This Founder Raised $80 Million To Turn Industrial Assets, Batteries, And Renewables Into Grid-Stabilizing Energy Resources
When Simon Bushell reflects on his journey, it doesn’t start in a boardroom or a lab—it starts outdoors. He was born in Fiji, briefly lived in the Netherlands, and grew up in a small village in England, spending much of his childhood outside.
That early exposure to nature quietly shaped a worldview that would later define Simon’s career: a deep conviction that climate change is the most important problem humanity needs to solve. He grew up determined to make the world a better place. But conviction alone doesn’t build companies.
What followed was a decade-long journey of experimentation, pivots, setbacks, and ultimately, scale—culminating in Sympower, a company tackling one of the most complex challenges in the energy transition.
Why Energy Became the Core Obsession
His interest in green energy and climate change was consistent throughout Simon’s growing years. However, after studying science at Cambridge, he found himself at a crossroads. Like many high-performing graduates, he didn’t have a clear path forward.
What Simon did have was clarity on one thing: climate change was the defining problem of our time. But, at the time, he was unsure about the best solutions and wanted to learn more. Rather than diving into a predefined career track, he chose to understand the problem first. And that led him to energy.
Energy, in his view, sits at the center of everything. If you can transition the global energy system—from fossil fuels to renewables—you unlock progress across nearly every other major global challenge. Without solving the energy problem, solving anything else becomes almost irrelevant.
That insight became the foundation for everything that followed.
Learning the System from the Inside
Simon’s first step into the industry came through consulting, where he worked as a technical energy advisor helping commercial and industrial clients reduce energy consumption and transition away from fossil fuels. This experience opened up perspectives on problem-solving from the inside.
The work ranged widely—from designing combined heat and power plants to improving efficiency in supermarkets. More importantly, it gave Simon critical advantages. His company was a fairly small business with just around 40 people and had recently been acquired by a big business.
Being at the receiving end of the acquisition taught Simon several valuable lessons. But, despite the technical complexity and importance of the work, he felt a growing frustration—his individual impact felt limited. The pace of change was too slow. That realization became the trigger.
Simon brought his dedication to making an impact to Sympower. He wants everyone to solve problems with the objective of delivering value to the world every day.
The Leap Into Entrepreneurship
There was no dramatic “eureka” moment. Instead, the transition happened almost casually. After encouraging Georg Rute, a friend, to start a company, Simon received a call about a month later: “Do you want to do this with me?” It took him 30 seconds to say yes.
Simon quit his job, moved to Estonia, and began building what would eventually become Sympower. The early days were as raw and scrappy as startup stories get. Operating out of Georg’s parents’ one-bedroom apartment in Tallinn, the setup was simple.
Simon’s bedroom doubled as an office, and the kitchen served as a workspace. And, fittingly for Estonia, a sauna became the meeting room. The initial idea focused on consumers—helping households reduce electricity bills through demand response by rescheduling their power use.
On paper, it made sense. In practice, it didn’t scale. So, a year down the line, Simon and Georg pivoted to working with much larger customers—commercial and industrial customers, similar to those Simon had worked with in his previous job.
The reasoning was simple—scaling would be quicker by targeting larger companies than doing it one household at a time. At this point, the duo began recruiting their team and raised their first round of funding.
Building the Core Business Model
At its heart, Sympower solves a fundamental problem. Electricity supply and demand must be perfectly balanced at all times. That means the electricity produced needs to be exactly matched by the amount consumed at any given time.
Historically, this balancing act was handled by gas-fired power plants adjusting output in real time. They would constantly adjust how much electricity they produce to match the amount being consumed in a country.
But as the world transitions to a renewable or mostly renewable electricity system, like wind and solar—sources that are inherently variable—that model breaks down. Balancing supply and demand becomes much more complex.
Sympower steps in to replace that function by turning flexible energy assets into active grid-balancing resources. The company optimizes industrial assets, distributed energy assets, and battery energy storage systems (BESS) to charge, discharge, or shift consumption at the most valuable moments. By doing so, they help stabilize the grid.
Utilities pay Sympower for this service, and Sympower shares that revenue with its customers. It’s a model that sits at the intersection of software, infrastructure, and energy markets—complex, but incredibly powerful.
When the Business Model Breaks Overnight
Even with early traction, the journey was far from linear. At one point, Sympower had a pilot project lined up with a grid operator. Everything was ready—contracts, funding, execution. Days before signing, the deal flipped.
For Simon and Georg, it forced a complete reset—back to first principles. Fortunately, this crisis coincided with joining Rockstart, an accelerator program, providing the space and structure to rethink the business from the ground up. The duo also moved from Estonia to the Netherlands.
The Next Big Pivot: Households to Industry
As Simon points out, pivots are scary but necessary because you have to adjust to market needs, and listening is key. The cofounders began assessing whether they were targeting the wrong customers.
When transitioning from residential to commercial and industrial customers, the duo pitched a few projects to big companies. Initially, it looked like they were moving in the right direction. However, the deals would fall through at the last minute because of weak economics.
