Business as Usual: BlastPoint

So Happy Monday, everyone. This is Audrey Russo, President and CEO of the Pittsburgh Technology Council, it's another kickoff to a great week here at business. As usual, I'm very happy to be here. I'm thrilled about our guest. Today, we're gonna hook we're gonna pack a lot in 30 minutes. And I'll introduce formally Allison Alvarez in a moment. But let me just start with welcoming Jonathan kersting. He is the Vice President of all things, medium storytelling, and he will be monitoring the chat to make sure that we're having an act of an inclusive conversation as much as we can, because there's a lot to pack in. I also want to thank Huntington bank and 40 by 80. Huntington bank has been a partner with us as a busy week as they've kicked off the second round of PPP, but they're good partners in and across Southwestern Pennsylvania. 40 by 80 is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Pittsburgh tech Council, which it means the longitude and latitude of Pittsburgh, and we work on things in that organization that are tied to workforce development and supporting entrepreneurs. So we're going to get into the show we've monitored, we've muted excuse me, we've muted your chat. And we've done that just so that we can make sure we're not hearing anything in the background. And we're focusing all on Allison and and just to be considerate. Many of us have animals at home, like I do mind right now. So the other is that, in this we have a chat and the chat, Jonathan's gonna keep his eyes on the chat, to see if there's questions that we have some time to ask. But also, this is not an opportunity for you to sell your wares. This show is all about Alison Alvarez, and ways that we can support her listen to her, and just make sure everyone knows the magic that's happening here in Pittsburgh. So now we're gonna jump in, we're gonna jump in and I'm gonna say, Okay, we have Allison Alvarez, and she is with us from blast point, and I want her to talk about last point, and talk about who is Allison? We're gonna start that way. Who is Allison? Um, hi, my

name is Alison Alvarez. I've been living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania since 2003. I came here to attend Carnegie Mellon University. I'm a proud graduate of both the School of computer science and the MBA program at the Tepper School of Business. I'm the CEO and co founder of blast points, based here in Pittsburgh. We are we we are one of the fast growing startups here in Pittsburgh, we build software, we're a bunch of nerds. And the software we build is designed to help really big corporations and even small ones understand who their customers are, what they're going to buy what they need, so that they can foster lifelong relationships with everybody who does business with them. And we work with a lot of the utilities here in town. As well as regionally, we serve a lot of the tier one and tier two utilities in United States. We also work with one of the largest car makers in the world, top five, we help them understand what features are going to build what markets they're going to have, and to prepare for the next generation of automotive.

So now let's talk about Who who are you who who is out and let's talk a little bit about who you are. And because you've done other things as well. So you've let's start with where did Allison grow up?

So I'm from Jonesboro, Georgia, which is in the deep south. My mom is actually a Pittsburgh native one of 18 kids. My, my dad is an immigrant from Cuba. He's been in United States since he was seven. And if you know anything about the Cuban American community, they have some very deep entrepreneurial values. And my family's always pushed me to be an entrepreneur. I can say that most of my career I didn't do that. I worked for some of the startups here in Pittsburgh. I've worked for valor water, a Y Combinator company out in California. I've worked for innovative systems here in the South Hills, just building software, understanding software markets. That's really been my forte, especially when it comes to designing software that really works for businesses. But you know, other than being a big nerd, I really love living in Pittsburgh. I'm from Atlanta, where the summers really are not fun. And I love that the summers are glorious here. And I love that I can afford to live here, which is one of the big reasons that you know, I came here from school. I moved here from Washington, DC. I saw how much houses cost and I was like, Are you kidding me? And I live in I've lived in the same house that I bought when I was a grad student which is completely insane. That was awesome. But you could have left. And there's lots of reasons besides the weather that you stayed right? Yeah, January, February can be tough. I think it's just tough now because like I can't, you know, like, I would love to go to the beach. And I just feel like that's not really a wise thing to do right now. So I think it just means it's making this one a little extra tough. But otherwise, like this is, this is my home. I'm raising my kid here. This is where I live.

Wow, that's great. So let I like reading a little bit about your dad a little bit. So you know, his efforts to encourage you down the path of entrepreneurship. So he, as a Cuban American, and your mother has, like when you said 18 kids, I never knew that before. So. So talk about those efforts talk about what his role was, or is with you?

