This week Chris and Johan are joined by Peter Bance from Origami. Origami helps digitalize energy companies bringing together the physical and virtual worlds of energy. The three discuss the importance of early customers willing to do pilot projects and the need for real time data in today’s energy industry. Listen in, to find out how the required skill set in the industry has changed and what that has to do with streaming services.
Origamis homepage
https://www.origamienergy.com/
This week Chris and Johan are joined by Peter Bance from Origami. Origami helps digitalize energy companies bringing together the physical and virtual worlds of energy. The three discuss the importance of early customers willing to do pilot projects and the need for real time data in today’s energy industry. Listen in, to find out how the required skill set in the industry has changed and what that has to do with streaming services.
Origamis homepage
https://www.origamienergy.com/
Broadcasting from the commodity capital of the world, Zurich, Switzerland, this is ‘Insiders Guide to Energy’.
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| Timestamp | Speaker | Transcript
| 07:22.74 | chrissass | welcome to insider's guide to energy I'm your host Chris Sass and with me as always as co-host Johann Oberg. Johan what's happening this week
| 07:29.61 | Johan | Hi Chris great to be on again another week but we have to mention that between these two shows we had the opportunity to actually meet our team face to face which was quite an adventure and quite of a thing. Yeah.
| 07:41.81 | chrissass | Now you totally just took me off base because my my Swedish friend didn't talk about the weather that went from beautiful spring to snow again instead you talked about the podcast team.
| 07:47.83 | Johan | I know this was such a much bigger even as a Sweden and I'm pretty sure our english firm will pack into this one as well. We always talk about the weather but listen meeting the team for the first time after closed the two years I thought it was quite amazing. I love virtual I love digital but face to face once in a while. It's quite amazing.
| 08:10.70 | chrissass | Yeah, so you you got a fair amount of likes on the post for folks that don't know look on Linkedin um, Johann you'll see part of the team I don't even think that's quite half the team but we we did get the Zurich contingent out and and 1 of our producers Luka from Byrne.
| 08:17.92 | Johan | Um, nope.
| 08:25.86 | chrissass | It was a fantastic time to get it worn out. We had a great time. Had some chicken wings had some beers. It was a great night out. It was It was a lot of fun for the team to see each other.
| 08:33.80 | Johan | I was great and and just imagine what we were able to what we've been able to do without ever meeting the team I think the sense a little bit of scene off. Food was great as well. But talking about the weather. Yes, what happened cold again. Not big fan of this one hope for the weather come back.
| 08:49.56 | chrissass | Well I think um, you know what? I'm looking forward to tonight is talking about what our guest does Entrepreneur. He's been in the business. He's been growing business. You want to hear about that gone through funding gone through all the things you need to do to grow a a tech company in the energy space. Um, I'm looking forward to hearing about you know how do you create a marketplace. How how do you solve some problems I'm I'm interested in what they've done there as well. So for me I think tonight is a pretty wide open slate to figure out where it's at when it comes to the technology I think that falls close to home for me. Um, but. I'm just excited dad to have the conversation.
| 09:28.41 | Johan | Not no likewise and I think this is right up the alley where the kind of the show is all about isn't it where we talked about renewable touching on the weather of course because it's extremely Weather-d driven but also the digital This transformation is equally as much digital and how do you use software in order to maintain. Energy transformation and this is what I'm really looking forward to hear a little bit more about and how do you actually create a business model around this which which can scale. Um, um, you know my business sense always comes around.
| 09:55.30 | chrissass | Well I have no idea how they did I think they've been around since about 2013 so I assume they've got some sort of business model because they're still here and it assume they're still growing but let's find out Peter Batch welcome to the program.
| 10:01.19 | Johan | Well for sure.
| 10:07.00 | Peter Bance | Thanks for having me on. It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks.
| 10:10.40 | chrissass | So as you can tell we we're not exactly sure where the conversation's goingnna go. But I think as I say every week I've got the unfair advantage I know you're from Oegami and I know a little bit about your but audience has no idea who weve brought on board tonight. So maybe we should start with a little bit about who you are.
| 10:25.76 | Peter Bance | Yeah, no problem. So as you can probably tell by my slightly annoying canadian accent I grew up on the East Coast of Canada surrounded by nature. You know, beautiful pine trees birch trees went hiking. You know I was an outdoorsy kind of guy and that sort of. 1 of the reasons why I've become an entrepreneur in the code of sustainability renewable space is I really do believe nature is important to look after um, but what brought me over to to Europe Uk specifically is where I've lived for the last twenty five years is is ah is a career in technology specifically turning technology into. Businesses right? So when I did my ph d in physics at Oxford it cured me of academia forever. But but technology stayed in the blood. So I then switched gears into a commercial career track for the last twenty Twenty five years you know building really market relevant piece of technology and then taking them to market at scale. So. Really, that's me a canadian by upbringing. Ah an environmentalist by passion but a technologist kind of business guy by career.
| 11:26.24 | chrissass | And so maybe it would be worth telling your audience what your current role is in your current. Your current venture is.
