Riding Unicorns: Venture Capital | Entrepreneurship | Technology
00:08:21 · James Pringle, Alan Chang
[00:08:21] S0: Yeah. Nice. I think one of our previous guests described it as the the unsell in the hiring process where they actually try and convince you not to join for a period to make sure that you're you're bought into the right level. And so how have you found the move from being an early employee to at least scaling into a very big organization to to now being a founder? Like, what's the biggest difference? Have you enjoyed it all? Like, what's that experience been like? [00:08:50] S1: I mean, for me, I I really think the... I know a lot of people ask me that question. Like, for me, it's really the same. Like, I mean, for me, I'm always, a problem solver at heart. Right? I love solving problems, I'm just solving a different problem. Right? So, yeah, for me, it's it's largely the same. Right? And the only difference, I guess, is the different industry. But in terms of actual experience, like, I feel like it's very much the same. [00:09:18] S0: And your cofounder was also Revolut. How did you guys... What was the moment where you went... Looked at each other and went, we're gonna do this? Like, then we're gonna do a business together. What was that kind of coming together like?
00:09:18 · James Pringle, Alan Chang
[00:09:18] S0: And your cofounder was also Revolut. How did you guys... What was the moment where you went... Looked at each other and went, we're gonna do this? Like, then we're gonna do a business together. What was that kind of coming together like? [00:09:29] S1: Yeah. So, yeah, I I actually hired him at, We always worked well along with each other. But then he went to do some investing for two years, what I like to call like semi retirement. And then we just, you know, basically he was bored and then I wanted to solve an IBM Dager problem, right? And then we started discussing, we bounced some ideas off each other and then we accidentally stumbled onto this battery company that was making a lot of money. And we were like, how can you make money from batteries? Like, we just didn't understand anything. Right? And then we started digging into energy. Then then a year later we decided, you know, let's give it a shot.
00:09:29 · Alan Chang, Hector Mason
[00:09:29] S1: Yeah. So, yeah, I I actually hired him at, We always worked well along with each other. But then he went to do some investing for two years, what I like to call like semi retirement. And then we just, you know, basically he was bored and then I wanted to solve an IBM Dager problem, right? And then we started discussing, we bounced some ideas off each other and then we accidentally stumbled onto this battery company that was making a lot of money. And we were like, how can you make money from batteries? Like, we just didn't understand anything. Right? And then we started digging into energy. Then then a year later we decided, you know, let's give it a shot. [00:10:09] S2: Yeah. And how have you how have you found that time in as a green energy company? You know, now you spend a bit of time there researching, exploring, learning. Has your has your view of the market changed at all since since starting a business? It's it's quite different from an outside... Being an insider versus looking at it from the outside. The solution you're building seems obvious, and it seems like something that would make sense. But I think it's it's it's easy to underestimate the complexity of the the power grid. Right? And so so I just wonder, you know, how you found that, whether actually you've kind of peeled back a few layers of the onion and and just found found a mess that's much harder to work with than you're expecting.
00:10:49 · Alan Chang, Hector Mason
[00:10:49] S1: For sure. For sure. I think energy markets is very, very complicated. There is a lot of like, because the problem is it's physical, right? So you start with actual generation. So it's like a physical engineering component, and then you have the grid, which is also a physical a physical thing and has a lot of constraints and limitations. And then you also have to consider, for example, permitting, right, which the local government wants, I would say. And then you have the financial markets of energy, right, which is not super efficient, And there are also a lot of problems in it. So I would say, yes, there is a lot of complexity. I would say a lot more than finance. But I think what we've done at Revlon, right, is we've abstracted all the complexity away from the customer. So for the customer, it's just one button. The thing we're doing, we're maintaining this similar philosophy, like we are abstracting complexity away from the customer. So for the customer, it's just one button. So I would say it's a lot more details and complexity than we originally anticipated, but they were all... They all solve the problems. [00:11:57] S2: How are you getting up to speed with the complexity? Like, how how do you do you build a team around you who understands it better than you, or are you having to bury yourself in reports, research?
00:11:57 · Hector Mason, Alan Chang
[00:11:57] S2: How are you getting up to speed with the complexity? Like, how how do you do you build a team around you who understands it better than you, or are you having to bury yourself in reports, research? [00:12:07] S1: Yeah. I'll say it's both. Right? So, you know, we we hired, you know, some... We just made some great hires to the team. So we hired about four people who actually came from this industry. Right? So we actually... Actually, maybe a bit about maybe five. So for example, we hired two people from Tesla Energy. Right? We hired one person from EDF Trading. He ran [00:12:29] S2: trading
00:12:29 · Hector Mason, Alan Chang
[00:12:29] S2: trading [00:12:30] S1: for EDF for twenty something years, and this is his second job. And we also hired an energy PhD as well. So we hired a combination of people who actually know a lot about energy and agree with us that something is deeply broken about energy and it needs to fixed. Plus a bunch of people just don't cover energy background, but love solving big problems. And they believe they want to contribute to this. Net zero transition calls, right? There's a combination of people really, and just thinking very, very deep, right? Going back to first principles. For example, when we understand the grid, trying to understand the grid, we actually first solve the engineering principles, right? What were the physics equations of the grid? And then we worked all the way back up to financial markets, and we just understood the whole chain, right? Whereas a lot of energy companies, you know, someone would understand it, but they're not all in a single team. Right? They would just like... Some person... Like, everyone will understand one small thing. Right? Collectively, they might know everything, but but the problem is it's very hard to make the ultimate decision. The leadership or people who actually do the execution or the engineers. Right? If you don't have a full picture, they're not running the best option.