00:01:09 · Alan Chang, James Wise
[00:01:09] S0: Yeah, so Fuse Energy is basically, what we're building is a fully integrated energy company from scratch, applying the latest engineering and technology from building our utility scale power generation storage all the way to energy retail and everything in between. [00:01:29] S1: And so to break that down to people, because it's such a big, complex industry. Yep. Does the average energy company that people may have historically used in their home actually do today versus what Fuse aspires to do?
00:01:46 · Alan Chang
[00:01:46] S0: Yeah, so I think there's like two I'll say I'll put these legacy energy companies in two buckets. The first is like formerly stage owned energy companies that were at one point fully integrated. And then second bucket is kind of like challenges, right, since the markets has liberalized, that has emerged in the last twenty something years. Right? And, essentially, I'll say the formerly fully integrated energy company... Like, state owned energy companies, they're they're very, very integrated into, you know, oil and gas technologies. Right? They're pretty good at doing that, but they haven't really transitioned well to the new, you know, energy paradigm, which is like, okay. There's increasingly more renewables in energy mix, and this requires, you know, new sets of, you know, skill sets that just... They don't possess. And the challenges, which is I'll say they do they're very, very focused mostly on the well, at least some of them customer experience side, which we argue they still don't do a great job. But they do do a better job than they formerly state run energy companies. They barely touch on the software side. Like, some of them do more than others. But otherwise, like, they're not really integrated. Right? So our approach here is, like, okay, we... What what what what most people don't know is, like, there are maybe, like, up to 20 companies involved, right, from building the power plant to getting power to your home or business. And there's, like, inefficiency in every single step of the way. We just wanna, you know, uncover that inefficiency. Okay. Think, okay. What's the best way to make it more efficient? Improve margins that way, and pass a lot of that margins back to energy consumers, obviously keep some for ourselves, and then also lower carbon whilst we do that.
00:03:48 · James Wise, Alan Chang
[00:03:48] S1: So I'm a Fuse Energy customer. My experience of it is the app and the prices. For lower prices. So for a consumer today, what is your hope for their experience? Will they notice a radical difference from working with fully vertical solution like Fuse? [00:04:07] S0: Yeah. So the idea is, like, you shouldn't. Right? It's like like, I think, like, ultimately, what what do what do people care about? Right? They care about low prices. They care about good customer experience. And if and when you have a problem, good customer service. Right? So we offer, you know, one of the best prices today. In terms of customer experience, like, we spent a lot of time thinking about, designing the customer journey, whether it's onboarding or whether it's tracking your energy usage. And then we're the only energy company that offers 20 fourseven customer support every single day of the year. [00:04:44] S1: It's amazing. And obviously, energy, certainly at a consumer level and industrial level, has shot up in the consumer awareness over the last few years, right? Partly prices, volatility, obviously people's hope to reduce their carbon emissions. When you started Fuze a few years ago, did it feel like you were going to be at the epicenter of this shift? Were you aware that this was going to happen, or has it been a surprise to even you about how quickly people have started caring, but you might even say worrying now about their energy bills.
00:05:19 · Alan Chang
[00:05:19] S0: Yeah. To be honest, actually that's not a surprise to me. In fact, that's one of the reasons why we decided to start an energy company, right? I think the last, you know, maybe twenty five years, I guess what we've been what we've been trained, right, to think is, like, in order to, you know, save the environment, we need to use less. You need to make a sacrifice. It's kind like the trolley problem. Use more or save the environment. Basically, that's always been top of mind. And it's not just your domestic energy or your business energy. It's also energy in other use cases like flying or driving to work. You're always making these choices, like convenience or saving the environment. And I think that's just a completely wrong mindset. And if you look at, for example, energy per capita, energy consumption per capita in the last twenty five years in The UK, it's gone down by 30%. Right? In Europe, it's gone down by 10%, and The U. S. Is flat. If you look at China, it's gone up by 7x in the same period of time, right? So we basically want to reverse this and encourage people to use more. Right? And obviously, it should not be in the expense of super high costs or destroying the environment. Right? We can actually have it all three ways. And the astonishing thing is there isn't an economic indicator in
00:06:52 · James Wise, Alan Chang
[00:06:52] S1: the world I've seen that doesn't suggest that more energy consumption results in better productivity, GDP growth, and better outcomes for individuals. And we've been telling people across the world, in the Western world at least, to use less, which basically means have less. Yes. So your your your motivation is to shift, you know, I guess energy consumption, but hopefully productivity, GDP. [00:07:14] S0: Yeah, for sure. Ultimately, energy is the engine behind physical GDP growth, which is majority of the GDP. And right now, the engine's broken, so we need to fix it. [00:07:29] S1: I wanna talk more about energy in a little bit, but but maybe we can talk more about your experiences before Fuze. You were, you know, one of the first employees and ultimately CRO at Revolut, one of the most successful software companies, financial services companies in the world now. So it must have been a difficult decision to leave. Other than your motivation to shift GDP, were there other reasons why you felt now or a few years ago it was the right time to to start something new? Had you always wanted to be a founder?
00:07:59 · Alan Chang
[00:07:59] S0: I always wanted to work in an entrepreneurial environment, and I think Revolut, you know, was and remains to be, you know, a great place to work for, you know, anyone who work... Wants to work in an entrepreneurial environment. I personally don't really care about, you know, this, like, founder title or non founder title. I I don't think it matters to me at all. Like, what matters to me is the the problem I'm trying to solve. And for me, like, there's two two, like, two reasons why I I decided to leave Revolut. Number one was it's in very good hands. Right? Like, it it is like a self running machine that keeps growing, and there's great people working in it. And, you know, I I felt like my impact at Revolut was reducing over time, for good reason. I think that's a positive thing. And the second is, think, at the time, I thought, Okay, what are the most important problems to solve in the next twenty five years? And for me, it's energy or AI. And I picked energy because there was a lot of very, very smart people working in AI. I was looking at, okay, how many smart people actually work in energy? Reality is there isn't a lot. Right? But for such an important industry, right, there is, like, a huge, you know, talent misallocation. There's over index on traditional finance, big tech. I'll say I'll argue AI is pretty like correctly allocated. But energy is like it's unallocated, right? And one of the beautiful things about startups is you can actually convince, you know, very, very smart people to join, you know, an industry where traditionally hasn't attracted a lot of very, very smart people. Right? So that's what drawn me to energy.