| 11:33.33 | Peter Bance | Yeah, so ah, my pleasure. So I'm I'm the founder and Ceo of a technology company called origami. So you know we don't sit around all day folding paper with our hands like the ancient japanese art of of kind of origami. But we do fold energy shapes with software. So that's where the kind of the name comes from. So when I found the business I was actually um, ah working kind of part-time in between Ceo Gigs at Octopus Investments it was a big London -based investment investor in venture capital sort of digital startups on the 1 hand but also um, ah green energy infrastructure things like big solar farms and wind farms stuff. You could kick. And and surprisingly nothing in the overlap between the kind of digital venture capital investing and the big kind of asset-backed renewable investing I thought aha there's an opportunity here. So while I was doing that I was working out the business plan for what became origami so when I founded the business which was basically to become the. The digital glue between the physics of energy assets and the economics of markets I then you know left and said you know see and never and they said oh whoa before you leave you know pay just the deal. So I pitched them the deal and I guess their investment instincts got the better of them so they actually bankrolled the company. To get going and off the ground so when I left they gave me a big check. So. It's a nice way to leave any businesses with a check in your pocket.
| 12:54.30 | chrissass | So so how long ago was that I think I think I mentioned 2013 I think I've seen some things of you talking in the past and speaking um tell us about the journey where where you guys at now. What's happened.
| 13:05.53 | Peter Bance | Um, yeah, sure. So so the early days.
| 13:10.22 | chrissass | Started with a check. So you quit your job. You told the boss to leave and you left they gave you money what happened next.
| 13:15.40 | Peter Bance | Ah, so yeah, it was it was a kind of classic startup. You know, literally in the study kind of bedroom. There wasn't there wasn't much reality to the to the venture to start with I had ah a skeleton crew of part-timers which I you know, hired myself with my own money I had. 3 sign letters of intent with customers saying you know if you build this software product. You know we will use it. But at the time I had nothing I had no product built so I had those kind of signed letters of intent for a future truth that I was going to build I had a a bunch of part time you know helpers trying to get the venture off the ground and also I'd I'd kind of. Called in some favors from a group of really experienced people one from the world of government one from the world of finance 1 technologist and we kind of built an advisory board and those 3 ingredients were I guess enough to to get the venture funded. So really in the early days it was using that seed funding to. To build a team build the beginnings of an early product and actually start getting in the hands of of customers. You know and fast forward a few years now like many entrepreneurs you're trying to get that product market fit you know am I building something that the market really needs and what's that pain point. That's really going to. Light the market up and you know that's the kind of journey through the fog that I guess we've been doing and now we've landed at the point where we're signing you know multi-year software as a service contracts you know worth millions. So it feels like we're now you know at first base ready to you know swing for the fences to use a baseball analogy. So. Yeah, I'm pretty proud of what we've accomplished over the last few years and I think the the external green energy markets changed in a transformational way in the last few years too as we all know so it feels like the timing is now about right to doing what we're doing.
| 15:01.27 | chrissass | All right? So So I got the fact that you kind of got stuff going. You. You got the board and all this stuff together. What was the genius idea that you woke up with that. You decided to get some engineers and folks do I Do What was the problem statement. So You said we're you know, kind of the digital world meets a physical world or whatever. Yeah, you. The market you need this kind of digital Glue. That's a pretty opaque statement I Guess I don't really know what that means so help me understand what what the problem statement you solve is.
| 15:24.99 | Peter Bance | Yeah, yeah, fair, fair enough and and I think it was partly a recognition that you know in the past the world of physical energy. You know, lived over here somewhere right? You know as assets you could build and finance and there's you know. Messy physical realities like grid connections and Epc Contractors all these kind of stuff and then quite separately. You know route- to market providers. You know trading the capacity or the energy etc and over here. You had the kind of financial world of you know trading and hedging and you know making money and. And and in fact, you know the the physical world of assets the financial world of trading and monetization and the contractual world of of customers and contracts. They spoke a different language right? You know a bit like in the early days of commute of of computing and the internet you know the packets of information. Needed to be translated in some sort of common language a bit like you know html for energy. So really one of the aha moments was the need to process and then orchestrate these quite different streams of data physical data financial data contractual data into something which made sense. It was more kind of interoperable. So that was one of the early light bulb moments is that these historically quite separate worlds of physical financial contractual needed to be brought together partly because the the markets were reflecting that the physical world of weather and renewables were beginning to really. You know impact the financial world of prices and exchanges and traded commodities. So you know these historically separate worlds were actually now had had a strong interplay. So therefore the data the tech that's going to bring this stuff together was suddenly going to become valuable hence create a business. So bring that stuff together.
| 17:12.94 | Johan | So You're sitting there in your old job waking up with this brilliant idea that there is a gap here somewhere but there's a big step of moving from a technology idea to actually then testing it on customers So were there customers. Involved in the beginning or was this just a leap of Faith. Let's get the money and they start trying it on customers because usually I think there is if you do something you you bring a customer you steal a customer or you work with a customer. So How how did that interaction work. Did you have that or did you just jump on the technology and think this this will work.
