Financial-modeling software for sustainable-infrastructure projects could boost investment in sector. Rob Matheson | MIT News Office
September 15, 2016
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For investors, deciding whether to invest money into renewable-energy projects can be difficult. The issue is volatility: Wind-powered energy production, for instance, changes annually — and even weekly or daily — which creates uncertainty and investment risks. With limited options to accurately quantify that volatility, today’s investors tend to act conservatively. An MIT spinout, EverVest, has built a data-analytics platform whose goal is to give investors rapid, accurate cash-flow models and financial risk analyses for renewable-energy projects. Recently acquired by asset-management firm Ultra Capital, EverVest’s platform could help boost investments in sustainable-infrastructure projects, including wind and solar power. Ultra Capital acquired the EverVest platform and team earlier this year in order to leverage the software for its own underwriting and risk analytics. The acquisition by Ultra will enable the EverVest software to expand to a broader array of sustainable infrastructure sectors, including water, energy, waste, and agriculture projects. “If an investor has confidence in the performance and risk they are taking, they may be willing to invest more capital into the sustainable infrastructure asset class. More capital means more projects get built,” says EverVest co-founder and former CEO Mike Reynolds MBA ’14, now director of execution at Ultra Capital. “We wanted to give investors more firepower when it comes to evaluating risk.”
The platform’s core technology was initially based on research at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), by EverVest co-founder and former Chief Technology Officer Teasha Feldman ’14, now director of engineering at Ultra Capital. The strength of data
EverVest’s software platform analyzes data on a variety of factors that may impact the performance of renewable-energy projects. Layout and location of a site, contractual offtake agreements, type of equipment, grid connection, weather, and operation and maintenance costs can all help predict a possible financial rate of return. Today, financial analysts use Excel spreadsheets to find a flat, annual revenue average for the next 20 to 30 years. “It leaves a lot to the imagination,” Reynolds says. “Renewable energy is volatile and uncertain.”
By the time of its acquisition, EverVest had clients in the United States and Europe, including banks, investors, and developers for wind and solar power projects. Users enter information about their prospective project into the software, which would provide a detailed analysis of future cash-flow model, along with a detailed statistical analysis of the project's financial risks. “The analytical engine and access to data on the EverVest platform gives investors a better understanding of their assets,” Reynolds says. For example, consider a wind farm. With location data, the software can use public data sets to calculate the last few decades of wind speed and determine the project’s overall performance. Location can also help determine the project’s profitability in the market. California could be a better market than, say, Texas or Maine. Specific types of equipment and manufacturer matter, too. If an investor considers a certain type of wind turbine, “we can pull data to determine that a turbine in that location is going to need $2 million of replacement parts in year five,” Reynolds says. “In year seven, you might have a 50 percent probability that something is going to fail, potentially resulting in a shut-down of the site.”
The end result is a more detailed projection of the rate of return, Reynolds says. While a standard Excel spreadsheet might give an average rate of return of, say, 12 percent, the EverVest software platform would show a full analysis of the quarterly performance, including the statistical uncertainty of the rate of return. While 12 percent may be the average, the returns may vary between 4 and 18 percent. “By understanding that range of risk, you can understand the true value of the project,” Reynolds says. Now at Ultra Capital, Feldman is further developing the platform. Reynolds is using it to invest in a wide array of sustainable-infrastructure projects, including solar energy projects, waste-to-energy assets, water treatment facilities, and recycling plants. “We’ve brought our technology in-house and have expanded it a great deal,” Reynolds says. “Now I get to use the software we built to make better investments.”
EverVest: The happy accident
EverVest (formerly Cardinal Wind) began as a CSAIL research project that was refined and developed through MIT’s entrepreneurial ecosystem before going to market. As an MIT junior in 2012, Feldman wanted to branch out from her theoretical physics coursework to focus on renewable energy. She discovered a CSAIL project, led by research scientist Una-May O’Reilly, that involved collecting and analyzing data on wind farm energy. “I showed up in [O’Reilly’s] office and begged her to let me work on the project,” Feldman says. In a year, Feldman had designed a machine-learning algorithm that collected 30 years of wind data from airports and other sites, to predict future wind power there for the next 30 years. During that time, she sought enrollment in Course 15.366 (Energy Ventures), where students from across departments plan businesses around clean technologies. Undergraduates are seldom accepted. But as luck would have it, the class wanted O’Reilly to speak about her research — and O’Reilly told them to ask Feldman. “I said, ‘Yes, I’m working on that research. You should just let me into the class,’” Feldman says, laughing. Enrolling in fall 2013, Feldman pitched her algorithm to the class, and it caught the eye of one student. Reynolds had come to MIT Sloan School of Management, he says, “with scars from working on Wall Street in investment banking … and I wanted to open my horizons and work with engineers who were building amazing things at MIT.”
During his time as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs, Reynolds dealt with funding large projects in infrastructure, energy, and transportation. So Feldman’s prediction algorithm research resonated immediately. “I saw her algorithm and thought of how great it would be for investors to have a more accurate way to measure the rate of return for a potential wind project investment,” Reynolds says. Joining forces, Feldman and Reynolds launched Cardinal Wind in 2013. The startup was somewhat of a “happy accident,” Feldman says. “The company took an insane amount of hard work to start and build. But by showing up in a lab and convincing them to give me a job, and then bringing the research to class, we were able to determine that there was a great opportunity and need for better financial risk analysis tools in the marketplace. "
The following summer, Cardinal Wind entered the Global Founders’ Skills Accelerator (GFSA), run by the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship, “which was a huge boost,” Reynolds says. Mentors and entrepreneurs-in-residence offered guidance and feedback on pitches, and generous GFSA funding paid the startup’s bills. “And we worked alongside other startups going through the same challenges,” Reynolds says. “All those resources were incredibly helpful.”
By October 2015, Cardinal Wind had expanded Feldman’s algorithm into a full cash-flow modelling platform that also included analyses for solar power projects. That month, Cardinal Wind rebranded as EverVest, and this July was acquired by Ultra Capital. A key to EverVest’s success, Feldman says, was constantly developing the technology to fit customer needs — such as including solar power. “When we found the actual need was more than just predicting wind patterns, we departed from using that particular algorithm, and we’ve built a lot of our core platform since then,” she says.

