WEBVTT
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Hey guys, what if the key of Europe's energy future is
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sitting in the trunk of yesterday's electric car? Today on
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StartupRaid IO, we're talking to David Odansia,
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CEO of Voltfang, the startup that turns EV batteries
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into grid stabilizing green powerhouses. We'll
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ask how did a broken camper battery lead to a
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15 million US dollar raise? What's behind Europe's
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biggest second life battery factory? And how do you pitch
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a vision bold enough to replace coal?
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You don't want to miss this. Stay tuned.
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Welcome to Startuprad IO,
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your podcast and YouTube blog covering the German
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startup scene with news, interviews and
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live events.
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David Usanti is the CEO and co founder of Voltfang, a
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German climate tech startup that transforms used electric
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car batteries into cutting edge stationary
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energy storage systems. With a background in
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industrial engineering from rvthen
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R wth Aachen, David leads one
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of Europe's most ambitious second life battery
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initiatives. A company that just raised 15 million
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euros, opened the continent's largest second
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life battery factory and secured projects with
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partners like Stuttgart Airport and grid operators.
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WorldFunk's technology is not only reducing
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CO2, but also decentralizing energy security
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across Europe. David, welcome to the show.
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Thanks for having me. Totally my pleasure. We. We already made some
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jokes before we started, so we both pretty relaxed.
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Take us back to the camper trip that sparked
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world fun. When did you realize there was a business
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behind repurposing EV batteries? And are you still
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camping? I wish. I
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actually wish I was still camping. It's. It's a
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long time ago when I. When we were camping the last time.
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But to start the story, I'm David, co founder and CEO
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of Vol. I'm originally from Cologne, so in Germany we say
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Kung. Then I moved to Aachen because of my studies 10 years
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ago, roughly 11, where I also met my two co founders,
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Afin and Roman. So we. We started studying
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together at the rwth. And if you
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are studying there, you always want to escape
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when the exams, the exam phase is over.
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So what we did, we bought a camper van together. And the
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reason was just to get out, to get to the Netherlands, to the Belgium,
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to every kind of party, festival or vacation
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we could to get some freedom back. And that's what we did.
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We bought a camper van, an old time of year Ducato,
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which we lovely called Mia.
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And with Mia we did everything. And the
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problem was just that Mia is an old timer
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with not such a huge motorization and the batteries
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was as old as MIA. And in Germany you need to be 30
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years or plus years old to be an old timer. Therefore you know
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how degraded the battery was. So our idea was to
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change first of all the battery storage system inside of
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it and also to integrate a solar panel on the roof. Because
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if anybody, everybody wants to charge their phones, then the battery gets
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empty extremely quickly. So we decided to do that. Roman
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just jumped on the roof and put a solar panel
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from ebay Klein inside, inside of it or on top of it.
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And then the idea was, which kind of battery shall we take? And
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we found out that you could buy Tesla batteries
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just out of the Eber Kleinenzeigen. And
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therefore we said, why shouldn't we take them? Easy
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answer, way too heavy. And the motorization is so bad we just
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go downhill if we want to get up a hill. Therefore
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we decided not to do that and
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we bought another battery storage and then we put it
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inside. Everything was fine. But a few weeks later,
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Roman's father just asked him why, whether he knows where to buy
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a storage system for his workshop. So he has a
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solar panel on the roof and he wants to consume as much solar
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as possible. And we engineers are really
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naive and we think we can do everything. Therefore Rohan just said,
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we can build you one. And that's what we actually did.
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We just closed the doors behind ourselves
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for we anticipated three days. In the end it was two weeks
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to build a storage system with these kind of Tesla modules, everything
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based on open source. And after two weeks and a
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lot of, no, not a lot really less sleep,
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we were able to actually run the system.
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And then we thought, look, we are at the end of our
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studies, we don't want to just end up in a corporate, we want to do
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something which matters. And actually we want to be free also in our work.
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Therefore we said, look, let's just sell it from the
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neighbor to the next neighbor and maybe to five other neighbors. So that
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was the idea, just to sell one by another. And we
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didn't even thought about VC startup and raising
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a lot of money and so on, so forth. We just thought, maybe that's a
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solid business. And after the university, when you
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don't do it after university, when shall you do it then? And therefore
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we started World Fund.