| 17:49.52 | Peter Bance | Yeah, a bit of both I guess you know most entrepreneurs that I know that they have a combination of sort of blind faith in their idea you know, ah based in some sort of really visceral vision of how they think the world should be and then anchored in reality of what. Customers users are willing to pay for in the here and now and that may be a small step along the way to a bolder vision of how the world is going to look pretty different in a few years time so I guess that was true of me too is I did have a vision of where I think you know the world is going to be quite different. But you need to get there. So so so the early reality was building a small subset. You know a couple of lego bricks in what will become a really you know, sophisticated set of digital lego over time and get those early beginnings used in the hands of real customers and start earning a bit of. Real money and also build the muscle fiber a bit like any athlete you got to you got to start jogging before you run before you sprint. So I think learning how to how to build and sell and deploy software solutions for customers again and again start small. Do some pilots with some early customers. And the choice of those early customers is absolutely essential for any entrepreneurial journey you need some that are willing to kind of take a bit of a leap of faith or maybe it's less of a leap of faith but go on a journey. They realize that a small beginning in the right direction can eventually be a transformative change to their business and really, that's what we were. Lucky enough to do is start working with a couple of those early customers that recognized they needed to go on what became a transformational journey in terms of how those digital tools will help them make money from assets or trade better. You know all that kind of stuff. So so yeah, that's that's what every you know? successful.
| 19:36.18 | Johan | Yeah.
| 19:41.51 | Peter Bance | Um, startup needs to become a scale up and a really growth company is some of those early customers are when to go on that journey. Okay.
| 19:45.55 | Johan | Um, so out of curiosity then who are the the early ones what? what kind of customers did you did you attract and who were who were willing to go on this journey little bit of leap of faith together with you because I guess it's also a leap of faith of the the customer to.
| 20:00.88 | Peter Bance | Yeah, it. It definitely is. It's going to work both ways right? So I guess if you had to kind of distill down the two basic types of customers there and this is all in the green energy space right? So everything we do is to accelerate the shift towards a green energy world. That's our entire. Purpose right? That's hopefully most people's purpose now in in the energy sector is to is to shift from brown to green. Otherwise what are we doing so so so all of our customers bar none are are are committed genuinely committed to the kind of green energy transition. So I kind of take that as a given. Um. But then within that space. We're seeing 2 big kind of groups of of of businesses 1 more centered around assets. You know, project development raising capital building out stuff and then another group of ah businesses that are more sort of in the markets. They're trading. They're providing ppas they're they're making markets they're they're buying and selling right? They're in the flow of money. So so so so partly the the physics of assets and part of the economics of markets. But actually there's they're they're blending together. You know some. Some ah project developers own and operating assets like batteries as well as solar and renewables. They're starting to monetize some of their own revenue streams in the stack themselves and they're starting to become technology users in their own right? Not just offloading everything to ah, a route-to-market provider or ah, you know someone providing them a ppa. And similarly on the other side. Um, some of those early adopters that recognized they needed to transform their journey were more you know market makers traders ppa providers to renewables and then to batteries and then to you know evs and and so forth is because they realized that the world of market experience and trading and. You know excel spreadsheets you know, no longer cuts. It. You know you're being overwhelmed by a sea of data and also the way you make money is going from long-term to more and more and more real time. So the fast and furious avalanche of data surging volatility. All that stuff meant. Needed a powerful real-time digital solution to survive so those are the 2 broad groups of of businesses that we see are are kind of latching on to this digital transformation transformation. The most is those building out assets that need more and more real-time visualization control optimization that kind of stuff and the second. More in the in in markets being overwhelmed by a sea of data or surging volatility. They need to make real-time decisions on real-time movements in markets.
| 22:36.91 | chrissass | And so is this taking place now what you're describing is that a reality today are people making you know, kind of like trading went through this right? So we went to automated trading and and the machines start start doing more and more. Are are the machines making these decisions or are the old school folks still wanting to be. You know do they still want to have a control or knob to change something. Oh.
| 23:00.86 | Peter Bance | Yeah I think it's fair to say there's still a spectrum. Ah I think most businesses still want some sort of human in the loop a bit like you know when you're flying an airplane most most passengers take some comfort that is still a pilot in the cockpit.
| 23:15.41 | chrissass | For now.
| 23:17.13 | Peter Bance | They may have an increasingly sophisticated autopilot that's helping them fly the plane. But ultimately there's some important judgments to be made by people I think that's so sort of the transition. We're seeing at the moment which is you know Ah, a lot of a lot of businesses in this energy transition. You know transition are going to want. To access more and more powerful digital tools to to do some of ah some of the work for them but not necessarily all of it. So yeah I think that's ah, that's an important trend. We're seeing especially when you're trying to cope with tons more data from these physical and financial sources and I think the the pace of decision making is going from. You know doing some analysis and that might take you a week with some you know Data Lake into you know a day or an hour a minute you know the the pace of actions having to accelerate dramatically. So it's partly the amount of data and partly the speed of decision-making means that over time more and more automation. Is becoming part of those digital tools. But there's still in most cases, a person in the loop.
| 24:16.26 | chrissass | Okay, so you said earlier that you know hopefully you're focused on green and it sounded like you're you're thinking you're accelerating or helping the process. Maybe you give a more tangible case story or a real world. So So once again I kind of get everything you're talking about. They're really broad Brush Strokes. So Maybe take me through a use case or something where you've made a difference where you've accelerated someone doing something green or where you think you're accelerating the industry that would be interesting to me.
