From South Central to Silicon Valley
So you want to start a buildings energy efficiency business?
I've always loved buildings. When I was a kid, I thought I wanted to be an architect? Went to community college
and got an Associates of Arts degree in Engineering Drafting. Well almost. I mean, I would've gotten my A.A. degree if I hadn't
dropped out of school - with three months to go.
But my journey in life was meant to go down another path. In another direction:
The road of a serial entrepreneur.
In 35 years I've founded seven companies:
Four building energy efficiency, two AI companies, and a Gospel record label.
Quite a journey indeed.
I'm writing a book about it. Still working on the final (happy ending) chapter :)
A tale about a little kid growing up in the mean streets of South Central Los Angeles. With dreams of a better life.
So you want to start a buildings energy efficiency business?
Well this is my story:
"From South Central to Silicon Valley".
Speaker Bio
Keith Gipson has been a serial entrepreneur and pioneer in Buildings IoT, Enterprise Energy Management (EEM), AI and
technology for thirty-five years. In 1997 Keith founded the very first EEM company, Silicon Energy Corp.,
which was sold to Itron in 2001 for $71 M. In 2005 Keith co-founded Shield Ops Inc. an AI driven CSI program which
was featured on TV show CSI Las Vegas (Season 10, Episode 4 "Coup De Grace").
In 2009 Keith co-founded and was the CTO of Phoenix Energy Technologies, another IoT
company that monitored over 16,000 retail buildings. In April of 2020 founded facil.ai Corp., one of
the first AI Building Optimization companies.
Keith holds a United States patent (US 6,178,362 Enterprise Energy Management System and Method 2001) and was
honored by Southern California Edison as “A Modern Day African-American Inventor” for his contributions to the
electric utility industry. He resides in Los Angeles, CA with his wife Andrea.
