Riding Unicorns: Venture Capital | Entrepreneurship | Technology
00:00:00 · James Pringle
[00:00:00] S0: This episode is sponsored by Seapoint, the business account built for startups. If you're a startup founder fed up with finance admin, you need Seapoint. Seapoint is different to neobanks because it connects all your bank accounts and your Stripe account to see your cash position, burn, and runway instantly. It automates bookkeeping by pulling invoices and receipts from your whole team's inboxes, so you just sync the whole lot to zero and pay outstanding bills with a click. Plus, it has a 3.51% yield on treasury and real human customer support. Find out more at seapoint.co. That's seaprint.co. Use code unicorn for a free month. Seapoint offers money market funds managed by BlackRock. Rate recorded at 10/01/2026. Rates are variable and subject to change. Capital at risk. Hello, and welcome to the Riding Unicorns podcast. This is the podcast all about growth startups. I'm James Pringle. I'm a technology entrepreneur, investor, and VC at Portfolio Ventures. My cohost is Hector Mason. Hector is a partner at b two b investor episode one ventures. This podcast is all about uncovering what it takes to build a unicorn business. We speak to some of the best founders and investors, many from unicorn companies, and ask them about their journey, operational insight, tips, lessons, stories, and anything that can help uncover what it takes to build a high growth business. This episode is with Alan Chang, founder and CEO at Tesseract Energy. Tesseract was founded to generate affordable renewable power and solve climate change. Alan and his co founder Charles were super early employees at Revolut. Tesseract has raised $78,000,000 from top tier investors like Baldurton, Lake Star, Xcel, Creendum, Lower Carbon and Ribbit. In this episode we touch on the Revolut journey, where the idea for Tesseract came from, the never settle culture Alan is building, the future of the energy industry, and much, much more. It's a big one. Let's get started. Hi, Alan. Welcome to the Riding Unicorns podcast. Thank you so much for joining us. Maybe we could just start with a quick explanation of what Tesseract Energy is for any of our audience that don't already know.
00:02:19 · Alan Chang, Hector Mason
[00:02:19] S1: Sure. So we're effectively a full stack of renewable energy supply. So we're actually building and owning renewable generation such as solar. So that's the first thing. The second thing we're doing is we allow our customers to effectively buy virtual renewable generation, especially after the energy crisis, a lot of people do want to reduce energy bill by putting, for example, rooftop solar. And the problem is not everyone has a rooftop, right? And there's some people renting or some people aren't just ready to commit to twenty five year, 15,000 commitments to the solar panels. So basically, we offer a virtual solution where some solar people we can use to reduce energy bill with us. Plus, you know, it has all the benefits of being virtual, such as, you know, if you move house, move apartments, do renting, you can basically take more effectively your your generation with you. [00:03:15] S2: So that's basically control. It's awesome. You guys raised probably one of, if not the the flashiest pre seeds of 2022. And that was... I think it was $78,000,000 off the bat, which is extraordinary. And just talk to us about how how you raised that and and why you need
00:03:35 · Alan Chang
[00:03:35] S1: to raise so much straight away. Yeah. So effectively, we... You know, most energy suppliers, they are... They just, you know, contrary to what most people believe, most energy supply, they just buy from the market and just resell it. And they also buy, you know, what the market calls rigos, right? Renewable, effective renewable energy certificates, such that they can claim their hard sell renewable. Right? But what's very interesting is when you see the gas prices going up, the energy prices from the tariffs also go up. So if it's fully renewable, then something doesn't add up. Whereas what we're doing, we're actually starting with completely... We're actually also building our generation from scratch, right? And that's why we need so much capital upfront to effectively kickstart our renewable energy business. So that's really number one. And number two is over time, we want to quickly decentralize it and make sure anyone can participate in the renewable energy network. Anyone can contribute. Right now, most renewable energy generation is really controlled by no more than 10 companies, mostly pension funds, infra funds, and private equity funds. Right? And in fact, everyone's paying bills to them. All we wanna do is we wanna be able to bring that to everyone. Right? You know, similar to, you know, how Revolut or Robinhood took stocks or ethics, basically democratize that, right, making it accessible for everyone. We wanna make real world energy accessible for everyone as well.