| 24:42.83 | Peter Bance | Yeah, so so I guess one of the the flavors of the month that we're seeing a lot of at the moment in the press is around um energy storage right? So if you look at the shift to green energy systems renewables powering increasingly electrified. Usage of energy ultimately things like mobility and heating cooling is all going to go electric powered by renewables right? That's a vision of the world which a lot of people believe in. But if you've got ah a renewables-based power system. You've got to have more and more physical flexibility to manage some of that inherent volatility. So things. Like um, like batteries or other forms of longer-term energy storage are going to become really important to to balance the system. Physically you know to keep grid systems stable physically but also to manage financial volatility in traded markets. So the physical volatility the financial volatility you're going to need you need energy storage in the system somewhere to kind of. Make sense of all of that and to soak it up. So so what we're doing with a number of our customers is is basically putting a ah layer of software ah over top of things like batteries that then connects them to potentially different route to market providers that can be switched out every year or every month maybe even in the in the future every day right? so. The the ability to have a consistent layer of technology over the life of a project. So we've signed. For example, our first ever you know 20 year software as a service deal with ah with a customer where the long-term certainty they're looking for was not on the commercialization. You know the route to market but was on the layer of software. Which let them consistently monitor. What the assets are doing make sure they could handle all those real-time flows of data make informed decisions about how those things are being monetized across different value pools some of them looked like grid-based ancillary services. Some of them looked more like. Day ahead or within day trading and in in in in wholesale markets. Some of them were things like the balancing mechanism so hopping between different pools of value but with a consistent view of what does the data showing you what decisions? do you need to be taking and had you plug in. To those value pools using potentially different route-to-markt providers across a portfolio. So. That's the kind of deal that we're now striking is long-term multi-year software as a service deals on flexible assets like batteries quite often as part of mixed portfolios batteries with renewables batteries. Colocated with solar or colloccated with wind or even manages part of you know gas peakers that are doing very short run. You know, um, ah flexibility for a wind lull in the middle of the winter that kind of thing so flexible monetization of assets with a consistent multi-year layer of software to handle the data.
| 27:25.88 | Peter Bance | And then form standardized interfaces to different route-to-markt providers. That's the kind of deployment. We're now doing these days as as 1 kind of tangible use case.
| 27:33.64 | chrissass | So so you you mentioned that you know this is like lego bricks. So assuming that that's the the 5000 piece lego how many bricks and are we right now. Are we like 200 or where where are we in that that scenario.
| 27:46.94 | Peter Bance | Ah, yeah, it's a great Question. So I think you know even as a technologist right? I can get a bit too excited around. You know the importance of of technology and ignore the reality that different markets different asset classes, different geographies, different regulatory. Environments are genuinely different right. So So so so I think what the modern version of technology for green energy looks like is that some sort of foundational level. Ah, really in the the core plumbing you can build stuff which is truly standardized identical bits of Lego which you can then start configuring. In solutions that look more bespoke to either a particular customer or a particular geography or a particular regulatory environment or a particular grid Topology. You know, whatever the reality is so absolutely standardized foundations with then highly configurable sort of applications built on top of the platform. So Guess that's the analogy I think that the whole industry is going to go more towards you know? um, ah, foundational levels of technology which are good at reading data streams or ah building forecasts or looking at comparing like with unlike data that kind of stuff and then an application layer. Which is more directly linked to specific customers or specific markets or specific geographic territories which need to accommodate the reality on the ground which might be quite different customer by customer country by Country Market by Market So in that way you can separate what looks like quite a. But a customized configurable application layer with a brutally standardized truly global tech platform at the more foundation level.
| 29:29.92 | chrissass | So so you basically built the osi model for energy. Basically so what you're doing just to text stack right.
| 29:33.86 | Peter Bance | Kind of exactly so the the art there is to build enough standard Lego So if you imagine like a kitchen or a chef you know they have a set of standard ingredients but depending who comes into the restaurant. They want a specific meal and you can cook that specific meal using your standard ingredients in the kitchen. So yeah, these highly configurable. Software components like containers and you can click those containers together in a way which delivers a solution which a particular situation demands.
| 30:02.29 | Johan | So the the benefit obviously having software is scale is and also geographically being Canadian running that the Uk ah market I would assume you started off testing a little bit on on the Uk market but where are you today in terms of where do you see the markets for this. We see number of trades going up everywhere. Of course we see more and more flexibility we see batteries. We had a lot of them on the show. We see new ppas flying up all over Europe now with with wind and solar. So so where do you see. I guess Uk and where are you now where where do you see the next kind of growing markets.
