Go to the profile of Patrick Teng
Patrick Teng
Your average genius.

So, I don’t know where to start really, and this sentence will probably not get edited out. Hi, I’m Patrick, I live in LA, I’m a developer, and my startup built the water conservation platform for a well known city in Southern California. If the reader cared enough she can probably find out which one.

Every water service customer sees this screen which is updated every four hours. A customer can see how much water they’re using down to her hourly consumption.

I’m starting this series because we’re at a point in this startup’s life that we need to search for a bigger market, a more scalable business model, and what others might generally call a pivot. Although, I might not consider this journey as a pivot — it’s not like we’re started podcasting company and pivoting to a 140 character social network. :)

These posts will mostly document what I’ve built so far, where I’m going with the ideas and product, and our process on evolving this platform into something useful for people to use everyday. Yes. This will all be done in public because you know how you’ve always read that Ideas should be allowed out so it can flourish and etc, and blah blah blah. Yeah, and some of these posts will have my thoughts on dealing with city governments, utility agencies, and their people — which by the way lots of people at cities are awesome but the bureaucracy and process really suck. These posts, you’ll some find programmer rants and raves in here too, and just general startup and entrepreneurial war stories too.

This customer is totally cutting back on their water usage. 2013 is the baseline to calculate her reduction levels.

What these posts won’t be about: They won’t be about trying to get VC money. Period. Susie and I are bootstrapping for now. Hey look, if someone gave me $10M in philanthropic-lottery-style-no-strings-attached money, I would take it in a heartbeat. I’ve done the investor and VC meetings, so I know what it’s like. The truth of the matter is, my platform has no mass-market appeal and it would be foolish for anyone in my position to take any investments right now. We’re not there yet, and it’s just not on the horizon right now.

And so the elephant-in-the-room question: So why are you posting these then? Well, I’m posting because I think these ideas and their eventual products are worth posting for the world to see. Yes, maybe I will get some publicity out of it, yes maybe my start will get some calls, yes my competitors might even steal some of the ideas. But hey, it is what it is. There wouldn’t be an Apple or Microsoft without a Xerox PARC. Also, I just wanted to learn how to use Medium’s publishing tools too.

So for 2016, just sit back and enjoy the screenshots, demos, and ideas. And Happy New Year!

Admins can search and segment their customers by using Google maps. The drawing is handled by Google Maps and the actual searching and and selecting is done using ElasticSearch.

P.S.

I just read George R.R. Martin’s reasons on not releasing the next GoT book, and a common theme between him, Tolkien, Hemingway, and Fitzgerald seems to be the constant rewriting. Do Medium bloggers rewrite their posts a couple of times before publishing, or is it all just word vomits? I’ve edited and rewritten this short post like three times already.