prototyped. Engineers had built wireless charging into a series of everyday products—televisions, speakers, routers, phones and wearables. The technology worked like Leabman always thought it would, and Energous was about to show the world.
Most companies exhibiting at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas set up a booth on the expo floor. Energous rented two suites at the Hardrock Hotel and Casino, a taxi ride away from the action. They wanted to show attendees what it would be like to live in an apartment where charging cords were optional. WattUp transmitters lit up electric lights and topped off batteries on smartphones and watches. Visitors who put a battery pack on their phone could watch their phones pair with the hidden transmitters and start charging as they moved around the room. (IPowerUp, an Energous partner, is already marketing these battery packs on their website.)
The demonstration drew attention and accolades. Engadget awarded Energous two “Best of CES 2015” awards including Best Innovation (Disruptive Tech) and Best (Connected) Home Product. Energous also landed three of the coveted honoree spots for “CES Innovation Awards.” A raft of news articles included some rave reviews. BGR (formerly known as Boy Genius Report) wrote: “It’s amazing. Period.” But other journalists wanted to know how the system compared to new rapid chargers. They also wondered about its efficiency and its safety. “There’s still a big question mark regarding its rate of charging,” wrote the Washington Post. “Another big concern is the potential higher cost of electricity, since much of it can go to waste.”
Rizzone had heard the questions before, and he tried to clear up the reporter’s confusion. WattUp isn’t designed for rapid charging, but for constant trickle-charging. Communication between the receiver and the transmitter ensure that power is only transmitted when it is needed. Energous has created software that tracks all this in detail. A restaurant or hotel could, for example, keep close tabs on how wireless power is being consumed by its customers. As a side benefit for business owners, the same communications channel that carried energy could also convey individual greetings and special offers. “The network owner/operate has the ability to deliver geolocation-based advertising,” Rizzone explained.
Energous continues working to increase the efficiency of its wireless charging system, but even the first generation of WattUp is unlikely to have a significant impact on a customer’s electrical bill. That is because the total amount of energy WattUp is providing to devices is comparatively minuscule. Charging an average cellphone costs less than $.50 a year. According to the Electric Power Research Institute, the annual cost of charging an iPad is just $1.36. The company argues that by actively tracking and monitoring devices under charge, and turning off the transmitter when no devices are present, WattUp can be even more energy efficient than what most consumers experience when they leave their devices plugged in after they are fully charged.
A basic lack of understanding of how wireless power works is one of the hurdles that Energous is facing. Concern is particularly acute around safety. Most people assume that Energous is radiating power around a room in the same way that Wi-Fi blankets an area. But while Energous uses the same portion of the electromagnetic spectrum as Wi-Fi (5.7 to 5.8 GHz) its waves are tightly focused to create small pockets of energy around the batteries that need charging.
This is how WattUp is designed to work: The transmitter and receiver first communicate over Bluetooth. It takes about a second for the system to focus. The transmitter then sends out electromagnetic waves (basically very simple Wi-Fi signals) that collect around the receiver in 3D space. Between zero and five feet, the system can transmit four watts to up to four devices each. That sounds like a lot, but it’s spread over hundreds of antennas on the transmitter and dozens of antennas on the receivor. What’s really being transmitted are micro amounts of energy, as little as a tenth of a watt, that is then aggregated at the receiver. “We are essentially receiving ten or twenty times less energy density per antenna than your phone transmits,” Leabman said.
However, the comparison between WattUp transmitters and cellphones potentially adds more confusion. The FCC requires cellphones to limit electromagnetic emissions to 1.6 watts per kilogram, a rate known as the Specific Absorption Rate or SAR rate. The SAR rate is measured by sticking a probe in a fluid-filled replica of the human head. Some phones like the new iPhone 6 and 6 Plus come extremely close to that limit when cellphone bands, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth are used simultaneously. In contrast, the WattUp system is designed to put receivers in phones that harvest electromagnetic emissions and put them to use.
WattUp transmitters, which can potentially be built into everything from a wireless router to a TV set, use a different frequency than cellphone signals. Cellphone signals are penetrative—they go right through the human body. “The physics of our transmitter signal is reflective,” Rizzone said. “and the signals aren’t penetrative as a result.”
There is no federally developed national standard for energy transmitted through electromagnetic waves, also known as RF emissions. “According to the FDA and the World Health Organization (WHO), among other organizations, to date, the weight of scientific evidence has not effectively linked exposure to radio frequency energy from mobile devices with any known health problems,” the FCC stated on its website. But concern has persisted, and in some cases has provoked raging debates.
The FCC addresses these concerns with two sets of regulations known as Part 15 and Part 18 approval. The problem for Energous is that the rules were written for the technology that existed at the time—spread spectrum transmitters, field disturbance sensors and microwave ovens. As the company noted in its IPO filing, “the transmission of power using RF energy waves by a consumer product at the ranges we are proposing has not yet been approved and there can be no assurance that we will be able to obtain this FCC approval or that other governmental approvals will not be required.”
For Energous investors, FCC approval is the big unknown. Noting first that the technology is a “no-brainer,” Thomas Hudson, founder of the investment firm Pirate Capital, said “obviously we want to make sure the regulatory environment is accepting of this particular product.”
Energous is doing what it can to mitigate the risk. Holmes hired an experienced regulatory team to work with the FCC, and he provides updates to investors every quarter. “In Q3, we conducted tests on our early prototypes, which [were] designed to help us with our test development and planning, which [were] very successful,” Holmes told investors in November. “During the course of Q4, we will be back in the labs to continue testing of our solution and expect to be able to obtain certification for our receivers perhaps as early as the end of this year. We are very happy with our progress. And through our engagements with the regulatory bodies to date, we have received no showstoppers that would stand between us and complete certification in 2015.”
In an interview, Leabman said the company is prepared to adapt if regulators throw them a curve ball. “We have tremendous flexibility because our system is software controlled,” he said. “There is still a lot of room for innovation,” he added. “We aren’t done yet.”
The next steps for Energous are delivering reference designs to its joint development partners. Once the designs are validated and prototypes built, the partners will decide whether to move forward with licensing agreements. At that point, Energous will transition from an extremely high-risk investment with no revenue, to an extremely high-risk investment with solid prospects of revenue.
A lot could still go wrong. But one thing Energous has proven is that the power can be wirelessly sent from a small, embedded transmitter to charge multiple devices anywhere in a room. And that may well be the future of power.
Follow my reporting on wireless power on Facebook.
Elise Ackerman
Elise Ackerman
Since 1998, I've been writing about technologies and technologists on the cutting edge, who are poised to reshape the status quo in both promising and... Read More
https://www.forbes.com/sites/eliseackerman/2015/01/25/an-in-depth-look-at-energous-its-ipo-and-its-disruptive-approach-to-wireless-power/?sh=38ab76161527
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