September C-E2 Recap
CE2 September Recap: E-Waste Solutions & AI Lessons
The September meeting of CBIC’s CE2 (Charlottesville Entrepreneurs & Espresso) delivered early-stage innovation, battle-tested wisdom, and robust conversation over morning coffee.
Early Stage Pitch: Control Alt Recycle
Up first was Steven Levin, CEO of Control Alt Recycle, Charlottesville’s computer electronics recycling business with a conscience. Steven brought impressive tech credentials—an early employee at Double Hoo, among the first 100 at Zapier, and a crypto space veteran.
His business model is elegantly simple: re-use, re-sell, re-cycle. Control Alt Recycle provides industry-standard erasure certificates for IT departments worried about security. Of 100 recent laptops processed, his team reformatted 50, shredded 30, and repaired and resold 20. The hidden gem: a metal recycling operation extracting aluminum, copper, and gold—your CPU and RAM might be worth more than a pile of gold!
Six months in and breaking even, Steven’s main challenge is awareness. He offers secure destruction, free pickup, ESG reporting, and local service.
Steven asked: “What should my marketing strategy be?” The CE2 community delivered: back his truck up at farmers’ markets for drop-off events, focus on B2B with the roughly 20 major players in town, partner with C4K for charity drives, connect with waste services for amnesty days, encourage businesses to let employees bring personal items. Other ideas: partner with private schools for social media reach, connect with tech protection companies, and study bicycle recycling models that partner with shops offering coupons for new products when recycling old tech.
Crash & Learn: Greg Frank on Internet Booms, Busts, and AI's Future
Our “Crash & Learn” presenter was Greg Frank, whose career spans four decades. From making one of the first cell phone calls from Mt. Kilimanjaro, to working on Xbox at Microsoft, founding a VC fund, building financial trading systems processing $3.5 billion daily, running a hedge fund, and applying machine learning to life sciences—Greg has seen it all. These days, he focuses on applied AI: useful systems that work in production and scale.
His insights comparing the early ’90s internet boom to today’s AI revolution were fascinating and cautionary. Late ’90s internet valuations were sky high—similar to AI today. When that bubble popped, VC funds had to “stop the bleeding.”
Key parallels between the internet era and AI today:
- Infrastructure rules in rising markets. Early dot-com days saw value accrue to Cisco, Sun, Oracle, and AWS. Applications like Google Search and Facebook took longer. Today, infrastructure companies like Nvidia capture most value, while application businesses struggle but will eventually prevail.
- Consolidation is inevitable. Greg predicts AI consolidation similar to the internet: a “Pets.com-style collapse” followed by “Amazon-style consolidation.” Markets will consolidate around dominant players.
- Commoditization drives differentiation. Access to AI models is becoming ubiquitous. Real differentiators will be domain-specific data, distribution, and trust around privacy, copyright, and IP.
- Trust and regulation matter. The early internet was the wild west but stabilized. AI will follow a similar but faster path. Companies that develop trust early will prevail.
Greg’s prediction: “In 10-15 years, AI won’t be a thing, it will just be how you do business.” Decentralization benefits tech hubs like Charlottesville, making our region more attractive to top talent.
On Xbox: In the late ’90s, Microsoft dominated offices but lagged in home computing. They tried to buy Sony (Japan blocked it) and acquired WebTV for $425M (a closed ecosystem failure). The breakthrough: “What if we created a consumer platform that gives developers access to write software?” This led to internal “bake-offs” where teams competed for capital—win or lose your job.
The Q&A covered a wide range of topics:
On AI and energy demand: Greg noted innovations like DeepSeek’s model using fewer CPUs, but energy is a significant under-discussed limit to the tech’s development.
AI investing strategy: “The most dangerous words are ‘This time it will be different.’ The next most dangerous: ‘This time it will be the same.'” Many unconsolidated verticals exist, and “the amount of societal transformation caused by AI will dwarf the societal transformation from the internet.”
VC strategy: West Coast VCs have simple term sheets and quickly scrap failing companies. East Coast VCs have complex term sheets that complicate rather than help. Bottom line: “Nothing can help your risk exposure if the industry itself is consolidated.”
Thanks to our sponsors: Codebase, UVA Darden, SBDC Central Virginia, Watermark Design, Design Clarity, CBIC, CIC, our ringleader Hope McCutcheon, and Tracey Greene for keeping the vision alive.
CE2 continues to be where Charlottesville’s entrepreneurial community comes together to learn, connect, and build the future. Mark your calendars for the next session on October 28th!