• Read more about Intridea Partner MyEnergy Acquired By Nest Labs

Less than five years ago, two young entrepreneurs named Ben Bixby and Greg O'Keeffe came to Intridea with an ambitious goal: launching a platform for helping homeowners track and reduce their energy consumption. It was a great idea, but we needed to work fast to have it done by their Earth Day launch target. Ben and Greg knew they were asking a lot, but their enthusiasm and desire to make a positive change in the world were contagious. It was an exciting and caffeine-fueled time.

After months of hard work and close collaboration between the Intridea and MyEnergy teams, we launched the beta version on Earth Day 2009. It was just the beginning of great things for Ben and Greg. That’s why we’re just as excited today to congratulate MyEnergy on their latest success: their acquisition by Nest Labs, home of the learning thermostat.

When I look back, I always think of that beta version of the MyEnergy platform as a perfect example of rapid prototyping and agile design and development done right. Under a time crunch, both our teams had to work closely to build out the minimum viable product while also creating a robust system that wouldn’t fail under load. I’m really proud of the work we all did.

After the successful beta launch and helping MyEnergy recruit and hire an internal engineering team, we've continued to stay close to them, offering engineering advice and the occasional extra hand when a big development push was needed. It’s been great following their growth and getting to partner with MyEnergy throughout the years.

Here’s what Ben Bixby, CEO of MyEnergy, had to say back in 2009 about working with our team:

"Intridea is a great partner for any startup looking to get off the ground quickly. The Intridea team worked closely with us to build our beta solution on a highly accelerated schedule and then helped us construct an internal development team to continue on from there."

Nest Labs, with their vision of changing the way people think about energy use, is the perfect home for MyEnergy. The simple design and usability of the Nest thermostat shows that Nest values good design and quality engineering. MyEnergy and Nest Labs: the perfect pairing.

Congratulations to both the MyEnergy and Nest teams -- we look forward to continued success!

• Read more about Intridea Client Homezada Launches Home Management Software

Last week Homezada officially released their home management software, a complete solution to the dispersed files, incomplete records, and scattered maintenance reports that plague homeowners everywhere.

Homezada's formula is "Everything about your home in one place" and they're serious about that; their software allows you to easily document all the possessions in your home, track the value of all of those items, track household improvements (making it easier to remember what you've done to improve your house when you decide to sell it), access an ongoing library of to-do maintenance items, and maintain checklists of seasonal cleaning, yardwork and maintenance projects. The system can remind you when it's time to update air filters, schedule furnace maintenance, and so on.

Below is screenshot of the to-do list functionality of the application:

Homezada approached Intridea to draft the wireframes, help design the user flow, and refine the user experience. Our design team, led by Jurgen and Ted, worked with their internal Rails development team to deliver an engaging and intuitive user experience and to help stylize it within the Rails app.

We were excited to work with Homezada on such an interesting and revolutionary project. We encourage you to watch some of the short videos on their site to learn more about the software.

If you need design or development expertise on your project contact us today to learn what we can do for you; at Intridea we are helping hundreds of people bring their ideas to life!