Yeah. I mean, if I showed the remotest interest in anything, as a kid, he would try and build a business around it. So if I was like, interested in printmaking, he would buy me a full setup for t shirts. And actually, that's not even true, he would go to the thrift store, or he would go to a pawn shop, and he would find stuff to like, underscore my business because like, he's a frugal guy. And he kind of pushed me my whole life to own a business. I was like, no doubt, I'm gonna work for the man. And that was like my own rebellion. I really like health insurance. Fortunately, blackpoint has health insurance now. But you know, it was kind of almost like, when I realized that, that we actually had a really good potential business, it was almost like find daddy when, because he's always pushed me here my entire life. I think, you know, it's not just Cubans, I think a lot of Hispanic community. It's a lot about owning your own business, being your own boss, and, you know, shaping your job to who you are, rather than the other way around. And I've definitely seen it in the Cuban community, my my avoya owned a stone quarry in Cuba. That was a seized by the communists. So now, when he came United States, he spent his whole life building a new business, because that was, how it was going to be. And I'd like to think he'd be really proud of me if he was still around right now. But I used to think, you know, something else was my dream job. But honestly, like, if I won the lottery, and I got $100 million, like, I don't think I changed what I'm doing. I stopped fundraising, that would be really nice. But otherwise, like, I think I do the exact same job every single day.

Well, so you know that that is a great story. And definitely very inspirational. You started last point, though, come in Project Olympus, is that correct?

Yeah, we are a practical impulse company. And we were also based out of the Sports Center in Carnegie Mellon, we had a lot of really great advocates for us. Project Olympus was like there from us from the beginning, which is really amazing. And we're really happy that we had somebody who believed in us from the very beginning, and we were founded as a class project, I had an idea for a way of making data more accessible. I was working for a company called ryza. here in town, they were eventually purchased by Nielsen. And I was thinking about just different ways to make data easier for people that I've learned on my job. And I found my co founder Tomer through the connects workshops at Carnegie Mellon. You know, we've always had kit at Project Olympus there to like, lenda, firm hand, and when we're like, not in the right direction. So that's been wonderful from the beginning. And I don't think we would have this company at all without the connections and support we got from just being at Carnegie Mellon. You know, I'm, I'm nobody, like I am from a family that is not rich. And my co founder isn't either. And having those kinds of connections is something that, you know, I don't think we would have gotten just out there on our own.

It's all about it's all about the relationships. It absolutely is. Yeah, and hats off to you for being able to navigate that and getting the support at the same time. Because it's not that easy. So, you know, one of the things that you have said, you know, we've talked about artificial intelligence, taking information and making it useful. So you've actually said that you want to be the world's most useful person. What What is, how did that concept come about? How did that help shape the purpose and vision for blast point?

Yeah, so I feel weird going back to the cute Cuban thing again, because like, I don't I don't think about this this much in my normal life. I'm usually thinking about pizza more than I am about being Cuban American. But, you know, I had a family who fled to a completely new life, leaving almost everything behind. And when you think about doing that, the only thing you have is you know, your family and yourself. And if you're able to learn how to do a lot of things, learn how to be a person who's able to contribute, that's something that nobody can take from you. And so for me, that's always been a really important part of my identity and how I want to live my life, because I knew things can change really quickly. And, you know, as long as we have our health and have, you know, our ability to contribute, I think that's the most important thing. So it's not just, you know, things like computer programming, it's learning how to tell a story, or change a diaper, or, you know, manage a budget, or grow a garden. It's lots of things like that, and you never know when this stuff will get useful. It's really great for building ties with other people. Because, you know, no matter, you know, where you are, and who you are, like, there's probably stuff that you know how to do that's really valuable. And I think it's a really great way to connect with people.

Yes, I think I'm gonna put that, like, when I brush my teeth, if I just have a thing that just says be useful, and I'll give you the quote, you can harness that. So you've done, you've done work with the energy sector, but COVID really brought, you know, the energy sector in the issues with a lot of new meaning. And particularly now, as we head into 2021. Talk about that a little bit.

With COVID.

There's 20 states that put on moratoriums in payment, there's about 40 million $40 billion in excess payments out there. You know, this is costs that are being absorbed by utilities, and it's, you know, cost that they were not expecting, and its costs are really having difficulty managing right now. And so we're working with a lot of regional utilities, helping them manage basically forecasting, understanding, hey, if I put in a particular rooftop, are the people in that house really struggling due to COVID? Are they fine? I mean, looking in the Pittsburgh area, we see it's only one out of every eight households that are really struggling with COVID. And everybody else, you know, they seem to be, at the very least making the same purchasing decisions that they usually do. And, you know, paying their bills on time and acting exactly as they would even if COVID wasn't here. But it's that that 12% of households that are really struggling under this burden. And if you can know who they are and how to interact with them in advance, you have a lot better chance of getting them back on track. Because what's happening is, these debts are snowballing. And if you get to a time where suddenly you can shut people off for non payment, people are going to owe $20,000, it's going to be you, you know, we're looking at even for, you know, back rent to landlords, it's around $5,000 for a lot of households. And it can be really overwhelming because if you're having trouble in COVID, you don't have that kind of money. You know, there's there's a minority of American households who can even are prepared to pay an unexpected $400 bill, like owing 1000s of dollars to utilities and their landlords. It's an overwhelming problem. But it's one that at the very least you can incrementally manage.