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Interesting story. I have to admit. Taking it
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from there, what was your first major
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challenge like tech regulation or team that
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made you doubt that your idea may work?
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So in the end we just started,
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we had the tech, we had a prototype running,
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we didn't have so much knowledge about batteries. Therefore the tech was one of the
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biggest things, we actually didn't care about regulation so much. We just said,
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okay, they have pilot projects, we just start and try. And
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therefore we didn't, we didn't think so much about regulation
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and the team, since we three are friends
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and long time friends, we didn't care about the team
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either. And also the RWTH has a lot of
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engineers who are like minded, therefore that was also not
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an issue. So tech was the biggest thing and selling our storage
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systems with the limited amount of capital we had
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in the beginning. So we just said, look, how could we develop
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something with so much so less money? And
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then we tried to sell something which we didn't even have and it
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was actually really hard. And
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then like after a half a year, one year, we still was
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wasn't able to sell one. But that was also the time
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we thought shall we do that? Maybe it doesn't work out, and so on,
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so forth. But since we started, since we said
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why it should work, because it's logic
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that we need something like this. If you have solar, you need to store it
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somewhere either or you will put everything into
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the grid and destabilize it. So we said, look, we just do it
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for one, two years and if it doesn't work out, we try something
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different. But actually it worked out.
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I see, so at one point
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you realized it works out. I was wondering when you
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were a student in Aachen,
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now you're cleantech founder, helping to rewire your
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script, did that also change your self image?
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Totally. To be completely honest, it
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changed it totally. I in the university,
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if you are at the RWTH and you are not the smartest person on earth,
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you will be average or below average. And therefore I always had the
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feeling of not fitting because all the others
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were way better engineers. For example, Afshin, which is one of the brightest minds
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I know, Roman as well. And therefore I always had
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the feeling of not being being able to do what the engineers are doing.
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And therefore I
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didn't knew what in the future I actually
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will be bringing value of.
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And that was something I had in the beginning. Now I know actually somebody
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who can, who is not the inventor, but who can
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explain what we have invented to people in
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easy words is. Is also something necessary and therefore
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it changed completely. My confidence boosted.
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We hold ourselves humble all the time. But still
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after five years, after building up a not
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small company anymore, rather a big company,
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you have some self confidence in your decisions, in the
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skills you have, and therefore it changed.
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I see. From our audience, I
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would like to Know what made you believe in your
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startup, share in the comments and or tag us
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wherever you're sharing this. We are on LinkedIn, we are an
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ax, we're in blue sky threads and so on and so forth.
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From a very good spot. Let's take us
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to your darkest day. There must have been a day when
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a pilot failed a route, a funding round almost fell
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through. What kept you from giving up?
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So the most important thing in the whole
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journey is Roman and Afcin the team.
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Since we we had always like a customer
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said I want to have the storage system, huge deal. Then they dropped.
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We had funding rounds where we had really,
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really less time actually to pay everybody.
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And always we always kept each other's back.
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That was incredibly important. If something doesn't
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work out, it was not like I told you so. It was like how can
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I help? Let's keep on doing it, otherwise we do something different
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and we will be successful either way. And this kind of
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mindset helped us through a lot of. A lot of
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phases which weren't good and but we
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still keep on doing it because we said what shall we
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lose? What have we. What can we lose? And
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therefore we just keep on going. The friendship
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just grew and actually these
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things together were like the resilience we needed to overcome this kind
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of. Yeah. Darker times.
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I actually plan to put right here some questions about your co
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founder and team dynamics. That works really well. You've lived and worked
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with your co founders for years. What is the biggest I do.
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What is the biggest people lesson you had to learn the hard
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way there? Actually my two confidants and I,
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we still are living together and
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we share a dog and we do a lot of
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things together, sometimes also on vacation and things like this. Therefore
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one thing I learned which is really important is having
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people around you you can trust who have the same values and who
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are loyal. This is such a relief in your
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whole life and who actually keep on
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want to to. You want to compete with them, you want to be better. You
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the best of yourself. Therefore this
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is something which is really good. But on
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the hard way. The most important thing is
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sales people can sell themselves really
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good. Therefore if you think you
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have the best salesperson on earth, you
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can be completely wrong. And that's something we learned on
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a hardware. A lot of times.
