Alumni Profile: Noah Eckhouse (E'88), VP of Bentley System's Building Performance Group, Offers Advice to Graduates

While many entrepreneurs support the idea of starting a company right after graduation, Noah Eckhouse (E'88) encourages students to first experience the workplace in a larger setting, as he did at Apollo Computer, Inc. After graduating in 1988 with a degree in Electrical Engineering, Eckhouse joined Apollo and experienced the benefits of working for a large company, taking advantage of the training and opportunities to be mentored by professionals in the industry. Eckhouse stresses that exposure to a large corporate setting fosters a learning environment where graduates can understand key business processes and all the various pieces required in making a company successful.

After two years with Apollo and four years working as the Director of MIT's Marine Computation Lab, Eckhouse started his first entrepreneurial venture in 1994—Player Systems Inc. The company's flagship product, SkyCaddie, incorporates the GPS and wireless technology used on sailboats to serve as an electronic caddy system on golf courses. Although there were numerous technological challenges in developing the product's hardware and software, Eckhouse notes that the business challenges were often the most complex. Essentially, the company was selling an electronic system with a high price tag, and golf courses needed to finance their purchases since they were a cashflow-constrained business. Fortunately, John Deere was a strategic investor of Player Systems at the time and partnered with the company to facilitate the transaction by leasing equipment to the golf courses and collateralizing it with land.

When Player Systems was purchased by John Deere in 1998, Eckhouse went on to start Trailbreaker.com, a venture-backed company that specialized in e-commerce analytics software. The company was sold to Steve Wozniak in Silicon Valley in 2003, at which time Eckhouse started his current position at Bentley Systems, an infrastructure software solutions company based in Exton, Pennsylvania. Eckhouse started in Bentley System's Mergers & Acquisitions group, acquiring companies and product lines in a global search for the best technologies in "green building." Due to his past experiences in operating companies, Eckhouse was approached by the CEO to run the Building Performance Group. As Vice President of the group, Eckhouse leads his team in making software that engineers and architects can use to methodically assess a building's energy consumption. The results produced by the group are used for LEED submittals for registering a building as environmentally sustainable, and quantitative analyses for compliance with local and national building codes.

Looking back at his own past experiences, Eckhouse advises young entrepreneurs not to rush immediately into a startup right out of school. "Don't be afraid to go work for a big company first and take advantage of the training and mentoring you'll receive. Find good mentors, all the way through life. People who can teach you skills and new ways of looking at things are always critical." Additionally, Eckhouse notes that many great businesses require insider knowledge of an industry, and it's crucial to gain experience from within the industry to truly understand how to bring a solution to that market. "That's when you'll find the 'ah-ha!' moment, where you can see a broken process that could be an opportunity to start a successful business."