| 30:41.29 | Peter Bance | Yeah, so the Uk is actually quite a a sensible quite an exciting place to start a business like ah like mine but a lot of the the regulatory liberalization that happened in the late 90 s you know, allowing. Cool new commercial models some based on technology some based on financial engineering some based on new physical assets. You know to really you know let rip. So so so the Uk is one of the the leading countries in the world that's allowed this type of technology-based commercial innovation to to flourish. And I think it's fair to say there's still a shakedown that's yet to happen in terms of chucking stuff on the wall and see what sticks but but but it's a great place to to get going because you can try stuff and actually because it's an island and there's quite an an open market in different pools of value. You can actually build. Commercially viable business models that people are willing to buy for hardcore commercial reasons. Not some sort of regulatory mandation or based on a subsidy It's just the real world of of merchant risk and stuff so the Uk is a great place to start that kind of stuff and if you look around the world driven. Sometimes by constraints like on the East Coast of the us or a regulatory model which is beginning to copy the Uk a bit like in Asia Japan is is is following ah a model but many many years later or in Australia you know raging volatility and a lot more buildout of renewables. So you see pockets of the world. Which are beginning to really be driven by similar forces. Ah that the Uk has has kind of pioneered in some way. So it's no accident that I think ah you know most of our deployments as a business are in the Uk to begin with but with the Uk subsidiaries of global giants. So so a lot of our customers are. Are truly global enterprises operating in countries all around the world but they using the uk is a bit of a test bed. You know let's let's see it work here and then you know take it to the northeast of the of the us or ercot in Texas let's take it to Australia. Let's take it to Japan. Let's take it to central europe and Germany in the dock region. So there are these logical. Expansion markets which are driven by maybe subtly different forces but opening up in terms of allowing the commercial innovation. The deployment of renewables and the kind of the the grid constraints the merchant risk and the volatility and the electrification of things like evs and heating and cooling. All beginning to create the same sort of forces around the world. So digital solutions to these green energy opportunities or problems depending on how you look at the different sides of the coin. It's beginning to be a global truth right? But the Uk is a great starting point.
| 33:21.77 | chrissass | So you talked about all these different disparate devices and parts markets and things not speaking the same language and to me you know. The language almost seems like it should be standard. It shouldn't be a origami or someone else it should be industrywide. These are the interfaces we use right? Whether it's internet of things talking whether it's you know the conventional license whether it's an interface that we do to get to the financial markets which then lends the question is okay so you've signed a 20 year agreement to be kind of this middle layer assuming that you're that language so is there a standards effort going to do what you're going to do and then the question is is why isn't it Google or Amazon or something like that that I expect to be doing what you're doing because they're really good with big data and things like that. So I'd expect them to be competing in your space once there's a standard. Way to talk to all these devices is that logical thinking or is that just way off the base from where we're going here.
| 34:18.67 | Peter Bance | No I think I agree with part of what you said right? So I think if you look at specific aspects of industrializing interfaces data formats communications languages all that kind of stuff I think you see the beginnings of some of that standardization in. In in pockets of this green energy transition. So a couple of really exciting ones that by the way you know our our platform talks to 1 is in in the in the guts of assets. So if you if you've got tons of solar farms and wind farms spewing out electricity via scottta systems on the ground and you know. How do you read? All those meters. You know those generation meters. So actually they're now beginning to be some businesses at getting to really quite large scale. You know providing data ingestion systems and then a platform or a company like us. We can tap a pretty standardized api and read real-time streams of data from. Gigawatts and Gigawatts of solar farms and wind farms without us having to go directly to each and every site so that's just wonderful, right? So it's beginning to be scaled and industrialized how you read ah data from thousands and ultimately millions of of of renewable generation sites. For example. On the other side. You know you're beginning to have more standardized interfaces to traded exchanges you know, different traded products on different timescales at different prices again, you can begin to to have ah you know clear apis in that world. So a bit like I don't know ah a plumber that. Shows up at your house trying to install some fancy new heat pump or heating system. They're going to have some basic connectors in their toolbox. So some of those connectors to Scott a system that scale or to exchanges you know we're we're going to build a library of those increasingly standardized connectors. But the solution that the customer needs that brings those those things together is is is kind of why a business like ours exists right? So I think those individual connectors are going to become increasingly standardized and thank goodness for that because you know a new company trying to build all that stuff from scratch I mean it's in. Would be insane. So but we're kind of standing on the shoulders of giants in many ways individual businesses starting to scale up quite successfully elements of of that kind of green energy transition is is awesome because then we can tap an increasingly efficient set of third -party apis to build our solution for our customers and. And that's exactly what we're doing.
| 36:45.84 | Johan | So the technology I'm starting to get ahead around probably Chris has already noted it down. So I think he's fine with it. But if we then turn around. Obviously we got the software part of this one we we're looking at maybe an ar model or something but ah. The advantage of of of software as a service obviously that you have an in you have a start and you add on number of of tools number of customer solutions be that bespoke or not but the whole idea of of cutting reoccurrent revenue. So so where how do you make the money where where do you sit in terms of this.
