Everybody remembers their first. When I was with Imagine H2O, I had the great fortune to meet Greg Floyd, who needed a small check for an early prototype of their shower head, which was crucially different from the litany of shower heads that were coming out at the time. They were all neon and internal drives and control panels and all this crap that totally overlooked that when people are having a shower, they want one thing and one thing only: plentiful, usually hot water to help them get clean and feel relaxed. Do not introduce complexity or unreliability into this equation.

Greg and his team really got it. And as importantly, had identified a gigantic market where the value prop of their shower, and I am leaving the explanation of that to him, really hits. Showers are a giant pain in the ass for hotels, and Shower Stream essentially deletes the source of a whole lot of trouble. There are now 400+ live devices across five hotel chains, 150,000 showers taken with zero complaints, paybacks measured in weeks. It's an unusual story in an overlooked market - the kind I love. And as you will hear, Greg has built deliberately into a fascinating position.

Please enjoy my conversation with Greg Floyd.

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Greg Floyd is the Co-founder and CEO of Shower Stream, an Austin-based startup transforming water and energy efficiency for hotels. Using IoT-enabled smart shower technology, Greg helps properties reduce resource consumption by 20% while maintaining guest satisfaction. With a B.S. in Computer Science from UT Austin, Greg brings a strong technical background from his decade-long career as a software engineer at Silicon Labs and AMD. An expert in embedded systems, he has successfully led Shower Stream through elite accelerators like Imagine H2O to scale sustainable property technology.

00:00 - Introduction

02:59 - The Hidden Costs of Hotel Shower Misuse

09:55 - Building a Smart Shower Guests Never Notice

15:24 - Proving Water Savings with Real-Time Data

21:49 - Creating a Hardware-as-a-Service Business Model

30:05 - Winning Enterprise Customers as a Startup

34:11 - Reaching Product-Market Fit with a Lean Team

40:25 - Why Passion Drives Startup Success

Links:

Greg Floyd

Shower Stream

SM Material

Key Takeaways:

"The first layer of reliability here is designing the thing to be non-intrusive. It's not a nanny telling you to turn off the water when you're done using it."

"We give the hardware to the hotel owners for free. . . and then we're going to charge you $10 per month per room. . . we typically come in at $25, $26 of savings per room per month."

"We can divert over a gigaton of CO2 emissions. Again, because there's a heating component here and then all of the energy that goes on the back end of water."

"In hardware startups, it takes seven years to become an overnight success."