It felt like pushing against a system that wasn’t ready to accept the solution. At the same time, something unexpected was happening. When Simon and Georg began experimenting with larger commercial and industrial customers, traction came much easier.
Their first breakthrough came with greenhouses in Finland, where word of mouth began driving organic growth. What started as a gradual shift became a decisive pivot. The cofounders stopped all activities on the residential customer side.
Scaling the Company: Raising Capital and Complexity
Over time, Sympower raised approximately $80M. The funding journey followed a familiar arc. Simon partnered initially with early-stage angel investors whom they met through the accelerator program. Next, they raised money from local impact investors in the Netherlands.
More recently, later-stage institutional investors, including US and European funds, and a Dutch pension asset manager, have backed Sympower. But one theme stood out: relationships mattered more than pitch decks.
Most investors who eventually backed the company had been in conversation with Simon and his team long before investing. This was especially critical given the complexity of the business, which is hard to understand.
As Simon explains, when you initially pitch to investors, you get one of two reactions—either curiosity and a desire to go deeper and understand it more, which then leads to building a relationship from there.
Alternatively, investors say, “This sounds a bit complicated. We'd rather focus on what we're good at, maybe a typical B2B SaaS.” Simon understands their perspectives.
Storytelling is everything that Simon was able to master. The key is capturing the essence of what you are doing in 15 to 20 slides. For a winning deck, take a look at the pitch deck template created by Peter Thiel, Silicon Valley legend (<a href=" target="blank" rel="noopener">see it here</a>), where the most critical slides are highlighted.
Remember to unlock the pitch deck template that founders worldwide are using to raise millions below.
Sympower operates within a layered ecosystem that takes time to understand, making prior relationships critical to build confidence. Another nuance was geographic. European investors, particularly in the Netherlands, have a different mindset compared to US investors.
European investors tend to prioritize tangible metrics—revenue, traction, and present performance. In contrast, US investors are often more comfortable underwriting future potential. Sympower navigated this by aligning with investors who understood both the long-term vision and mission, and the market.
Building the Organization
As the company scaled to around 150 employees, hiring became a strategic challenge. Different stages required different types of people. Some early team members grew with the company, evolving into new roles over time.
Others eventually left to start their own ventures—part of the natural lifecycle of startup talent. Sympower adopted a distributed model early on, with teams spread across multiple countries; some were also working remotely. Each operating model had advantages and disadvantages.
As Simon explains, the coordination required strong documentation practices so new recruits could get up to speed quickly, even if they worked remotely. They also developed a culture designed for asynchronous work.
While not without challenges, it enabled access to talent in Europe and supported expansion into new markets.
The Hard Lessons of Expansion
At one point, Sympower pursued an aggressive expansion strategy—targeting up to 20 countries across Europe. However, it didn’t work. The company found itself spread too thin, with limited depth in each market. The lesson was clear: breadth without focus kills scale.
Simon and his team shifted their strategy to fewer countries, but with deeper market penetration. In some cases, this meant walking away from markets where they already had revenue—a difficult but necessary decision. Today, expansion is more disciplined.
Simon talks about the new strategy they’ve developed for expansion. Before entering a new geographic location, they start by targeting a customer base that matches their ambitions for that location in terms of scale.
The Vision: A Smarter, Cleaner Energy System
If Sympower succeeds at its mission, the impact goes far beyond efficiency gains. It enables a world where renewable energy can scale without instability, so that dependence on fossil fuels like oil and gas decreases dramatically, which, in turn, is beneficial for geopolitical and cost reasons.
Simon reiterates that his driver is from an environmental perspective. Through Sympower, he would want to enable people to be more active participants in the energy system, thanks to increasing awareness.
For instance, Sympower’s industrial clients are becoming more conscious of their electricity consumption and are exploring ways to reduce usage, increase efficiency, and source energy locally.
Thus, Simon envisions the overall system being greener, cleaner, cheaper, and more local. Consumers are more conscious on both sides of the system and are attempting to drive climate change initiatives themselves, rather than being told what to do by the authorities.
As Simon points out, he has been pushing this change for 10 years, which translates into 200 years in corporate terms. Sympower has raised $80M to date and now employs over 150 people—a truly remarkable feat.
The Founder’s Realization: Focus Is Everything
After a decade of building, Simon’s advice to his younger self is surprisingly simple: Focus. But not just in the abstract. Entrepreneurs find it difficult to focus because they are enthusiastic and eager to say yes to the next exciting opportunity that arises.
Entrepreneurship is very binary, and founders can be in one of two phases.
Default Yes: Explore, experiment, say yes to opportunities · Default No: Ruthlessly test and filter, focusing only on the highest-impact actions
The mistake most founders make is living in between. Without a clear focus, execution suffers. With it, everything compounds.
Growing as Fast as the Company
Scaling a company is one challenge. Scaling yourself is another. For Simon, two factors made the difference. The first is curiosity. He considers himself extremely lucky to have mentors, angel investors, and board members guiding him through the various stages of the company-building.