| 37:18.70 | Peter Bance | So it's it's a great question. You're right that I mean certainly you know Ah we we haven't pioneered the the saas model right? You know tech companies for the last five ten years have been shifting from. You know one-off capex purchases of software hosted on-prem and with a server in a cupboard somewhere. Through to you know cloud hosting software as a service right? So we're standing on the shoulders of giants in terms of that pricing model that deployment model that hosting model. But the the really big difference here and I think the way that we we've kind of built a growth model around saas for clean energy. Is that there's at least 2 and ah over time more growth dimensions so to pick 2 simple ones and this follows ah a land and expand ah deployment with you know customers is quite often. A business would want to start using um, software as a service in quite a small way. So let's pill. Let's pick a fairly narrow use case. Maybe they'll pick a tiny subset of their portfolio. Maybe so physically they might put 1 or 2 assets on the platform one 10 megawatt battery or one fifty megawat battery or 1 small solar farm or whatever and they might only then use 1 or 2 of those software lego brits. Bricks not the entire stack. So the initial deployment you know the land bit of land and expand could be a tiny number of assets a small percentage of the whole portfolio and 1 or 2 bits of software modules including the whole stack and then that gives you a small amount of recurring revenue. And you might do that as a pilot. Maybe for six months or a year or something and then they get comfortable with that. Okay, great I trust what you do I can see how it's going to make more and more money for me as I do 2 things 1 is put more and more of my portfolio onto your platform so more volume. And then secondly you you go from the bronze to the silver to the gold version of the software in other words more and more modules more and more functionality more and more value add and really, that was the 2 big dimensions that we grow our business and they drive greater ar r so. More Megawatts and more pounds per megawatt I guess would be 1 crude way of describing the way you can grow and grow the value of what you're doing in software terms. Is you start onboarding more and more of the customers portfolio onto your software platform and you end up upgrading the solution. every month every year that goes by to become increasingly powerful and you can create more value for them. So hence you get paid more for doing it so those are basically the 2 big dimensions of growth for a saas-based arr kind of revenue model like ours.
| 39:56.23 | Johan | Um.
| 39:58.27 | chrissass | So so what have you learned along the way so you've been doing this for little ways the the conversation night is probably different than some of the early Youtube videos I've seen of you speaking and and and maybe you know getting your generator to make your money for your company or something like that where it's sitting there so seems to be a bit broader than the early vision and. As a founder myself I know we pivot and grow and do things as we go, we never actually deliver what we thought we were going to deliver I think in the very first first inincarnation least that's been my experience along the way to what have you learned.
| 40:28.14 | Peter Bance | Yeah, so um I think like like most entrepreneurs I like to believe that the original vision that I had for what I found in the company is still exactly the same but the way you actually execute on that has changed probably 4 Or 5 Times along the way and and I think that's actually true. So so the original vision that you need this kind of digital glue between the physical and the kind of financial world of energy is absolutely what we're doing but but what we've learned along the way is you know what? exactly is that product. Well we've reinvented that a few times. Um. How are you actually going to offer it to your customers again. We've evolved that and you know our our um, our energy business is willing to take you know from 0 to an all in bet. Well no, they're not they want to do it in some sort of phased way. So I think whether it's the the go-to-market strategy that's probably pivoted 2 or 3 times. Ah. Product incarnation the the pricing model we've changed all of those 2 or 3 times along the journey but the original vision is exactly the same as it was when I founded the company back in my proverbial bedroom and I think a lot of businesses do that kind of thing the the north star that. Creates this kind of galvanizing force for everybody including in our customers and others and investors you know backers that we've had you know we've raised you know £50000000 as a company and and we're probably going to raise a lot more those original investors took a bet that the we'll figure it out right? that we didn't have a crystal ball that was perfect. You know far from it. I think the one thing that we knew is that the energy sector and therefore our digital solution was going to have to need to evolve and evolve and evolve as it has but they believe that we're going to figure it out along the way and that's what a lot of the early customers did too is they realized that they're going to go through this digital transformation. So a bit of a journey too. So yeah I guess in hindsight. Vision is the same as it always was but the product definition the pricing model the go-to-market. We've pivoted probably 3 or 4 times along the journey. Yeah.
| 42:25.20 | chrissass | Yeah, and I would expect that right? So that that was just curious What you you learned the other question I have is who is your customer. So I get the companies that buy it but the kind of the vision and the things that you're talking about you know who do you Call. Who who you talking to is you know what is is the is there a futurist at the company is there? Yeah is there? Yeah who who's dealing with you who's who's making this decision because it's probably not one that's already in place because you seem to be you know the complex sale because you've got financial people. You've got people in operations you got pretty. Probably a lot of people that could say no along the way.
| 43:03.47 | Peter Bance | Yeah, you're right like every every kind of b to b you know tet cell especially and a level of the enterprise. Yeah, it needs to needs to have a couple of key people to say yes and you need to avoid several people who are going to say no or or convince a begrudging you know? ah. Person that actually they see the value in what we're doing so quite often, especially in this kind of early adopter kind of innovator uptake of any curve you do rely on 1 or 2 real champions in the business and quite often. It's the Ceo of the whole company is they understand that they need to go through a transformation themselves as a business. And that technology is going to be 1 of the keys to unlock the castle. So usually it's it's the Ceo is a real believer so he or she understands that they've got a good business today. But it's going to need to go through a transformational journey quite often. There's some sort of technology advocate. Maybe it's the cto or the Cio they get the data. Is the new oil. They really understand that the ones and zeroes are really going to be the source of a lot of the enduring value. But then you've had a whole bunch of people that quite often would say would say no or they kind of begrudgingly. You know it's. Think we can eat out a bit more why you know rock the boat. So someone in operation someone in trading someone in asset management. You know those are sometimes the people that you need to convince hence the need to do pilot deployments or let's do ah ah you know initial phase deployment with you. Let's show you what we can do right to kind of get them to become. Advocates as opposed to naysayers say usually it's ah it's a real champion at the top Ceo Cio Cto someone like that maybe head of strategy. They get the fact that they have to go through a transformation and then in the engine room in operations and asset management in trading. Really going to have to get the the buy in the belief and just show them that this helps their world. They can make more money they can avoid a lot of operational pain. You can make their problems go away. That's where you need to win the hearts and minds.
