Short Fifth offers select consulting and advisory services to clients in the areas of energy, software, business development, and general project management with a special interest in entrepreneurial startup programs.
Leveraging experience that ranges from the early days of software development to the latest renewable energy deployments, I look forward to helping you and your organization advance emerging technologies and unique opportunities from concept through fruition.
Dan Fitzgerald is Principal of Short Fifth Consulting LLC, where he consults with clients on select engagements in the areas of energy, software, business development, and general project management, with a special interest in entrepreneurial and startup programs.
Prior to founding Short Fifth, Dan was Cofounder and Chief Operating Officer of Key Capture Energy (KCE), where he took the company from concept to successful startup and through acquisition by one of the country’s leading energy storage companies. During his tenure, Dan was responsible for overseeing all of KCE’s operations, including oversight of KCE’s battery technology, project development, construction, and information technology efforts.
Previously, Dan was with Apex Clean Energy where he established a northeastern portfolio of wind projects from eastern Maine to western New York. Dan created a pipeline of over 750 MW with additional prospects under evaluation. Before Apex Dan worked for EDP Renewables, where he completed the development of and successfully brought to construction the 215 MW Marble River Wind Farm in northern New York. Many of Dan’s other wind projects have advanced to commercial operation or are ready for construction.
In his pre-renewable energy days, Dan was a project manager at two software startups. Thirteen years of that time was spent with MapInfo Corporation, a GIS software company launched as a Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) incubator project and developed into a worldwide location intelligence and GIS platform. It was later acquired by Pitney Bowes and became Pitney Bowes Business Insight.
Dan serves on the Board of Directors of NY-BEST, an organization working to establish New York State as a global leader in advancing energy storage as a key solution for a clean energy future. Dan has also served as a board member for the Alliance for Clean Energy New York.
Dan is a proud graduate from the State University of New York at Albany with a Bachelor of Arts degree.
The name Short Fifth is a tribute to my grandfather. When I was a young child, my grandparents lived on “Short Fifth,” a street on the south side of the canal in Troy, New York in an area called Pig Town. I would watch my grandfather tackle projects in his garage and marvel at his ability to make anything work, albeit not necessarily in the most conventional way.
He was a self-taught mechanic who had no formal education in the business but who had a knack of taking the unfixable and fixing it. Leveraging those skills, he became a quality control inspector for the Watervliet Arsenal during World War II, working on some of the nation’s most secret and course-altering projects throughout the campaign.
When I was old enough to join him in the garage, we would work on cars together. The practical life lessons I learned working by his side have enabled me to have a highly successful career spanning multiple decades and industries. The two most formative lessons that inform how I approach my work are the power of persuasion and finding unique yet practical solutions.
My grandfather was a perfectionist, unless that course of action didn’t produce results, in which case he would pivot to using any means necessary to achieve the desired result.
I clearly recall working with him on my first 1966 Mustang, a blue coup with a 289 in it and a serious case of rust. We were installing new, self-adjusting drum breaks that required precision settings on the calipers. My grandfather pulled out his old micrometer from his Arsenal days and showed me how to precisely line everything up such that once the brakes were applied, they would automatically adjust. But despite taking each step with surgical precision…the brake pads didn’t come together. After checking and rechecking his work, he looked at me and said, “It seems like this is going to require a little bit of persuasion.” Pulling out “the Persuader,” a homemade mallet consisting of a steel rod with a lump of lead at one end, he reared back and hit the brake drum. Just like that, the brake pads came together as intended.
I walked away that day having learned that when tackling a project, you should closely follow instructions and double check your work. BUT if the results don’t pan out, step into the unconventional and give it a good whack. If the rules don’t work, change the rules.
To this day, I keep the Persuader in the trunk of my latest Mustang.
Some might label my grandfather as cheap, but in reality, he was simply thrifty. Take, for instance, the time he successfully fixed my sister’s car by packing part of an old garden hose into the gear shift.
Later at college, she took her car to a service station, where the mechanic discovered the hose. After asking my sister what it was doing there, she promptly replied that her grandfather had put it there for some reason, it was serving its purpose, and it was not to be removed under any circumstance.
Similarly, rather than buy new engine mounts – which, according to my grandfather, were “just steel and rubber” – for my Mustang, we made our own. The worn-out mounts were used as templates, and we sourced the rubber from an old set of rubber horseshoes I played with as a child. He truly was the original MacGyver.
It was from my grandfather’s thriftiness that I learned to use existing resources when possible – you don’t necessarily need the finest parts to make something work like new.
I look forward to hearing about your interesting endeavors and exploring ways to work together.
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