Calculating the financial risks of renewable energy

September 16, 2016
by Energy @ MIT Leave a Comment
MIT spinout EverVest has built a data-analytics platform that gives investors rapid, accurate cash-flow models and financial risk analyses for renewable-energy projects. For investors, deciding whether to invest money into renewable-energy projects can be difficult. The issue is volatility: Wind-powered energy production, for instance, changes annually — and even weekly or daily — which creates uncertainty and investment risks. With limited options to accurately quantify that volatility, today’s investors tend to act conservatively. But MIT spinout EverVest has built a data-analytics platform that aims to give investors rapid, accurate cash-flow models and financial risk analyses for renewable-energy projects. Recently acquired by asset-management firm Ultra Capital, EverVest’s platform could help boost investment in sustainable-infrastructure projects, including wind and solar power. Ultra Capital acquired the EverVest platform and team earlier this year, with aims of leveraging the software for its own risk analytics. The acquisition will enable the EverVest platform to expand to a broader array of sustainable infrastructure sectors, including water, waste, and agriculture projects. “If an investor has confidence in the performance and risk they are taking, they may be willing to invest more capital into the sustainable infrastructure asset class. More capital means more projects get built,” says EverVest co-founder and former CEO Mike Reynolds MBA ’14, now director of execution at Ultra Capital. “We wanted to give people more firepower when it comes to evaluating risk.”
The platform’s core technology was initially based on research at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), by EverVest co-founder and former chief technology officer Teasha Feldman ’14, now director of engineering at Ultra Capital. EverVest co-founders Teasha Feldman ’14 and Mike Reynolds MBA ’14
 