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You and your two co founders still live together. Just between you
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and me and something like 50,000 listeners, who's the one who doesn't do the
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dishes? All three are not so good
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at this. Therefore let's Call
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it all of us. I see, that's fine
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but we don't. Do so much dishes anyways because
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we are always late at work. But, but to be, to be fair,
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we have really strict things who is
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doing what. So for example, Roman is most of the times
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like getting the groceries. Afin is the one of the best
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cooks and I do the rest.
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Okay, I see going a little bit into
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a potential emotional toll here you are operating at the heart
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of energy, climate and impact. What's
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been a personal toll of building this climate
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tech rocket ship. So if you don't want to
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make it your living or your your life,
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then you will probably have a hard time to be
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successful. What I heard from my family
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in the last few months, a lot of times you are,
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you haven't been around at the weekends and so much
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you weren't available over the last five years. So much.
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Because I actually had a lot of things to
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do and if I'm not doing that, I'm
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trying to take my time and calm down. So
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it needs also a lot of self discipline,
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a lot of time and also a lot of focus on
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yourself to be the best you can for the company,
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for the team and for the growth. So you,
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you for sure you have your time with your family, your friends, but it's
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lesser than before. Plus
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I also do feel the value of just sitting
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in the evening outside on our covered porch here. Just
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be by yourself, do something you enjoy, for example, listening to an
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audiobook and just have to do nothing. No, to do that gets
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a very much higher value over time. Totally. Having a
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book, reading it and being completely by yourself
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is incredibly helpful for calming down. Talking about
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breaks here. We will be back after our short ad break
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here. Then we talk about make or break moments, founder
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misconceptions and vulnerability to value.
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Hope to have you back soon.
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Hey guys, welcome back to the interview with David
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from Voltfang. We've been talking about a lot
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already and now I want to dig a little bit deeper. The make
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or break moment you've transitioned from a startup
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to scale up. Was there point
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when you had to pivot hard or double down? Yes, a
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lot of times. So in the beginning
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we started as a residual storage
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provider. So for the home storage we figured out
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that's not the best way to grow. Therefore we decided
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to pivot into commercial industrial. We did a
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lot of things by ourselves which we said no, we need to
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focus and focus and focus. Therefore
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we needed to pivot from home storage to
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commercial industrial storage system. We needed to Also
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change sometimes the business plan, the strategy,
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so on, so forth. So yes, a lot of times
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you need to always evolve yourself. You need to, you
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have a lot of evolutions within yourself as
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the company leader, but also the company as itself.
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I was wondering, is there like one moment that extremely,
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extremely has been sticking to your mind for that. When
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we started, we wanted to give the people
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the opportunity to actually
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produce and own their own energy. So if you
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have, if you own a home or you are living in a home, then the
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solar energy, the storage system, you can be
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as self sufficient as possible. Giving away this
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kind of dream of being able to
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help everybody to decentralize the energy, that was a
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hard moment. So what I mean is
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the pivot from home storage to commercial industrial was
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hard times. You misconception. I'm very sure
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not everything worked out the way it should be.
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But what were you completely
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wrong about when you launched like tech readiness, market
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demand, or was this something else? And how did you fix it?
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Yeah, the misconception is really in the
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DNA of an engineer to be able to do everything
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by yourself. So we started to, to develop and testing
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facility, we, we wanted to develop
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and certify a Bennett battery management system, the whole
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system by itself, then the energy management system. So we
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wanted to do everything on the horizontal
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to actually on the tech side because we thought, okay, Tesla can do
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it, why shouldn't we do it? And there was
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actually one of the biggest mixed misconceptions we,
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we had since you need
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to focus, you need to focus, focus. And again, you need to
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focus to be able to grow fast. And that's
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something we figured out rather sooner. But
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for us it was late after two years or three years.
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And therefore we burned a lot of money and
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time by following different
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paths, which in the end we needed to cut and just
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focus on the main things we need to do.