| 45:03.71 | Johan | So in terms of a b two b model. Obviously we we we all been in the b two b I've worked in b two b for the last I don't know my whole life in terms of finding the right people which is always the big challenge. Everyone was the Ceo meetings and that's not always the easiest one so you have something to wave them with but that also creates a little bit of a positive challenge in terms of growth because we mentioned not geographically growth but also in terms of okay so how do you take business growth in terms of a software. The technology is 1 thing. But what? what are your? What would you say are the biggest challenges from where you are maybe from the start to now. But maybe even further you said bringing home more money but where would you invest it in where do you see the big gaps in terms of scaling this business now in terms of winning the deals getting into the right people exploring the technology. Where do you see that is.
| 45:57.14 | Peter Bance | Yeah, so I guess the the challenges are always usually around build what the market needs and sell it via the right channels and have the right team critically the right talent base to do both those things so get the product right. And get the go-to-market right? Those are the absolute essence of our business. So we're spending millions on building out more and more functionality in the software layer so that spend will never stop because in a sense. That's what all b two b tech companies do is they promise I can deploy something that's worth something to you today. And it's going to get better every day every week every month every year that goes by. It's going to get better and better and better so investing shareholder capital into a ah software product. That's just going get more and more powerful over the years to come that is 1 core kind of enabler of growth in in our b two b tech company right. The the second is getting your go to market right? and sometimes you sell direct. You know, find that evangelical you know, ah champion at the top. You know the Ceo who really believes in it or also what we're finding now and this is I think a really important trend that the whole market's going through is that. The wall of money that's funding the green energy transition. You know, probably $100000000000000 is going to be spent between now and twenty fifty to green the entire planet. That's an enormous deployment of capital. So the the wall of money is beginning to be a sales channel in and of its own right? actually. So so befriending a bunch of those infrastructure funds. You know, deploying money into things like solar farms or Ev Networks or batteries. They're not going to be the customer necessarily but they're going to whisper softly into the ear of the the business. They just gave 100000000 invest in a fleet of batteries. You're going to say hey don't you need software to intelligently monitor and dispatch and optimize the value from this stuff. So actually those indirect sales channels are another important thing to get right as we grow so looking at the indirect. Sales channel that go-to-mark is really important I'd say also the the s I the systems integrators those those tech companies doing bespoke elements of software deployment. They may become a channel in their own right? as well to kind of stimulate. Ah, you know sales uptake and I guess the last one would be There are a lot of um, ah, consultancies out there. There being. They're advising the boards of energy businesses on their own transformation and quite often. The recommendation is you need some tech so to to go through this transformation. So build great product.
| 48:38.52 | Peter Bance | Get your go-to-marke sorted out I guess those would be the 2 key areas that we we we stay awake at night worrying about the talent to make that stuff happen and then in terms of the product make sure that you make the right investments at the product at the right time and in terms of the go-to market is don't just think about the obvious way. Of of landing the customer but the indirect way via the investor via the consultancy via the systems integrator that's quite often. The indirect sales channels to grow the business.
| 49:05.47 | chrissass | So So I think we've done a really good job for folks that want to get in the startup business or understand how how a tech company gets built up. Um, what are the skills that are making you uniquely energy right? So you kind of peripherally we've talked about some of the energy Problems. What. Specifically you know if you're looking for an employee or your you know I think your vp of sales came from an etm background and trayport and some of these other big software companies. What are you looking for and what kind of knowledge and industry Knowledge. You need to be successful because it's not just about Building. There's a lot of techies that that don't solve the problem. So. Where is that mix and what does that look like for you.
| 49:43.52 | Peter Bance | Yeah, so you're right I think any kind of tech company trying to get into or transform the energy space needs a combination of you know, deep domain knowledge. You actually do need to understand how energy works. You know what is a. What is a megawatt what's a megawatt hour how do you trade power you know what's a ppa you need the basics and probably twenty thirty percent of your people need to actually really understand that domain. Otherwise they're going to struggle with the basics and also you're not going to be credible probably in the eyes of your customer. But actually a significant chunk. Maybe even the majority of the company needs to almost be blissfully ignorant of of those realities because you're going to try and build some foundational bits of lego which are super scalable. Super secure you know design in cyber from day one etc and. And you may not have those instincts if you come from an energy background because energy up until fairly recently wasn't digitized. The the software wasn't even a thing. Um, so so I think you you know you do need a big chunki of people who are willing to kind of build stuff in the way that you know is right. For way, the future of the industry is going to be not the way it was five ten years ago right which was pretty low- techch. Let's be honest. So I think you know maybe it's a 2 wo-thirds 1 ne-third thing but you know a decent third who have deep domain knowledge understand. Pain point of the customer the realities of making money and energy and what physical assets or trades look like but then ah probably a majority of your business which really brings you know our digital natives. They really understand instinctively. How you do agile software development how you build in cybersecurity from day 1 how you think about scalability all that kind of stuff has got to be in their Dna and they're probably not going to come from the world of energy because basically the energy sector hasn't been through this. Global digital transformation yet. So you're unlikely to find them from that sector.