The strength of data
EverVest’s platform analyzes data on a variety of factors that may impact the performance of renewable-energy projects. Layout and location of a site, certain contracts, type of equipment, grid connection, weather, and operation and maintenance costs can all help predict the financial rate of return. Today, financial analysts use Excel spreadsheets to find a flat, annual production average for the next 20 to 30 years. “It leaves a lot to the imagination,” Reynolds says. “Renewable energy is volatile and uncertain.”
By the time of its acquisition, EverVest had clients in the United States and Europe, including banks, investors, and developers for wind and solar power projects. Users enter information about their prospective project into the software, which would provide a detailed analysis of future cash-flow model, along with detailed statistical analysis of the project’s financial risks. “It’s the strength of the data that we wanted to give to investors, banks, and developers, to get a better understanding of their assets,” Reynolds says. For example, consider a wind farm. With location data, the platform can use public data sets to calculate the last few decades of wind speed and determine the project’s overall performance. Location can also help determine the project’s profitability in the market. California could be a better market than, say, Texas or Maine. Specific types of equipment and manufacturers matter, too. If an investor considers a certain type of wind turbine, “we can pull data to determine that a turbine in that location is going to need $2 million of replacement parts in year five,” Reynolds says. “In year seven, you might have a 50 percent probability that something is going to fail, potentially resulting in a shut-down of the site.”
The end result is a more detailed projection of the rate of return, Reynolds says. While an electronic spreadsheet might give an average rate of return of, say, 12 percent, the EverVest’s platform would show a full analysis of the quarterly performance, including the statistical uncertainty of the rate of return. While 12 percent may be the average, the returns may vary between 4 and 18 percent. “By understanding that range of risk, you can understand the true value,” Reynolds says. Now at Ultra Capital, Feldman is further developing the platform. Reynolds is using it to invest in a wide array of sustainable-infrastructure projects, including solar energy projects, waste-to-energy assets, water treatment facilities, and recycling plants. “We’ve brought our technology in-house and have expanded it a great deal,” Reynolds says. “Now I get to use the software we built to make better investments.”
EverVest: The happy accident
EverVest (formerly Cardinal Wind) began as a CSAIL research project that was refined and developed through MIT’s entrepreneurial ecosystem before going to market. As an MIT junior in 2012, Feldman wanted to branch out from her theoretical physics coursework to focus on renewable energy. She discovered a CSAIL project, led by research scientist Una-May O’Reilly, that involved collecting and analyzing data on wind farm energy. “I showed up in [O’Reilly’s] office and begged her to let me work on the project,” Feldman says. In a year, Feldman had designed a machine-learning algorithm that collected 30 years of wind data from airports and other sites, to predict future wind power there for the next 30 years. During that time, she sought enrollment in Course 15.366 (Energy Ventures), where students from across departments plan businesses around clean technologies. Undergraduates are seldom accepted. But as luck would have it, the class wanted O’Reilly to speak about her research — and O’Reilly told them to ask Feldman. “I said, ‘Yes, I’m working on that research. You should just let me into the class,’” Feldman says, laughing. Enrolling in fall 2013, Feldman pitched her algorithm to the class, and it caught the eye of one student. Reynolds had come to MIT Sloan School of Management, he says, “with scars from working on Wall Street in investment banking … and I wanted to open my horizons and work with engineers who were building amazing things at MIT.”
During his time as an investment banker, Reynolds dealt with funding large projects in infrastructure, energy, transportation. So Feldman’s prediction algorithm resonated immediately. “I saw her algorithm and thought of how great it would be for investors to have a more accurate way to measure the rate of return for a potential wind project investment,” Reynolds says. Joining forces, Feldman and Reynolds launched Cardinal Wind in 2013. The startup was somewhat of a “happy accident,” Feldman says. “The company took an insane amount of hard work to start and build. But by showing up in a lab and convincing them to give me a job, and then bringing the research to class, we were able to determine that there was a great opportunity and need for better financial risk analysis tools in the marketplace.”
The following summer, Cardinal Wind entered the Global Founders’ Skills Accelerator (GFSA), run by the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship, “which was a huge boost,” Reynolds says. Mentors and entrepreneurs-in-residence offered guidance and feedback on pitches, and generous GFSA funding paid the startup’s bills. “And we worked alongside other startups going through the same challenges,” Reynolds says. “All those resources were incredibly helpful.”
By October 2015, Cardinal Wind had expanded Feldman’s algorithm into a full cash-flow modelling platform that also included analyses for solar power projects. That month, Cardinal Wind rebranded as EverVest, and this July it was acquired by Ultra Capital. A key to EverVest’s success, Feldman says, was constantly developing the technology to fit customer needs — such as including solar power. “When we found the actual need was more than just predicting wind patterns, we departed from using that particular algorithm, and we’ve built a lot of our core platform since then,” she says.