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You've shared openly about building in a
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tough space, what part of yourself felt like a
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liability, but turned out to be an asset.
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So as I mentioned, when I was studying,
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I always had the feeling that not being able to actually
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get to be able to invent something new
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is a huge liability. To not be able to
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understand everything on point in the first second
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when you were in mechanics or physics or something like this. That
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was in my opinion always a bad liability for
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myself. But this
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turned to be something my biggest asset
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where because I believe being able to understand them and
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after a while and then being able to also
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explain it to everybody was extremely important. If you
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are in a team of really true engineers.
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And therefore this is something I believe
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which is from liability to assets.
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For our audience. Guys, what's
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one founder trait you've turned from a liability in a
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powerhouse? Let us know on threads or LinkedIn.
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There are always surprises when you're an entrepreneur.
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What was the most unexpected insight you've
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learned from a customer? Supermarkets, airports or grid
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operators? So
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what we actually found out
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was that all of the companies didn't have so much
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knowledge about their energy space. They didn't knew how
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much they are actually consuming and how much they're producing, how much
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they need, what they can actually avoid
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on cost of the energy. Therefore that was
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something we actually figured out really quickly that
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we can, we need to show
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everybody what they are capable of. And
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this is something we didn't expect. But
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that's actually also something which helps us a lot to grow because
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there are so many potentials we with
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our battery storage system can take for any kind of
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customer. Therefore that was amazing to figure out. If you are a huge
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company like Bayer or something, then you know everything about your energy.
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But everything below that there you don't have the capabilities
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of actually figuring out everything. And there that's something
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we want to help with. It's like almost
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my level. I know there's a power outlet, I plug it
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in and every year I go to the cheapest provider. So
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that's it.
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Thank you for the answer so far. Now I would like to look a little
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bit ahead five years maybe. What's your moonshot for
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Voltfang? A coal free grid. European energy independence.
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So we want to decentralize Europe. We
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want to give Europe the resilience of being able
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to protect their energy transition, energy grids, everything.
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And that's something where we believe as Volfang we
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can help by becoming one of the biggest
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energy providers in Europe. We want to put
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smaller and bigger storage system everywhere in the countries
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and then also connect them to a virtual power plant with who we
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then can for example, which is also our vision
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to shut down Weissweiler which has 1.6
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gigawatt. That's actually our
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our moonshot of Voltfang getting rid of
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coal as soon as possible with the resilient
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energy grid of Europe. As a last question, I
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would like you to reflect a little bit. If your 40 year old
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self could speak to you now, what would they say about this
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moment in Voltfunk's journey? Good
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question. If a 40 years old
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self would tell me or would look at the moment right now,
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they would probably say how The F
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did. How the F did you come so far and how did
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you manage to get over the next steps? Because right
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now we have so many things which are incredibly cool,
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which we are developing right now. Where two or
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three years ago it didn't. It was like slow growth. And now
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we can really show the hockey stick, which I always promised the investors.
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But now we are able to do that. Therefore, I believe
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they will. If you look into the retrospective,
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then you will figure out how much myself,
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Voltfang and the company grew within this short amount
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of time, within the last year to the next one or two
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years. I know that from some projects, looking
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at the presentation, then looking at the real thing and think, huh, that really
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worked out. What a surprise.
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That's a. The funny thing is I'm. I never
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know how we got here, but I know where we'll go in the
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next years.
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Okay, we close with this indirect Heisenberg quote.
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David, with such a pleasure having you as guest. Best of luck and
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hope to have you back in a few years doing an update. I would
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love to. Thank you. Have a good day. Bye. Bye.
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Bye.
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That's all, folks. Find more news, streams,
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00:25:12.300 --> 00:25:13.390
events and
391
00:25:13.390 --> 00:25:17.830
interviews@www.startuprad.IO.
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remember, sharing is car.