| 51:42.78 | chrissass | Cool so you on as we're pressing up against time I'm going to ask you the usual thing I'm sure you about 50000 questions you would like to ask? Do you have 1 or 2 questions you'd like to ask to kind of to bring this together for us.
| 51:56.39 | Johan | As always I have a few but but I'm going to touch back a little bit for what you just mentioned there as well in terms terms of of the journey and the digitalization and the digital native because it's kind of words that sometimes are flown around a little bit but then you apply that to kind of a legacy industry. It clashes a little bit but. Out of curiosity apart from from your employees have you seen from when you started the company and and you went out for funding and you pitched the idea or the software. Maybe even a few years in versus now is there a big difference between investors now in their kind of digital nativeness or their digital experience. Knowledge. But also in terms of investing in renewable. What I'd assume it's a big difference because a lot of things have happened in the last couple of years but what we just say is the big thing.
| 52:38.34 | Peter Bance | Yeah, yeah there there really is and and to use like ah a Tv analogy. You know? Ah, maybe it's overused because of the business model but this is a more techie point in terms of you know how you know Netflix and other streaming services ah operate is. The the the energy problem that was solved by technology used to be a static problem. Let's put a whole bunch of data in a cave Let's let some clever people crunch on it for a day or a week or a month and tut-ah here's a solution. How are you going to build your hedging book for the next year or how you're going to invest in the new asset that's going to be built and sweated for the next twenty years so it was a static problem based on static data and and now we're moving to real-time streams of data. So if you look at that really big change and that's fairly recent right? That's since I've found in the business is the type of skills you need the type of business model and actually I think the fundamental offering. Looks more like a real-time streaming service a bit like streaming a movie on your Tv as opposed to ah a static bunch of data that you kind of crunch through for a while and you come up with a tudock kind of answer. So I think really that is a fundamental shift that. I don't think even our early investors realized was going to be as fundamental as it was is that they were really backing was an ability to deal with real-time streams of of of data that was relevant to different bits of the energy transition problem. And to be able to not just handle that real-time streaming but to make sense of it make real-time decisions on the back of it. So I think that's one of the really big shifts that we've seen even in the last five years and it's again standing on the shoulders of giants in terms of other industries like entertainment like streaming services. so so really that is I think the new normal in energies you have to be able to handle real-time streams of data make real-time decisions in the scale of you know, seconds minute seconds minutes hours not just days and weeks and months if you can't do that. You're dead and and I think that's really what the the clever investors into this green energy transition are realizing. Is if you're investing in an asset like a battery. It's going to make a lot of its money based on services measured in milliseconds and seconds not just hours and minute hours and minutes if you're investing in a software company like origami it's going to have to handle real-time streams of data. So the whole real-time nature. The physical reality of financial trading of handling digital data streams is increasingly real time. So it's a real time solution for a dynamic problem I think that's one of the biggest changes that's happened in the last five years
| 55:17.52 | chrissass | Well I think that that brings us to the end of our our time here I think this conversation's been a lot of fun as an entrepreneur or someone that works in the tech space and works as a software as a service company so much what was discussed just applies across the board. Um, doesn't matter where in the energy sector you are if if you're offering these kind of services I I think that was pretty able I could generalize it to my my current organization and a number of other newer companies in the industry that I can see that have that kind of same model and in philosophy. So for me, it's been a fun fun journey. Um, you know, be interesting just to see how these 20 year contracts work out 20 years from a startup is forever so if you consider you guys still a startup ah 20 years is forever so in in in renewable energy. You know that puts us in a really different place and you know I think. I don't know anyone's got the crystal ball that really knows where we're gonna be 20 years out so be interesting to see how that journey goes I want to thank you for joining us. It's been fantastic. Having you as a guest Johann any final thoughts from you.
| 56:20.72 | Johan | No. Thanks Peter for joining us I thought it was interesting I thought it was really interesting to see the analogy that you've ended off the show as well with in terms of the understanding of of real time data I think this is something that that I think is really interesting I like the business model as well that that we got that. And it's a combination of of using the digital we use it the big d in terms of the digital transformation for energy. So great to hear. Thank you very much for joining.
| 56:49.87 | Peter Bance | It's my absolute pleasure. It's been fun guys.
| 56:50.73 | chrissass | Well thank you Peter and for our audience you spent another hour listening to insider's guide to energy. We hope you've enjoyed the conversations as much as we have if you had please share subscribe to our Youtube channel and don't forget to get hit the like button as well. We look forward to talking to you again next week bye bye