Calculating the Financial Risks of Renewable Energy

– Ultra Capital, an investment leader focused on scaling institutional investing into small and mid-sized sustainable infrastructure and real asset projects in agriculture, energy, water, and waste, is pleased to announced the acquisition of EverVest, a Boston-based technology firm providing advanced software for analyzing and valuing renewable infrastructure projects. With this acquisition, Ultra Capital adds Teasha Feldman-Fitzthum, Jake Mower, Mike Reynolds and Michael Bernstein to its growing team of professionals. ”The EverVest team is a perfect fit for our vision at Ultra Capital and will accelerate our growth and capabilities to deliver world-class investments”, notes Roland Van der Meer, Co-CIO of Ultra Capital, “Both firms share a common passion and vision to deploy capital into sustainable real asset projects.”
The acquisition enhances Ultra Capital’s project finance capabilities and will be an integral part of the firm’s investment platform, enabling comprehensive risk analysis, investment decisions, and active asset management to optimize outcomes. “We are excited to add enhanced analytical capabilities to complement our deep domain and project finance experience,” adds Van der Meer. “EverVest’s robust technology complements our existing strengths, combining state of the art analytics with decades of investing experience by our team and is a natural extension of our current product offerings within these real asset sectors.”
About Ultra Capital
Ultra Capital builds and manages portfolios of small to mid-size sustainable real asset projects in agriculture, energy, water and waste. The firm provides institutional investors with diversified portfolios of yield oriented real assets; and project developers with with capital and project finance expertise. Ultra Capital has assembled an experienced team of investment professionals with a broad range of expertise in project development, finance, engineering and capital markets that can deliver consistently underwritten and risk managed projects to investors. For more information about Ultra Capital, please visit UltraCapital.com. CONTACT: Stephanie Strid Davis, Ultra Capital LLC: (215) 278-9862 sdavis@ultracapital.com
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Ultra Capital Acquires EverVest
In News by uc-admin
July 14, 2016
San Francisco, CA.

At Cleantech Pitch Events, Solutions to Real World Problems Sought
Speaking with CleanTechIQ and adding perspective on this year’s competition, O’Shea observed a broader diversity of companies this year focusing on what has been traditionally called clean tech. “I think the definition of clean tech is expanding.”
For example, during this year’s competition, “we’ve seen technologies around water purity testing and nanotubes, which is very different than the types of clean tech startups in 2007 or 2008, which were more traditionally focused on renewable energy and energy efficiency.” And we’re seeing more “capital light” strategies, he points out. “What struck me more than anything was the diversity and creativity of the business models that we’re seeing coming up.”  He points out that several new clean tech startups are using existing, proven technologies to solve problems by applying new business models. The Four Winners:
Rapport (Portland, ME)
Summary: Rapport, launched in  helps small and midsized business reap the rewards of sustainability. We offer simple but powerful tools to capture, analyze, reduce and report corporate sustainability metrics. It helps companies drive waste and cost out of their operations. It is an outgrowth of a sustainability consulting firm with over 40 years of collective experience helping company manage, improve and disclose their impact on the planet. Rapport has a total addressable market of $4.3B. The key driver at large companies, such as Walmart and Home Depot, that are demanding this data from their suppliers is the realization that most of their environmental impact is locked up in their supply chains. They have made lots of progress “cleaning” up their own operations, and now much engage their supply chain in doing the same, says CEO John Rooks , who has 20 years in the environmental and sustainability space. “I think it is more about the realization that sustainability offers an opportunity to increase efficiency, drive down cost, discover operational risks, and, yes, get a bit of a halo from doing good,” says Rooks. Earlier this month, it won a $100,000 investment from Steve Case , co-founder of America Online, after a pitch competition held in Portland as part of Case’s Rise of the Rest tour, a series of visits to highlight the burgeoning startup communities that exist outside Silicon Valley. It also raised $75,000 in a friends and family round, won $39,000 in grants from the Maine Technology Institute and won a $10,000 business idea competition prize from the Maine Center for Entrepreneurial Development. It’s currently raising $500,000 in seed funding, which will be its first angel investment round. Evervest (Boston, MA)
Summary: EverVest, founded in 2014 as Cardinal Wind, provides financial risk analysis software for the renewable energy industry. We help Wall Street make better investment decisions when committing capital to wind and solar assets. Our software provides more accurate financial projections, enables faster deal screening, and helps investors manage portfolios of renewable assets. Our system leverages the technical data of a site and applies our proprietary machine learning algorithm technology. According to CEO Mike Reynolds , the renewable energy industry is not very good at understanding engineering risk because they do everything in massive Excel spread sheets, which are prone to errors and aren’t easily shared. EverVest developed its cloud-based solution to eliminate this problem and limit errors in financing decisions being made by operators and developers of wind and solar projects. It received   $105,000 in venture funding in February and $393,000 in debt financing in June. The company is in the process of raising a seed funding round. Encourage Capital’s OShea particularly liked that EverVest is using proprietary software to allow for better analysis, better data and information sharing around the valuation of complicated asset classes. “This is something we’ve seen in other areas, such as in real estate. I do think there’s a real need for something like this in the clean tech space,” he says. Fluidscreen (Boston, MA)
Summary: Current water-testing methods–including rapid tests–take at least 24 hrs. to deliver reliable results on water contamination. Because of this delay in information, 47 million people in the US contract food or water borne illness every year. Fluid-Screen delivers fast (30 min. ), accurate (99%), sensitive (1 bacterium/ 100mL) information on contamination in a portable, automated device for onsite testing of municipal & recreational waters. Fluid-Screen is the next critical step in water safety. Its current focus is on the US water testing and food safety categories, with an estimated total addressable market of over $1 billion. Longer term, the company plans to expand into medical diagnostics and a range of other related fluid testing applications globally. Fluid-Screen grew out of the Reed lab at Yale University and was spun-out as an independent entrepreneurial venture in 2009 by electrical engineering doctoral student  Monika Weber . It took first prize in the 2014 Sabin Sustainable Venture Prize , receiving $25,000 to develop their business plan and received a $50,000 MassChallenge grant in 2013. Tank Utility (Somerville, MA)
Summary: High delivery costs for delivered fuels are driven by a combination of inaccurate data and the high cost of running out. The Tank Utility solution combines a low-cost, easy-to-install, wireless monitor with secure mobile and web applications that provide realtime status, usage data, pricing, communications and transaction processing. Tens of millions of people in the US rely on delivered fuel to heat their house, and there’s 24 million propane tanks, says TankUtility CEO Amos Epstein. However, if their fuel runs out, it costs in the area of $15,000 to fix damage in the home caused by subsequent frozen pipes and there’s no cost effective solution on the market today to monitor fuel levels, he says. This problem prompted the founders to launch Tank Utility in 2014. They’ve been developing direct sales to both consumer and fuel distributors, and its product allows suppliers to more effectively schedule when they make deliveries, says Epstein. It makes storage of delivered fuel more efficient, which can eliminate ½ of deliveries currently needed today, which saves fuel, trucking and shipping cost. And it is building Opower-type reports for consumers to understand their consumption and become more energy efficient, says Epstein. In just over a year, they’ve been able to finish the hardware and software development and are actively selling their product now and are currently generating revenue, he says. They’ve raising funding from hardware-focused venture capital firm Bolt in August and won a $40,000 Catalyst grant from MassCEC in June. And they will be raising a full seed round in the near future.