So today, I think it was today, right in ink magazine. You were you were featured. I bet it's it wasn't today, Allison,

I think that's an article came out? Yes.

The article just came out this morning, you're giving advice on how to compete some of the pieces in there. We're giving advice on how to compete and succeed in business plan competitions. And let's just frame that everyone, as she mentioned before, you know, many people who are building companies, they actually have some friends and family that that helped them. And Allison looked around with her co founder and just said, Wait a second, we got we don't we don't have access to that we get to look at things differently. So yeah, talk about that article. Because I think that's an important point.

Yeah, part of its that I think some ways, the ways that especially high growth companies and the kind that are going to be seeking investment or funded right now, in a way that's really not equitable at all. Because some people have relatives who can cut very large checks, and will not be mad at you if that money disappears, because honestly, most startups do not succeed. So it really is a gamble with not very good odds in the end, and having those kinds of not just connections, but people who have a fondness in their heart for you enough to write you a massive check. That's, you know, just thinking about everybody out there. That's probably like a very small number of us. And yet, when you see who gets to build businesses, who gets to get the lion's share of VC dollars, it's people with those kinds of backgrounds and You know, that's how things are. And it doesn't seem fair. And I gotta say, I'm not, I'm like one person in one company, I don't think we're we're quite at the point where we can change the system. So we look for ways to be successful within the system that exists. So there are things like business plan competitions, where you learn how to pitch, and they can have profound economic effects. For us, it was enough money to, for us to start this company. And we did it because we were able to tell our story really well. And we think, you know, ultimately, this is not the most the way to, like, you know, even the playing field. And there's a lot more business plan competitions, because it's just a drop in the bucket. But if you, but if you're like us, and you're like, I don't have a rich uncle, who's gonna write me a check, you gotta you got to go with what there is. And so we did was we learned how to be really good at pitching at winning these competitions. A lot of it's because like, I really liked doing paperwork. Like I, the other, before I did this, I won a lot of scholarships. And, you know, a lot of the techniques, I learned winning scholarship, so I could pay for my undergraduate and my graduate degrees, I was directly applicable to the business plan competitions, because it's all about selling yourself your idea, why is it worth it to spend this money on me? And what am I going to do with it, that's going to be so great. And I think if you get good at that, even if you don't win every single time, not only do you make connections, you get really good feedback. And eventually, once you get everything together, you might even win. And it means that you're going to have that capital to get your company off the ground.

So give us a couple of examples. Give us some of your seat, just a couple secrets, not all of your secrets. I mean, because I think it's pretty funny in the Inc article talked about, oh, we need a printer. And you said Oh, okay, let's see where we can, you know, apply for some sort of competition, because we need a printer. I mean, so it's your resourcefulness is remarkable. So, you know, tell us, just give us a couple of examples of what you think when people make mistakes I don't want to get

is doing everything at the last minute. I'd say if you can figure out about these competitions, and do everything early. And not only that, there are a million people in this town who are there to take what you're doing and make it better. We've got innovation institutes at both Pitt and Carnegie Mellon, we've got innovation and works lots of more open platforms to help people get feedback. And I think if you do the stuff in advance, and you talk to people, the best, the best people to have in your corner are the ones who will be really honest with you. There's a lot of people who are like you're doing great, sweetie. And that's like not the kind of person you want. You want someone who will be like, well, this is starting to come together. But you've got to do this, this and this, and they won't believe you for this. So you got to do this. And the first couple of times you do it, you're not going to have this stuff internalized, it's good to get a second pair of eyes on this. I guess the other important thing I'd say is I learned this from scholarship competitions is that every single one of these competitions has a rubric by which they're grading you. And generally, if you ask what it is, they'll tell you, they don't always publish it. So you don't know you don't know that they, you know, they care about these four things. And you need to make sure in your pitch that you check those boxes. And so it's it's not cheating. It's being resourceful to go to those competitions and say like, Hey, how are you greeting people? And once you know that it's a lot clearer how you put together your argument for like, why I should be the winner, and then not necessarily somebody else. There's a question by Bob. Yes, so

one new Awesome. Thanks for joining us today. It's always great to see you. And your story is absolutely amazing. It's such cool stuff. Bob capital wants to know if you consider getting your minority DBE through the SBA or using any of the other SBA programs available to go after set asides in other government contracts.