1
00:00:00.160 --> 00:00:03.880
Hey guys, what if the key of Europe's energy future is
2
00:00:03.880 --> 00:00:07.280
sitting in the trunk of yesterday's electric car? Today on
3
00:00:07.280 --> 00:00:10.960
StartupRaid IO, we're talking to David Odansia,
4
00:00:11.120 --> 00:00:14.800
CEO of Voltfang, the startup that turns EV batteries
5
00:00:14.800 --> 00:00:18.440
into grid stabilizing green powerhouses. We'll
6
00:00:18.440 --> 00:00:22.160
ask how did a broken camper battery lead to a
7
00:00:22.160 --> 00:00:25.760
15 million US dollar raise? What's behind Europe's
8
00:00:26.090 --> 00:00:29.850
biggest second life battery factory? And how do you pitch
9
00:00:29.850 --> 00:00:33.210
a vision bold enough to replace coal?
10
00:00:33.450 --> 00:00:35.930
You don't want to miss this. Stay tuned.
11
00:00:42.010 --> 00:00:45.050
Welcome to Startuprad IO,
12
00:00:45.690 --> 00:00:49.170
your podcast and YouTube blog covering the German
13
00:00:49.170 --> 00:00:52.650
startup scene with news, interviews and
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00:00:52.890 --> 00:00:54.170
live events.
15
00:00:56.780 --> 00:01:00.620
David Usanti is the CEO and co founder of Voltfang, a
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German climate tech startup that transforms used electric
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car batteries into cutting edge stationary
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energy storage systems. With a background in
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industrial engineering from rvthen
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R wth Aachen, David leads one
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of Europe's most ambitious second life battery
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initiatives. A company that just raised 15 million
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00:01:25.920 --> 00:01:29.200
euros, opened the continent's largest second
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life battery factory and secured projects with
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partners like Stuttgart Airport and grid operators.
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WorldFunk's technology is not only reducing
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CO2, but also decentralizing energy security
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across Europe. David, welcome to the show.
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Thanks for having me. Totally my pleasure. We. We already made some
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jokes before we started, so we both pretty relaxed.
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Take us back to the camper trip that sparked
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world fun. When did you realize there was a business
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behind repurposing EV batteries? And are you still
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camping? I wish. I
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actually wish I was still camping. It's. It's a
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long time ago when I. When we were camping the last time.
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But to start the story, I'm David, co founder and CEO
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of Vol. I'm originally from Cologne, so in Germany we say
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Kung. Then I moved to Aachen because of my studies 10 years
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ago, roughly 11, where I also met my two co founders,
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Afin and Roman. So we. We started studying
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together at the rwth. And if you
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are studying there, you always want to escape
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when the exams, the exam phase is over.
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So what we did, we bought a camper van together. And the
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reason was just to get out, to get to the Netherlands, to the Belgium,
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to every kind of party, festival or vacation
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we could to get some freedom back. And that's what we did.
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We bought a camper van, an old time of year Ducato,
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which we lovely called Mia.
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And with Mia we did everything. And the
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problem was just that Mia is an old timer
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with not such a huge motorization and the batteries
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was as old as MIA. And in Germany you need to be 30
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years or plus years old to be an old timer. Therefore you know
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how degraded the battery was. So our idea was to
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change first of all the battery storage system inside of
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it and also to integrate a solar panel on the roof. Because
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if anybody, everybody wants to charge their phones, then the battery gets
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empty extremely quickly. So we decided to do that. Roman
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just jumped on the roof and put a solar panel
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from ebay Klein inside, inside of it or on top of it.
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And then the idea was, which kind of battery shall we take? And
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we found out that you could buy Tesla batteries
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just out of the Eber Kleinenzeigen. And
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therefore we said, why shouldn't we take them? Easy
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answer, way too heavy. And the motorization is so bad we just
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go downhill if we want to get up a hill. Therefore
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we decided not to do that and
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we bought another battery storage and then we put it
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inside. Everything was fine. But a few weeks later,
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Roman's father just asked him why, whether he knows where to buy
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a storage system for his workshop. So he has a
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solar panel on the roof and he wants to consume as much solar
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as possible. And we engineers are really
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naive and we think we can do everything. Therefore Rohan just said,
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we can build you one. And that's what we actually did.
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We just closed the doors behind ourselves
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for we anticipated three days. In the end it was two weeks
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to build a storage system with these kind of Tesla modules, everything
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based on open source. And after two weeks and a
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lot of, no, not a lot really less sleep,
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we were able to actually run the system.