The Four Top Northeast Cleantech Open Startups

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Acquired

EverVest, previously known as Cardinal Wind, provides advanced software for analyzing, valuing, and financing renewable energy projects. The company's software provides more accurate financial projections, enables faster deal screening, and helps investors manage portfolios of renewable assets. The system leverages the technical data of a site and applies proprietary machine learning algorithm technology.

Date	Round	Amount	Investors	Valuation Valuations are submitted by companies, mined from state filings or news, provided by VentureSource, or based on a comparables valuation model.	Revenue	Sources
7/15/2016	Acquired		Ultra Capital	$XXM	0 FY undefined	1
11/3/2015	Seed	$XXM	Subscribe to see more	$XXM	0 FY undefined	10
6/22/2015	Debt	$XXM	Subscribe to see more	$XXM	0 FY undefined	10
2/20/2015	Unattributed	$XXM	Subscribe to see more	$XXM	0 FY undefined	10

Date	7/15/2016	11/3/2015	6/22/2015	2/20/2015
Round	Acquired	Seed	Debt	Unattributed
Amount		$XXM	$XXM	$XXM
Investors	Ultra Capital	Subscribe to see more	Subscribe to see more	Subscribe to see more
Valuation	$XXM	$XXM	$XXM	$XXM
Revenue	0 FY undefined	0 FY undefined	0 FY undefined	0 FY undefined
Sources	1	10	10	10

First funding	Last Funding	Investor	Rounds	Board Seats	Type	Location
7/15/2016	7/15/2016	Ultra Capital	1 Acquired		Holding Company	California
00/00/0000	00/00/0000	Cleantech Open	Subscribe to see more		Incubator/Accelerator	California

First funding	7/15/2016	00/00/0000
Last Funding	7/15/2016	00/00/0000
Investor	Ultra Capital	Cleantech Open
Rounds	1 Acquired	Subscribe to see more
Board Seats
Type	Holding Company	Incubator/Accelerator
Location	California	California

How VCs Use CB Insights

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Platform Overview

EverVest

Total Raised

Investors Count

Funding, Valuation & Revenue

EverVest Investors