Daintree Networks
Danny Yu

Albert Einstein once said, “Try not to become a man of success, rather become a man of value.” Danny Yu, CEO of Daintree Networks, a provider of Building Energy Management (BEM) and Enterprise Internet of Things™ (E-IoT™) Solutions for commercial and industrial facilities, has lived his life adhering to these words.

Daintree Networks was founded in 2003 by Bill Wood, a former vice president and general manager of Hewlett Packard (HP) and Agilent Technologies. The term ‘Daintree’ refers to a rainforest in Australia. Daintree Networks is a channel-friendly company serving global customers with office locations in Silicon Valley, California, and Melbourne, Australia.

Yu heads this company, which leverages next-generation networking technologies for its open standards-based networked wireless building control and energy management solutions. After reviewing an enormous accumulation of knowledge gathered from its early years in wireless networking test solutions, Daintree chose to turn its focus on solving the problem of poor energy efficiency in buildings. With the advent of LEDs and the longevity associated with that technology, the development of open standards-based wireless and software solutions proved to be the most cost effective and useful entry application for advanced building control and energy management. This was the pivot point where Yu took up the lead.

The Pledge, the Turn, and the Prestige
Yu was a man who the company knew was bringing over 20 years of leadership, growth, and experience in lighting, enterprise solutions, communications, and semiconductors to his role as CEO at Daintree Networks. Hence, a makeover of the company was imminent. This decision was a much-needed one because prior to Yu joining the company, Daintree was at the crossroads of selecting the perfect path for the technology.

Yu believes that “creativity is the key to productivity and prosperity.” Daintree has incorporated this into their value system and has gone on to simplify the way buildings owners and operators intelligently manage, monitor, and optimize their energy use today.

Danny says eloquently, “we focus on understanding end users better than the rest of the industry, so we are able to create the right solutions for them.”

Additionally, his belief in the philosophy of amalgamating the business method with a ‘human touch’ created value for Daintree’s customers and employees and the company was able to advance up the ladder over the course of his leadership ever since.

My focus for four to five years was on software and enterprise technology Danny Yu, CEO By Kamalika Roy Chowdhury

This was not the first time Yu had helped transform a company. All throughout his career journey, he was known for creating magic. It was in 1998 that Yu stepped into the venture capital industry. After years of explosive growth, the IT industry was shrinking in 2001. This was the period he was involved in restructuring companies from the hard knocks that technology was going through for the next few years. He says, “My focus for four to five years was on software and enterprise technology.”
At this time, HP joined hands with Philips, to drive LED technology for never-before-possible applications, including consumer electronics and traditional lighting. HP and Philips together formed a joint venture known as Lumileds, which drove new businesses with LED globally. Yu joined Lumileds to run business development, strategic marketing, and product strategy. The biggest facet that was taken over by Yu was a new technology that has now created functionality in global markets and drove high volumes of profits too.

The Rise of an Entrepreneur
Danny holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University. In the 90s, Yu had decided to pursue a MBA from the UCLA Anderson School, while working at Hewlett-Packard in technical sales management. This was his first step into the world of communication that helped him to become a better businessman. He enjoyed learning applications like networking, satellite communications and high speed fiber optics, which was catered by HP. Yu represented the networking and LED divisions at HP and his ‘far reaching’ goal was to go out and build networking solutions for big companies and participate in the market boom with the rest.

Living the Dream
Attaining the ‘dream of his life’ Yu being a veteran considers that an entrepreneur requires technical understanding of problems and should have the ability to solve them accurately. “One must provide solutions matching the market standards, which requires a lot of effort and perseverance,” explains Danny. He goes on to say, “Adaptability and resiliency are the two vital elements to develop a successful entrepreneur. Depending on the business technology, it could be a short or long period of struggle in the making of an entrepreneur.”

Outlook for Future
In the words of Yu, “Our vision for Daintree is to continue to drive success with our wireless networking control and software to become a leading provider of smart building operation solutions for medium to large enterprises.” Therefore, he explains that the goal is to create platforms that connect next-generation intelligent devices for commercial building energy control applications resulting in a smart solution for the Enterprise Internet of Things (E-IoT).