Today Laura and Kevin talk to Colin Gounden the CEO and co-founder of VIA about privacy and energy. We discuss why data privacy matters in energy, if the average person really cares about privacy, compensating renters for sharing in energy conservation, how EV owners think about privacy,  which countries are the most (and least) advanced in data privacy, the 2014 class action lawsuit against Honda, Toyota, VW and GM about data collection in cars, why cars are even our collecting data and whether smart meters are worth "Big Brother" watching us. We also discuss a federal privacy law, what you can infer about someone based on their energy usage, the Justice40 initiative, and George Clooney.

Colin Gounden is CEO and co-founder of VIA. Colin recruited five of the top 20 global utilities and the U.S. Department of Defense as co-developers and now major users of VIA’s Trusted Analytics Chain™ (TAC™), a data privacy-enhancing blockchain-based platform. With seven patents issued and nine pending, TAC™ is the bridge that securely connects infrastructure data, distributed across many locations, to AI solutions. 

Previously, Colin was the first investor and board director of five MIT and Harvard spinouts, focused on energy and deep science technologies. Two of these spinouts became profitable in their first year of operations and three of them are now valued at more than $400M each. In 2009, he sold Grail Research, where he was founder and CEO. Under Colin’s leadership, Grail Research grew from its first employee to more than 300 full-time employees in three years. 

In the 2000s, Colin was a partner and elected board director at a top five global strategy consulting and private equity investment firm with $2Bn in assets under management. He started his career with IBM working with utilities in Europe and North America before co-founding a database-driven web-development company based in London, with major customers such as Royal Dutch Shell. Colin has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Fast Company, Wired, and the Financial Times. He is also a frequent guest speaker on the subject of blockchain and energy at events held by industry experts and energy regulators (public utilities commissions and FERC). Colin’s leadership at VIA has been featured in seven Harvard Business School case studies, three with VIA. Colin graduated from Harvard University.