Yeah, that's definitely on our agenda. Right now. My co founder and I are split 5050. With with the our stock. So it's like we don't quite qualify, we do qualify when it's like female lead and a lot of cases. So I think we'd have to like, rethink that. So this is like my advice. If you're, if you're if you ever want to qualify for this stuff, look at that paperwork ahead of time, and when you're like splitting up founder equity, like don't do what we did. Well, I I'm very glad that I'm like 5050 of my my co founder because I think it's very, very much a 5050 partnership. But it's you know, it's it's definitely something that we're missing out on if we structured our our stock a little bit differently.

Yeah, good question. So in 2020, again, I can't believe it's 2021 but blast, boy expanded the business to include automotive sector. And so just a couple of weeks ago, you released a report about the electric vehicle market, you know, sort of what's to come, that really picked up on some national attention to. So at the Council, we're very excited about these, we're very excited about what that means for our region. And last week, I just want to give a plug that we're actually hosting Lyon electric. And I think you know, that Allison, and their large manufacturer of electric buses and delivery trucks, and we're going to have them on business as usual, we're also going to do some things with them behind the scenes, they're looking for us manufacturing, location, right, I'm crossing my fingers, right, we're gonna do the best that we can do. So we want to connect them with local suppliers. tell everyone about the Eevee space and why we should be paying attention. And we can put a link out there for people to actually download your report as well.

Yeah, I thank you so much for doing that. This is this is a topic that is very near and dear to my heart, because it's both technology, and it's the future man. And, and what's really interesting is, you think, you know, 2020 would be kind of a, like a not great year for selling TVs. But there was actually a pretty big leap in the total sold. And I think one of the most interesting things is that there's a headline that just came out that the average new car cost about $40,000. However, he V's are getting cheaper. So for example, Hyundai is selling electrical vehicles, that when you take subsidies into account, they cost less than $20,000. So electrical vehicles are tons of objections to them, like the range argument, the amount of time it takes to charge them the overall cost, there's even a very healthy secondary and use market for electrical vehicles right now. And so they're starting to be a little less differentiated from regular combustion vehicles, while still offering a lot of amenities that, you know, like being healthy for the environment, like being relatively inexpensive to fuel. One of the most interesting things that I've seen lately is that when it comes to cost per kilowatt hour, solar is starting to be one of the cheapest available energy sources out there. So even if you end up switching from combustion gas to electric vehicle, it's now getting cheaper and cheaper to fuel with renewables, which means we're more likely to hit our climate goals overall. And, you know, with Joe Biden coming into office, he's pledging to build another 500,000 electrical vehicle charging stations in the United States. It's early days in that that's, like, I think five x from where we are right now. And so there's a lot of potential for that a lot, much of that Evie, charging activity has been concentrated in, you know, putting them in people's garages. And it means that, you know, I'm, I'm a pittsburgher, I live in the city, I park on the street, and I'm sure a lot of other people, you know, who would like to have electric vehicles do too. And so expanding this infrastructure means that even people who don't have maybe their own private charger at home will have access to stuff and it just makes electric vehicles more equitable, more accessible. It just makes them a bigger possibility for a wider slice of the US population and beyond.

So if it's exciting, right, I mean, I think this is real. I don't think that any of this is just us doing some sort of popcorn thinking, I really think this is real. So are you excited for Pittsburgh and the region when it comes into the space do you think, you know, if you've had your magic wand based on the data that you've been collecting? What do you think we should be doing?

Yeah, so I think there's so much potential gains in Pennsylvania, we're like in the infancy of this industry. So it's definitely like the we're only we only have up to go from here. And I've been out in California I've been watching the charging infrastructure out there. They there's Tesla charges a bank of 12 of them at Target that people line up for. And you can see the the future happening there with the way people use the infrastructure the way they interact with it. And I think there's a lot to go here in Pittsburgh, I'd say the biggest thing is that electric vehicle charging stations, especially public stations, really echo economic investment. So you can see I know just look we have a report on that. So you can just look at the map and a lot of US cities and see that where there are poor and minority populations. There is no charging it's it's effectively Evie charging deserts and in areas where you know everyone's got all the money and that's where electrical vehicle charging is. And a lot of the incentives for building electric vehicle charging has been building bringing in those those More spendy consumers and keeping them in your location. But as time moves on, and the the usage expands out, we're gonna have to think about, how do we deal with this lack of economic investment, which honestly, is a century old, it predates electrical vehicles by a lot. And how do we build charging infrastructure in an equitable, equitable way without 100%, tying everything to, you know, a commercial location, or, you know, in these areas where it's where there's a lack of investment, it's not, it's not going to be good for 100%, for our future, to have the sort of, you know, you could actually literally see redline maps pop up in the Eevee charging infrastructure. And it's not, it's not going to be good for us, as a country long run to replicate that technologically.