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And then we thought, look, we are at the end of our
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studies, we don't want to just end up in a corporate, we want to do
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something which matters. And actually we want to be free also in our work.
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Therefore we said, look, let's just sell it from the
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neighbor to the next neighbor and maybe to five other neighbors. So that
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was the idea, just to sell one by another. And we
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didn't even thought about VC startup and raising
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a lot of money and so on, so forth. We just thought, maybe that's a
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solid business. And after the university, when you
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don't do it after university, when shall you do it then? And therefore
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we started World Fund.
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Interesting story. I have to admit. Taking it
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from there, what was your first major
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challenge like tech regulation or team that
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made you doubt that your idea may work?
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So in the end we just started,
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we had the tech, we had a prototype running,
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we didn't have so much knowledge about batteries. Therefore the tech was one of the
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biggest things, we actually didn't care about regulation so much. We just said,
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okay, they have pilot projects, we just start and try. And
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therefore we didn't, we didn't think so much about regulation
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and the team, since we three are friends
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and long time friends, we didn't care about the team
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either. And also the RWTH has a lot of
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engineers who are like minded, therefore that was also not
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an issue. So tech was the biggest thing and selling our storage
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systems with the limited amount of capital we had
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in the beginning. So we just said, look, how could we develop
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something with so much so less money? And
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then we tried to sell something which we didn't even have and it
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was actually really hard. And
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then like after a half a year, one year, we still was
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wasn't able to sell one. But that was also the time
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we thought shall we do that? Maybe it doesn't work out, and so on,
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so forth. But since we started, since we said
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why it should work, because it's logic
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that we need something like this. If you have solar, you need to store it
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somewhere either or you will put everything into
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the grid and destabilize it. So we said, look, we just do it
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for one, two years and if it doesn't work out, we try something
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different. But actually it worked out.
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I see, so at one point
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you realized it works out. I was wondering when you
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were a student in Aachen,
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now you're cleantech founder, helping to rewire your
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script, did that also change your self image?
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Totally. To be completely honest, it
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changed it totally. I in the university,
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if you are at the RWTH and you are not the smartest person on earth,
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you will be average or below average. And therefore I always had the
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feeling of not fitting because all the others
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were way better engineers. For example, Afshin, which is one of the brightest minds
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I know, Roman as well. And therefore I always had
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the feeling of not being being able to do what the engineers are doing.
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And therefore I
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didn't knew what in the future I actually
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will be bringing value of.
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And that was something I had in the beginning. Now I know actually somebody
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who can, who is not the inventor, but who can
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explain what we have invented to people in
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easy words is. Is also something necessary and therefore
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it changed completely. My confidence boosted.
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We hold ourselves humble all the time. But still
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after five years, after building up a not
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small company anymore, rather a big company,
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you have some self confidence in your decisions, in the
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skills you have, and therefore it changed.
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I see. From our audience, I
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would like to Know what made you believe in your
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startup, share in the comments and or tag us
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wherever you're sharing this. We are on LinkedIn, we are an
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ax, we're in blue sky threads and so on and so forth.
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From a very good spot. Let's take us
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to your darkest day. There must have been a day when
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a pilot failed a route, a funding round almost fell
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through. What kept you from giving up?
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So the most important thing in the whole
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journey is Roman and Afcin the team.
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Since we we had always like a customer
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said I want to have the storage system, huge deal. Then they dropped.
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We had funding rounds where we had really,
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really less time actually to pay everybody.
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And always we always kept each other's back.
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That was incredibly important. If something doesn't
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work out, it was not like I told you so. It was like how can
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I help? Let's keep on doing it, otherwise we do something different
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and we will be successful either way. And this kind of
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mindset helped us through a lot of. A lot of
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phases which weren't good and but we
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still keep on doing it because we said what shall we
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lose? What have we. What can we lose? And
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therefore we just keep on going. The friendship
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just grew and actually these
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things together were like the resilience we needed to overcome this kind
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of. Yeah. Darker times.
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I actually plan to put right here some questions about your co
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founder and team dynamics. That works really well. You've lived and worked
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with your co founders for years. What is the biggest I do.