00:05:05 · Hector Mason, Alan Chang
[00:05:05] S2: Yeah. There there there are super interesting comparisons to the Internet, really, and, like, Energy Grid is a network and Web three for for the Internet is the the decentralized version, like, you know, hopefully, what you're what you're building for the energy networks. You know, you've had a a fantastic career at Revolut. I think your... It looks like perhaps your whole career has been at Revolut, rising from an analyst. So, yeah, just very interested to... Before we kind of dive deeper into Tesseract, it'd be good to hear about your journey through Revolut and sort of learnings there. [00:05:35] S1: Yeah. So I joined Revolut as a effectively fresh grad. I think I was employee number three, if you don't count founders. Yeah. And basically I did everything from, if I did anything by code. So I started doing customer service, then running customer service, then running operations. Then in SaaS expansion, so I took Revlon also in core markets. Then took it profitable during COVID and then forex revenues before I left. [00:06:04] S2: And what what were the what were the key key learnings? I mean, it's it's probably the poster child of of UK startup success. And so, I mean, you'll have you'll have seen a lot. You'll have you'll have war stories from your experience there. I wonder, you know, what what are the what are the things that you learned at Revolut in scaling a business like that that that you're applying at the very earliest stages with Tesseract?
00:06:04 · Hector Mason, Alan Chang
[00:06:04] S2: And what what were the what were the key key learnings? I mean, it's it's probably the poster child of of UK startup success. And so, I mean, you'll have you'll have seen a lot. You'll have you'll have war stories from your experience there. I wonder, you know, what what are the what are the things that you learned at Revolut in scaling a business like that that that you're applying at the very earliest stages with Tesseract? [00:06:27] S1: Yeah. I would say it's all about the people. Right. So at the end the day, it's all about people, you know, building a great product, building a great service, working hard in the competition. Right. So for example, when I joined Revolut, it was so in this small co working space And essentially, it was a dedicated office, so it was just like hot desk. And I would say the Revolut team was the only team that really stayed after 7PM on weekdays, and also the only team that worked on weekends. Right. There was like probably several 100 startups in that group. I saw that, you know, literally first week. So, at that moment, it was very obvious to me. Know, regularly something special. You know, if you're up against the big guys, it's very hard to win if you don't work harder than you. They have more money than you. They have more people than you. They have more resources than you, more connections, etcetera, etcetera. And also, they have more time than you, right? So, your odds are really stacked against you. The only thing you can beat is you hire better people, and you work on it.
00:06:27 · Alan Chang, James Pringle
[00:06:27] S1: Yeah. I would say it's all about the people. Right. So at the end the day, it's all about people, you know, building a great product, building a great service, working hard in the competition. Right. So for example, when I joined Revolut, it was so in this small co working space And essentially, it was a dedicated office, so it was just like hot desk. And I would say the Revolut team was the only team that really stayed after 7PM on weekdays, and also the only team that worked on weekends. Right. There was like probably several 100 startups in that group. I saw that, you know, literally first week. So, at that moment, it was very obvious to me. Know, regularly something special. You know, if you're up against the big guys, it's very hard to win if you don't work harder than you. They have more money than you. They have more people than you. They have more resources than you, more connections, etcetera, etcetera. And also, they have more time than you, right? So, your odds are really stacked against you. The only thing you can beat is you hire better people, and you work on it. [00:07:29] S0: I think that's really interesting. I mean, is that something that you think that the the founders tried to get right in the hiring process, or was it set post hiring in terms of, like, expectations? We just work harder, or do you think they they sort of hired people that they sort of knew would work that hard?