So you think we should be investing in workforce development in this in this area to get to get ready for that?

I mean, not just workforce development, but partnerships. In a lot of cases, I think, you know, thinking about when I moved here 17 years ago, and what the city looks like, now, it's really different. And I think it means that there's opportunities in a lot of neighborhoods that didn't exist before. And I hope that there are ways of capitalizing on that I knew in in California, one out of every four, electrical vehicle charging stations needs to be built in a disadvantaged neighborhood. So there's legislation to sort of bring more charging infrastructure into those neighborhoods. And while by and large, Evie buyers are high income people right now, not gonna stay that way. And when you think about the utility industry in the infrastructure, we have to think on order of decades, which means we need to start now when it comes to putting this infrastructure in place.

Right. So it's really interesting. Is there a question out there, Jonathan, before we

open up to the question, more of a comment of maybe if we have time to walk through kind of a practical way that blast point, maybes work with like Duquesne light to really show how their analytics provides these insights and becomes helpful for both customer and for the for the company itself would be great for our audience?

Yeah, we're working with the candidate on this right now. So we're really excited about it. A lot of what we do is look at residential customers and looking at potential pickup for individual households. So building their own charging station, understanding what subsidies are out there, and reaching out to those customers to build and the way we do our systems, if it's not built on, you know, what your neighbor is doing. It's built on, you know, your own individual household. And we talk about, you know, equity and those sorts of things are built into our models, so that we can look and find the best people no matter where they are in the city, and help bridge that gap moving from combustion vehicles to electric vehicles.

So people want to know more about you, and they want to get connected with you and they want to work with you. What's the best way?

Yeah. So I am Alison Alvarez at blast point.io. I check my email constantly. Otherwise, I have my staff monitored our website constantly. So if you want to connect with us through there, we have tons of case studies and information about what we do and how everything works. We worked with a very wide range of companies all the way from Chula here in Pittsburgh, all the way up to one of the largest car makers in the world. We work with Chula

Yeah.

It's so they're,

they're looking at expansion. And we're the ones who are helping them find the right places to do that.

Wow. So you're gonna work across all market sectors. So us doing it, we've had a privilege to talk with you today. But it's almost every market sector that your support. So thank you for doing the deep dive on the electric vehicles. I want to remind everyone that we actually do have have the folks from Lyon on Thursday, I believe, and we'll put that out there. So this is really useful. Join us for that. And you know, Allison, you've just been a champion, you've been sampling Pittsburgh, you actually are you might not realize that, but people are paying attention to you, and the work that you're doing and leading and your points on equity have not gone unnoticed. And we really appreciate that. So I do want to say that. Lastly, at two o'clock pm, we're actually hosting Marvin Chow. He is the Vice President of global marketing for Google, although I found out this morning, actually, it's two jobs. I don't know how he does it. But we're thrilled to have him as part of our chief marketing officer insights series. And that's a two o'clock if you want more information about that, you can go to our site. And under events, you'll see cmo underscore insights, and we'll be able to you'll join us. So he's very interesting. He'll be it'll be fun to have a chance to talk with him, I had a chance to interview him a while back. So Allison, keep up the great work. Thank you for your vision, I'm going to put up be useful on my mirror. And I'm going to give Alison Alvarez credit for that, because I think that really grounds us in our work. And really appreciate just you being here in Pittsburgh and doing this work. We've put out some information on the chat. Thank you, everyone for joining us today. And like I said, we also have something this afternoon at two o'clock eastern standard time with Marvin Chow. Thanks, Alison. We'll see everyone here. Who's here tomorrow, Jonathan. I just realized that

the one the only the definitive, Tony Murphy from Comcast, she's the new Senior Vice President of energy, tons of fun.

You got to be here tomorrow. tons of fun. Thanks, everyone. Thanks, everyone for joining us. Thanks again, Allison.

Much appreciated. Thank you.

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