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What is the biggest people lesson you had to learn the hard
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way there? Actually my two confidants and I,
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we still are living together and
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we share a dog and we do a lot of
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things together, sometimes also on vacation and things like this. Therefore
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one thing I learned which is really important is having
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people around you you can trust who have the same values and who
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are loyal. This is such a relief in your
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whole life and who actually keep on
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want to to. You want to compete with them, you want to be better. You
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the best of yourself. Therefore this
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is something which is really good. But on
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the hard way. The most important thing is
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sales people can sell themselves really
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good. Therefore if you think you
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have the best salesperson on earth, you
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can be completely wrong. And that's something we learned on
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a hardware. A lot of times.
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You and your two co founders still live together. Just between you
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and me and something like 50,000 listeners, who's the one who doesn't do the
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dishes? All three are not so good
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at this. Therefore let's Call
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it all of us. I see, that's fine
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but we don't. Do so much dishes anyways because
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we are always late at work. But, but to be, to be fair,
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we have really strict things who is
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doing what. So for example, Roman is most of the times
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like getting the groceries. Afin is the one of the best
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cooks and I do the rest.
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Okay, I see going a little bit into
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a potential emotional toll here you are operating at the heart
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of energy, climate and impact. What's
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been a personal toll of building this climate
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tech rocket ship. So if you don't want to
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make it your living or your your life,
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then you will probably have a hard time to be
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successful. What I heard from my family
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in the last few months, a lot of times you are,
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you haven't been around at the weekends and so much
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you weren't available over the last five years. So much.
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Because I actually had a lot of things to
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do and if I'm not doing that, I'm
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trying to take my time and calm down. So
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it needs also a lot of self discipline,
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a lot of time and also a lot of focus on
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yourself to be the best you can for the company,
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for the team and for the growth. So you,
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you for sure you have your time with your family, your friends, but it's
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lesser than before. Plus
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I also do feel the value of just sitting
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in the evening outside on our covered porch here. Just
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be by yourself, do something you enjoy, for example, listening to an
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audiobook and just have to do nothing. No, to do that gets
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a very much higher value over time. Totally. Having a
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book, reading it and being completely by yourself
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is incredibly helpful for calming down. Talking about
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breaks here. We will be back after our short ad break
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here. Then we talk about make or break moments, founder
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misconceptions and vulnerability to value.
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Hope to have you back soon.
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Hey guys, welcome back to the interview with David
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from Voltfang. We've been talking about a lot
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already and now I want to dig a little bit deeper. The make
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or break moment you've transitioned from a startup
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to scale up. Was there point
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when you had to pivot hard or double down? Yes, a
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lot of times. So in the beginning
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we started as a residual storage
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provider. So for the home storage we figured out
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that's not the best way to grow. Therefore we decided
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to pivot into commercial industrial. We did a
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lot of things by ourselves which we said no, we need to
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focus and focus and focus. Therefore
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we needed to pivot from home storage to
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commercial industrial storage system. We needed to Also
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change sometimes the business plan, the strategy,
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so on, so forth. So yes, a lot of times
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you need to always evolve yourself. You need to, you
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have a lot of evolutions within yourself as
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the company leader, but also the company as itself.
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I was wondering, is there like one moment that extremely,
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extremely has been sticking to your mind for that. When
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we started, we wanted to give the people
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the opportunity to actually
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produce and own their own energy. So if you
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have, if you own a home or you are living in a home, then the
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solar energy, the storage system, you can be
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as self sufficient as possible. Giving away this
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kind of dream of being able to
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help everybody to decentralize the energy, that was a
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hard moment. So what I mean is
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the pivot from home storage to commercial industrial was
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hard times. You misconception. I'm very sure
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not everything worked out the way it should be.
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But what were you completely
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wrong about when you launched like tech readiness, market
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demand, or was this something else? And how did you fix it?
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Yeah, the misconception is really in the
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DNA of an engineer to be able to do everything
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by yourself. So we started to, to develop and testing
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facility, we, we wanted to develop
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and certify a Bennett battery management system, the whole
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system by itself, then the energy management system. So we
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wanted to do everything on the horizontal
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to actually on the tech side because we thought, okay, Tesla can do
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it, why shouldn't we do it? And there was
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actually one of the biggest mixed misconceptions we,
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we had since you need
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to focus, you need to focus, focus. And again, you need to
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focus to be able to grow fast. And that's
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something we figured out rather sooner. But
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for us it was late after two years or three years.
