team_report

6.5 Team & Vision Report

Slide 1 - Cover (LAVisions layout)layout: title_hero · 16:9

team & vision report

the team behind ember

three operators who've built energy software, grid markets and consumer hardware before

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Slide 2 - Team Overview (LAVisions layout)layout: team_grid · 16:9

the team

A team that has built energy software, grid markets and consumer hardware

Alex Rivera

Co-founder & CEO

Led product at a home-energy startup, ex-utility strategy team.

Sam Chen

Co-founder & CTO

Built forecasting AI at a grid-scale trading firm.

Priya Nair

Head of Energy Markets

Ran demand-response and VPP programmes at a US utility.

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Slide 3 - Founder Bio: Alex Rivera (LAVisions layout)layout: product_split · 16:9

Co-founder & CEO

Alex Rivera

Alex spent four years leading product at a home-energy startup, shipping the smart-thermostat and solar-monitoring tools used in over 200,000 US homes, and two years afterward on a regional utility's strategy team pricing demand-response programmes from the inside. That utility seat is where Ember took hold: he watched millions of dollars of flexible household capacity go unpaid every month because nobody had built the software to coordinate it. Before any of that, he was employee six at a Y Combinator smart-thermostat startup that shipped hardware to two million homes before being acquired. He holds a mechanical engineering degree from Georgia Tech and an MBA from Berkeley Haas. At Ember he sets product direction and owns the utility and installer partnership strategy that gets the hub into homes.

linkedin.com/in/alexrivera

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Slide 4 - Founder Bio: Sam Chen (LAVisions layout)layout: product_split · 16:9

Co-founder & CTO

Sam Chen

Sam spent six years building forecasting models at a grid-scale energy trading firm, where his team's load and price-prediction systems moved positions worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Before that he completed a masters in electrical engineering at Stanford focused on power systems, and interned on a battery-storage optimisation team the summer before he graduated. He met Alex at an energy-industry conference and the two spent the next year prototyping Ember's control algorithm on borrowed hardware in Alex's garage before raising a pre-seed round together. He now leads engineering and the AI that decides, every few minutes, what every connected device in an Ember home should do next.

linkedin.com/in/samchen

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Slide 5 - Founder Bio: Priya Nair (LAVisions layout)layout: product_split · 16:9

Head of Energy Markets

Priya Nair

Priya ran demand-response and virtual power plant programmes for a mid-size US utility for eight years, designing the rate structures and enrolment mechanics behind some of the first residential VPP pilots in the country. She joined Ember as employee four to build the energy-markets function, translating utility tariffs and grid-services opportunities into the pricing and control logic Ember's AI runs on. She holds a degree in energy economics from UC Berkeley and spent two years early in her career at a state energy regulator before moving to the utility side. At Ember she owns utility certification, VPP market access, and the savings-share pricing model that only pays Ember when a home actually saves.

linkedin.com/in/priyanair

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Slide 6 - Mission & Vision (LAVisions layout)layout: mission_vision · 16:9

mission

make every home run on the cheap side of the grid, automatically

Ember exists because US homes overpay for power they could buy cheaply, and let $40B a year of solar and battery value sit idle. We built one AI that runs solar, battery and EV as a single system, so homeowners save without lifting a finger, and we're only paid when they do.

vision

the default operating system for every connected home in America

In five years we want Ember running behind the meter in hundreds of thousands of US homes, turning pooled household flexibility into a grid asset utilities pay for. Hardware-agnostic by design, Ember becomes the layer every solar installer, battery maker and utility plugs into, not another app homeowners have to manage.

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Slide 7 - Next Hires (LAVisions layout)layout: next_hires · 16:9

next hires

the five roles we're hiring next

Senior Energy Systems Engineer

Our roadmap calls for two energy engineers in the first quarter of the raise. We need senior grid-systems talent to harden the hub's firmware and control logic ahead of our first utility certifications.

Utility Certification & Regulatory Lead

Certifying with two US utilities in year one is the single biggest gate on our roadmap. We need someone who has taken connected hardware through utility interconnection and certification before.

Installer Channel Partnerships Manager

Solar and battery installers are our lowest-cost acquisition channel. We need someone full-time signing and onboarding installer partners past our first three pilot signings.

Customer Success Lead

Savings-share pricing only works if customers trust the number on their bill. We need a dedicated lead to own onboarding and retention as we scale past our first thousand homes.

VPP & Grid Services Lead

Ember Max, our VPP tier, launches in phase two of the roadmap. We need someone to build the grid-services revenue line before pooled household flexibility becomes a business of its own.

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