Business View Magazine | December 2018

224 225 ket intel and drives decision-making using millions of data points,while also powering data analytics and visualizations to assist the firm’s clients, team, and the industry at large.Tools within Level5, com- bined with deep insider-knowledge, enable the team to educate and advise on historical and future pricing trends, technical and fundamental commod- ity analysis,weather impacts and forecasts, product perfor- mance, power factor pen- alties, and benchmarking, along with other reporting to assist with demand-side management. Business ViewMagazine recently asked 5 CEO, Brian Hayduk and Chief Culture Officer, Jeff Schiefelbein for insights into their company’s incredible achievements and its role in today’s competitive deregulated energy space.The following is an edited transcript of that conversation. BVM: Howwould you describe the evolution of 5 from founding to its current status? Hayduk: “The company was officially started in Dec. 2011 on paper; operationally,we began in early 2012.The impetus for founding the company was the big value gap in the marketplace.All the founding partners had come from the supplier side of the deregulated energy space. So,we were the company that you could switch to if you were in a deregu- 5 lated state for electricity or natural gas. “The way that market had evolved was very much like the insurance industry,where almost all commercial insurance transactions today are done through an intermediary–a broker or aggregator of some sort.The energy industry developed the same way. So, over time,what that meant was that most of our transactions, the contracts we entered into with commercial and industrial entities,were done through intermediaries.We dealt with almost every broker and consultant in the country and we felt, generally speaking, that customers deserved much better than they were getting, both from an analyti- cal standpoint and the scope of services. “Most of the folks in our space will help custom- ers with procurement, essentially the buying of electricity or natural gas from these markets.We saw a much broader need.Once you become the outsourced energy professional for these firms, they were asking all kinds of questions; whether it’s issues on their delivery bill, onsite generation, solar, lighting, you name it.We saw a need for somebody who can not only do a better job on the procure- ment side, typically a top-three item on somebody’s budget, but also be that outsource energy team people were looking for.” BVM: Who are your customers and what geo- graphic region do you cover? Hayduk: “We service commercial and industrial and government entities in deregulated markets. Depending on whether it’s natural gas or electricity, it could be up to 18 different states.The customers are very wide ranging.We have some Fortune 500,