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Peter
Vandermeulen: Moving on after BlueShift
Boston Business Journal
Peter Vandermeulen says he can’t blame investors for shutting down his previous company, Andover-based semiconductor equipment firm BlueShift Technologies Inc., in late 2009.
That’s because despite having received $26 million in venture capital from investors including North Bridge Venture Partners and Atlas Venture, and having some early customers, the company couldn’t escape the fact that the semiconductor equipment market dropped by 90 percent during the economic slowdown. “I think the investors lost faith that there was going to be an exit any time soon,” Vandermeulen said.
That experience didn’t sour him on being an entrepreneur, though. His new company, 7AC Technologies Inc. in Woburn, is seeking to head down the venture capital road this year to commercialize a new type of highly efficient air conditioner, which can be powered with solar panels or natural gas.
He says a 7AC rooftop system would be able to cut a building’s cooling and heating bill by 50 percent if it runs off natural gas, and by 75 percent if it’s powered by solar. The company plans to initially target one- to three-story commercial buildings. Vandermeulen recently spoke with reporter Kyle Alspach.
Does your experience with BlueShift make you wary of getting into a market area like solar, which still has a lot of uncertainty?
Well it’s not just clean energy — fundamentally, it’s energy, and energy doesn’t have these huge swings that semiconductor capital equipment does. I don’t think we’ll find another 90 percent downturn in that kind of market. It will go up and down with the economy, but it won’t be that severe. Regulations will have some impact on it as well, but it won’t be as crazy as the semiconductor capital equipment market was.
So you don’t approach getting VC now with trepidation after what happened?
No. You don’t like it when your company gets shut down. But was it realistic? Yeah, probably. It was not an irrational decision. You may not like it, but you can’t argue with the decision necessarily. … We were in the market, had a bunch of machines out in the market, mainly in Asia. We were exporting out to Korea and China. But when the market went down, we just hadn’t booked enough orders to keep the growth and the momentum going.
Do you have solar on your home?
No, I don’t yet. I’d rather invest money into my company right now than into solar panels. Because if I do that, I can put my own solar panels on the house at some point.
Motto?
I care about competence and engagement in people. And that’s what I look for — people that are competent and can be engaging.
Hobbies?
I live in Newburyport, and I have a 30-foot sailboat. I do occasionally take a Saturday off and sail all day. It’s a really great thing to do, really relaxing.
What do you miss about Holland?
I became a U.S. citizen two years ago. I like it here. The concept of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness came out of New York, which was a Dutch colony. Whereas the Puritans in Massachusetts weren’t all that much about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. They were more about freedom of religion. So there’s a strong Dutch influence (in the United States). ... There’s also a really large Dutch community in the Boston area, and many people don’t realize that. I’m told there are 50,000 Dutch people living in the Greater Boston area. I miss some of the Dutch foods, because you can’t get them here. But I go back frequently enough that I don’t really have to worry about it too much.
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