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And therefore we burned a lot of money and
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time by following different
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paths, which in the end we needed to cut and just
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focus on the main things we need to do.
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You've shared openly about building in a
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tough space, what part of yourself felt like a
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liability, but turned out to be an asset.
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So as I mentioned, when I was studying,
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I always had the feeling that not being able to actually
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get to be able to invent something new
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is a huge liability. To not be able to
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understand everything on point in the first second
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when you were in mechanics or physics or something like this. That
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was in my opinion always a bad liability for
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myself. But this
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turned to be something my biggest asset
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where because I believe being able to understand them and
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after a while and then being able to also
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explain it to everybody was extremely important. If you
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are in a team of really true engineers.
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And therefore this is something I believe
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which is from liability to assets.
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For our audience. Guys, what's
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one founder trait you've turned from a liability in a
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powerhouse? Let us know on threads or LinkedIn.
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There are always surprises when you're an entrepreneur.
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What was the most unexpected insight you've
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learned from a customer? Supermarkets, airports or grid
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operators? So
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what we actually found out
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was that all of the companies didn't have so much
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knowledge about their energy space. They didn't knew how
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much they are actually consuming and how much they're producing, how much
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they need, what they can actually avoid
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on cost of the energy. Therefore that was
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something we actually figured out really quickly that
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we can, we need to show
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everybody what they are capable of. And
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this is something we didn't expect. But
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that's actually also something which helps us a lot to grow because
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there are so many potentials we with
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our battery storage system can take for any kind of
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customer. Therefore that was amazing to figure out. If you are a huge
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company like Bayer or something, then you know everything about your energy.
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But everything below that there you don't have the capabilities
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of actually figuring out everything. And there that's something
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we want to help with. It's like almost
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my level. I know there's a power outlet, I plug it
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in and every year I go to the cheapest provider. So
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that's it.
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Thank you for the answer so far. Now I would like to look a little
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bit ahead five years maybe. What's your moonshot for
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Voltfang? A coal free grid. European energy independence.
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So we want to decentralize Europe. We
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want to give Europe the resilience of being able
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to protect their energy transition, energy grids, everything.
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And that's something where we believe as Volfang we
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can help by becoming one of the biggest
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energy providers in Europe. We want to put
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smaller and bigger storage system everywhere in the countries
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and then also connect them to a virtual power plant with who we
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then can for example, which is also our vision
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to shut down Weissweiler which has 1.6
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gigawatt. That's actually our
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our moonshot of Voltfang getting rid of
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coal as soon as possible with the resilient
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energy grid of Europe. As a last question, I
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would like you to reflect a little bit. If your 40 year old
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self could speak to you now, what would they say about this
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moment in Voltfunk's journey? Good
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question. If a 40 years old
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self would tell me or would look at the moment right now,
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they would probably say how The F
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did. How the F did you come so far and how did
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you manage to get over the next steps? Because right
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now we have so many things which are incredibly cool,
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which we are developing right now. Where two or
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three years ago it didn't. It was like slow growth. And now
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we can really show the hockey stick, which I always promised the investors.
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But now we are able to do that. Therefore, I believe
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they will. If you look into the retrospective,
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then you will figure out how much myself,
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Voltfang and the company grew within this short amount
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of time, within the last year to the next one or two
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years. I know that from some projects, looking
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at the presentation, then looking at the real thing and think, huh, that really
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worked out. What a surprise.
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That's a. The funny thing is I'm. I never
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know how we got here, but I know where we'll go in the
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next years.
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Okay, we close with this indirect Heisenberg quote.
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David, with such a pleasure having you as guest. Best of luck and
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hope to have you back in a few years doing an update. I would
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love to. Thank you. Have a good day. Bye. Bye.
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Bye.
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That's all, folks. Find more news, streams,
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00:25:12.300 --> 00:25:13.390
events and
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interviews@www.startuprad.IO.
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remember, sharing is car.
