Green Server - Meh

Energy production is a fascination of mine, so I’m also interested in the other side of the equation, consumption. Or in this case, conservation. Efficiency in computing is becoming ever more important as companies like Google deal with the economics of powering (and cooling) thousands of computers. But what about the home or small office network?

I finally saw a repeat of episode 2 of Dragon’s Den I had missed, and one presentation was the Green Server by fellow Calgarian and computer nut, Jonathan Levine. It’s a small, low-power server and the idea is you let it do server things instead of your power-hungry PC. The theory is you save money on your power bill and there’s less strain on your PC. I think the theory is sound, modern PC has far more power than is required to sit and download a file overnight ¹. However, the dragons were right to turn the investment down. This company has no chance.

I’ll get to the killer flaw, but it’s worth mentioning that it never came up during what I saw of the show. To be fair, Jonathan may have discussed it with the dragons and we missed it, as the show is heavily edited for entertainment. To viewers like me it appeared the pitch failed because of Jonathon’s truly lousy performance as presenter. I wouldn’t be surprised if that actually was the cause since he does an equally poor job with online posting ² and the company has an awful website. Not visually awful, it’s actually almost pretty. The problem is it reads like spam email or late night shopping channel presentation. Save “HUNDREDS of $$$ per year”, “radically improves the integrity of the user's data”, immune to malware, and other claims, and even a rant about Windows cloud what little objective facts and information there are. Jonathan, every technology company has the problem of trying to sell too many features at once. If you think it’s hard with investors wait until you get to the public.

But those are not insurmountable problems. I’m sure professional marketing is high on their list of things they need funding for. There’s even a good reason in a post by Jonathan as to why he ending up presenting to the dragons instead of someone more “suit”. And while there are plenty of nuggets of investment wisdom, Dragon’s Den is first and foremost entertainment. O’leary will insult you just for fun as often as he will for an, umm… business reason.

No, the main reason why they have no chance is this product already exists. There are dozens of network attached storage devices out there from experienced, reputable companies. These companies already have cheap manufacturing in Asia, and they already have sales channels, and advertisements, and reviews on CNET, and a history of providing support, and stock on the NASDAQ, and the next version already at the lab, and so on. And these products have one advantage beyond price and specs that leaps out at me, in most cases the device is also a router or media adapter. Those are additional jobs that are required 24/7, but the green machine doesn’t do. They are also print servers, firewalls, and, like the Green Server, backup devices ³.

Still, I wish them luck as I’m always hoping to see more high tech development here. At the very least I can sympathize with the state of VC in Calgary for anything not oil. One last problem is how the hell they came up with a $3,125,000 valuation for a company only at the prototype stage and no proprietary hardware. I doubt it happened in this case, but a lot of Dragon's Den presenters seem like they think how much money they want, how much company they want to keep, and don't do the math.

1. The theory is sound by I’m still skeptical of the numbers. I’d like to know where you get your numbers regarding the number of computers in homes and average power supply wattage. I know a lot of people who have one laptop that hibernates overnight.
2. Like this joke (I hope it’s a joke) Jonathon posted to the CBC website :

   Finally, I'd like to speak to that "mad scientist" business. I hate it. You'd better get over what I look like, because anyone who compares me to those undisciplined cranks is gonna get invited out to the woods behind my house for a little re-education.

3. I know the Green Server website mentions off-site backup, but that doesn’t mean anything without details or reputation. What size data? Where is it located? How do I know it’s safe? I would say those questions all need to be answered, but it’s moot. The fact is there are many off-site backup solutions out there, including at least one I know (x) that’s free. And that one is automated backup which is far superior to drag-and drop backup.