Dan Liddle is a Silicon Valley veteran, with more than thirty years of experience navigating high-growth markets. He has spent two decades building venture-backed start-ups, followed by a decade at Sanmina, a Fortune 500 global technology contract manufacturer. Dan had executive marketing, sales and business development positions at Maxiscale, Clustrix, Attune Systems, NeoPath Networks (Cisco), First Virtual Corporation (IPO), Whitetree Networks (Ascend/Lucent), and Advanced Computer Communications (Ericsson).
He has a bachelor’s degree in Business Economics from the University of California, Santa Barbara and an MBA from the University of Michigan, Ross School of Business.
Please tell us a little bit about your company – what Splitvolt all about?
Splitvolt is addressing a big pain point affecting the adoption of electric vehicles (EVs): power access for fast home charging. The Splitvolt Splitter Switch provides fast, level-2 charging of a dedicated 240V circuit, but by intelligently sharing power on your existing 240V dryer circuit, without any re-wiring or electrician fees.
Tell us a little bit about your background and how/why you started your company?
My background is mostly on the enterprise side, especially with venture-funded startups. This was deep tech built to keep the world’s largest companies going and I was fortunate to work with amazing people who have influenced my career, but also taught me to follow my passions as a believer in technology and the way it is shaping our life today, which is what I am doing now and that brings me to Splitvolt.
While I have been driving hybrid plugins for some time, I upgraded to a Tesla with a long-range and had 330 miles of range rather than a 20 miles of range that my prior vehicle had. I realized then that the normal 110-volt plug in charging that I had been doing charges only at a rate of three miles an hour. With a battery range of 330 miles, it was not practical to charge with that slow rate. I looked around and realized that it was expensive to have someone install a dedicated circuit, and wanted to find a solution that would allow people to inexpensively and easily get very fast charging at 220 to 240-volt rates without having to pay electrician fees. I founded Splitvolt to solve this problem first, and then roll-out a series of products which Empower Electric Vehicle Adoption™.
What would you say are the top 3 skills needed to be a successful entrepreneur, and why?
Here are three in no particular order:
Bringing together and growing a team that is positive, energized and builds the right company culture in an effort to always be doing the “right thing” for the company and our customers.
Staying connected with your customers. Understanding your customers is critical, and aligning/empowering your team to efficiently and effectively address those needs is the foundation for a successful business. I spend many hours during my week listening to customers and even responding to some of their questions. It helps me build a product that they want and need.
Learn from everybody and from every situation, no matter how much you think you know. You have to question everything related to your business, make sure that you understand it and that it makes sense. You need to be able to adjust rapidly to the market in real time and in our case it is a pretty new market, so understanding it is important.
What were the top 3 mistakes you made starting your business and what did you learn from it?
As an entrepreneur in an evolving market, there is the danger of underestimating.
1. the complexity, 2. the cost, or 3. The timeline for developing a business or program.
I consider myself very good at identifying business and technology risks, as well as potential complexities or issues that can come up in functional areas I have less direct experience with.
To address this, I seek diverse perspectives from folks in those areas for not only business planning and risk mitigation, but also to execute in those areas so we minimize the learning curve and can scale the business efficiently.
What are the top 3 online tools and resources you’re currently using to grow your company?
I think those would be Google Applications, Google Drive and Google Meet. It is an incredibly cost-effective package and is already integrated. It has made our life much easier and is easy to add users in the background. It works great for my fully distributed team, and supports our interactions with global partners.
What are books or courses you recommend for entrepreneurs?
- “Hacking Growth” by Sean Ellis and Morgan Brown
- “Start with Why” by Simon Sinek
If you only had $100 dollars to start a new business, knowing everything you know now, how would you spend it?
Understanding customers is the first place I’d invest any money, period. That said, since $100 is really negligible in the grand scheme of things, the most impactful thing to spend $100 on would be for some simple ergonomic laptop stand and lighting set-up pieces for my desk. Simple things like having your monitor the right height, a laptop stand, and a “warm” light for use on Zoom calls made a huge difference for comfort given the extensive hours you will spend there…
How do we get in touch with you?
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