Riding Unicorns: Venture Capital | Entrepreneurship | Technology
00:19:22 · James Pringle, Alan Chang, Hector Mason
[00:19:22] S0: It's unbelievably awesome. Apart from track record, why do you think you raised so much money? But, obviously, that explanation goes a bit of a way to explaining why. Did you aim to raise as much as you did, or did you just keep getting offers and that just helped shape the round eventually? [00:19:41] S1: Yeah. That's a good question. To be we didn't think too much in in terms of how much we wanna raise. Yeah. I I think it kinda just happened. [00:19:48] S0: Did it surprise you how much momentum the round gathered? [00:19:53] S1: Yeah. I would say maybe a little bit. No bit. I was I was... I guess, I had a range. Right? And I guess it it it happens within range. [00:20:04] S2: You spoke about at the beginning, like, this is... This can be asset heavy. Like, is some of the round for asset purchase?
00:20:12 · Alan Chang
[00:20:12] S1: Yes. Some of the round is... Majority of round is actually for asset purchase. Effectively, what we want to do, right, is we want to take it off. So, initially, to kick to kick off, we have to take it on balance sheet. Because what we don't want to do is basically build another energy supplier that relies on the wholesale market, right? That can really get fucked if the wholesale market goes up, right? And they can't sell it for as much as what you're buying it for. That's really just what happened to a lot of energy suppliers that went bust, right? So, that's why we are all in generation. The long term, we want to take off balance sheet, right? So, effectively, we want to... I mean, this is another... We're simultaneously creating another decentralized renewable energy network, right? So, imagine, right, if you look at the Bitcoin network, right? Bitcoin network is effectively the fastest growing financial services network that everyone's ever seen. And they manage to convince... Basically what it is, it's just automated incentive system to convince people to buy GPUs to solve useless math. And actually, it through the thing, right? It grew super fast. Now, what if, right, and what I really appreciate about Bitcoin now is just this incentive system is so beautiful. What I do not appreciate is, you know, it's, I'll argue, it's not that useful, right? But what if you can design a similar incentive system, but convince people to do something more useful? So, rather than convincing people to buy GPUs, what if convince people to buy renewables? Mine, this, you know, Bitcoin for energy, Bitcoin for renewable energy, right? Where they can earn a lot more than, you know, early Bitcoin miners can make millions. Magic can make millions from, you know, mining renewable energy. And that will convince a lot of people to do it and really accelerate their renewable transition. And that's how we think about, you know, effective design incentives. Right? So eventually, we do wanna take a generation of balance sheet, right, and basically create an effective decentralized, new energy network where anyone can participate. Anyone can earn. Anyone can participate. Anyone can become a renewable energy mind.
00:22:12 · Hector Mason
[00:22:12] S2: Yeah. It's a... It's an amazing vision and one that makes sense sort of in the abstract. And then then, like, it's, you know, it's just a a really complicated problem and difficult problem to solve. And I just want to like that journey from, you know, zero to a 100, which you I'm sure have sort of mapped out and, you know, think about a lot. One of the things that strikes me is that it's just gonna be or it could be really hard getting certain important stakeholders to kind of pick up the phone to you guys. Like, there must be all sorts of people who you're ultimately gonna be putting out of business or need to do things for you that they don't want to do. And and so are you finding that it's difficult to get people to pick up the phone? Are you finding that certain stakeholders are making it very difficult for you? A lot of people have been
00:23:05 · Alan Chang, James Pringle
[00:23:05] S1: extremely helpful. So far, anyone who we want to speak with we're within reach. Obviously, investment network has very good connections. So we met a lot of people in the industry from that way. We also managed to hire an ex CEO of Ofgem as an advisor, so to help on the regulatory front. So that opened a lot of doors. And generally people are just very, very excited about a change, right, in this industry. And, you know, they just think, you know, something fresh, something more innovative, something actually solves customer problems and, you know, help lower customer bills and help us go net zero, think. Like, because it's on so many people's agenda. Right? Like, people really care. A lot of people really care about going net zero. A lot of people really care about doing what's best for the customer. So we just kind of hit, you know, we don't hit like all the... Everything they care about, they hit every song. Right. So, think we found, you know, a lot of people have been very, very helpful so far. And we really appreciate the helpers so And, yeah, I would say, Jerry's been very positive. [00:24:09] S0: That's good to hear. I mean, it sounds like you've brought in some great people. If Hector and I came and spent a day in the office, what would we notice about the culture at TesterApp Energy? And I noticed you got a few roles on LinkedIn. Like, how big is the team, and how big will it be in twelve months' time?
00:24:09 · James Pringle, Alan Chang
[00:24:09] S0: That's good to hear. I mean, it sounds like you've brought in some great people. If Hector and I came and spent a day in the office, what would we notice about the culture at TesterApp Energy? And I noticed you got a few roles on LinkedIn. Like, how big is the team, and how big will it be in twelve months' time? [00:24:28] S1: Yeah. So about 26 today. We don't plan to grow the headcount that much. We are so very, in terms of who we need, right? We, I think we need, we have everyone we needed to execute the plan. But I think we're always on the lookout for an opportunistic for top talent. That's why we... I'll say we'll always be hiring. But I don't expect a team to be much bigger than what we have today in, let's say, twelve months time. So one thing I learned is, at Revlon, it's better to have small but brilliant team than a large but less effective team. So I want to maintain that philosophy here as well. In terms of culture, I would say are... I brought some of that from Revolut, right? And I'll say the key cultural value we have... Because Revolut, I think from memory, had six cultural values. I think it's too much for people to remember. So I just brought one, right, which is never settle. You know, we never stop. We don't stop until we're number one. We don't stop. We don't settle anything that's not top notch in quality. We don't settle for anything that is not fast. So, yeah, that's that's really, I'll say, our culture and in practice, we work very... We all work very hard. Everyone works six, seven days a week.
00:24:28 · Alan Chang, James Pringle
[00:24:28] S1: Yeah. So about 26 today. We don't plan to grow the headcount that much. We are so very, in terms of who we need, right? We, I think we need, we have everyone we needed to execute the plan. But I think we're always on the lookout for an opportunistic for top talent. That's why we... I'll say we'll always be hiring. But I don't expect a team to be much bigger than what we have today in, let's say, twelve months time. So one thing I learned is, at Revlon, it's better to have small but brilliant team than a large but less effective team. So I want to maintain that philosophy here as well. In terms of culture, I would say are... I brought some of that from Revolut, right? And I'll say the key cultural value we have... Because Revolut, I think from memory, had six cultural values. I think it's too much for people to remember. So I just brought one, right, which is never settle. You know, we never stop. We don't stop until we're number one. We don't stop. We don't settle anything that's not top notch in quality. We don't settle for anything that is not fast. So, yeah, that's that's really, I'll say, our culture and in practice, we work very... We all work very hard. Everyone works six, seven days a week. [00:25:51] S0: Just around, like, customers, they... If someone's listening now, what do they do to sign up?