Every day brought new situations Simon had never encountered before. Instead of pretending to have the answers, he leaned on those around him—gathering input, then making decisions with conviction. Continuously asking questions and learning from others’ experiences helped him get ahead.
The Long Game
Ten years into the journey, Sympower stands as a testament to persistence. What started in a cramped apartment has grown into a multi-country operation with significant capital, real customers, and meaningful impact. But perhaps the most important takeaway isn’t the scale—it’s the process.
There were no shortcuts. No single breakthrough moment. Just continuous iteration, hard decisions, and a relentless focus on solving a problem that truly matters. And in the world of energy—and climate—that’s exactly what’s required.
Climate change became Simon Bushell’s defining mission, and energy became the lever he believed could unlock the biggest impact. · Sympower’s journey shows that conviction matters, but market feedback determines where a startup can actually scale. · The pivot from households to commercial and industrial customers turned a promising idea into a viable business. · Sympower’s evolution from demand response into BESS optimization shows how the company has adapted to the grid’s changing needs as renewables, storage, and flexibility markets mature—helping battery asset owners maximize revenues across balancing, wholesale, and ancillary markets while supporting grid stability and decarbonization. · Raising capital for complex infrastructure businesses requires long-term investor relationships, not just polished pitch decks. · Expansion without depth can weaken execution, which is why Sympower shifted from many countries to fewer, deeper markets. · Simon’s biggest lesson is that founders must know when to move from “default yes” experimentation to “default no” focus.
Technically this happened before the pivot from household to industry (the pivot happened during our time at the accelerator - rockstart)
Original Version
Alejandro Cremades: All righty. Hello, everyone, and welcome to the DealMaker Show. So today we have an amazing founder. you know we're going to be talking about a clean and sustainable energy and and quite the story, you know, on how he's been able to build his business. So the building, the scaling, the pivoting.
Alejandro Cremades: I mean, he's he's been all over the world, too. I think that that thing really is going to iss going to let you let you all know, you know, what kind of perspective that gives you when it comes to execution. But anyhow, you know, quite the inspiring formation and conversation in front of us. So without further ado, let's welcome our guest today, Simon Bushell. Welcome to the show.
Alejandro Cremades: So originally born in Fiji, but then, you know, Netherlands, UK, you know, boof moved quite a bit. So give us a walk through memory lane. How was life growing up for you?
Simon Bushell: Yeah, so as I was born in Fiji where my my um mom was working for it for a couple of years. Didn't spend that much time there, but then yeah, it was briefly in in the Netherlands before before spending most of my life growing up in in the UK.
Simon Bushell: guess my formative years in ah in a very small village in in the middle of England where I was outside a lot of the time. And I think that that's kind of part of what what got me interested in sustainability and and yeah trying to kind of prevent climate change from getting too bad and and and make the world a better place.
Alejandro Cremades: So now in your case, you know, one of the things that is interesting is, you know, energy. You know, energy has been something consistent. You know, whether you were at Imperial, at the Cambridge, you know, right after, mean, quite the collection of academia references as well, but they but energy. I mean, you were talking about like growing outside and being outside quite a bit.
Alejandro Cremades: What about energy, you know, really caught your attention?
Simon Bushell: So yeah, after my first studies at Cambridge in in sciences, I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do, to be perfectly honest. So I spent some time trying to figure it out what it was I wanted to do kind of with my life.
Simon Bushell: And I really thought that for me, kind of climate change is is is really the kind of the the biggest and most important problem that we have. I see it as the overarching problem. I think there's a lot of other really important problems to solve in the world. But if we don't solve climate change, and there's kind of not much point in solving the rest, but I, as I didn't know much about what the solutions were, I wanted to kind of find out more. And I really see the kind of the energy problem as as the absolute key to solving climate change and and the yeah energy system renewables that that whole transition, I think is the most important thing we can do to solve ah solve climate change.
Alejandro Cremades: so So talking about this, you know basically for you after the studies, you went into consulting a ah little bit. So consulting, give us basically what what was that experience for you, how you were thinking about the problem tackling, and then also what kind of perspective or or or I would say lessons it gave you from the space as a whole.
Simon Bushell: So yeah, we were, i was a kind of quite technical energy consultant helping commercial industrial customers to find different ways to save energy, to move away from from fossil fuels, um everything from you know building big combined heat and power plants to kind of energy efficiency in in ah in supermarkets, all all sorts of different things.
Simon Bushell: And um i I guess it gave me a good exposure to those sort of customers and um the and the problems they have. And it was a know fairly small business, about 40 people that had just been acquired by by a big business and in the US. So was also interesting to be kind of on the on the receiving end of ah of an acquisition, and I think plenty of ah plenty of lessons learned there as well.
Simon Bushell: I think that i i after a while, i felt kind of frustrated by the lack of impact that was having, both in the kind of traditional sense of the word impact, you know I wanted to make more impact on the energy transition, but also in terms of the impact I was making as an individual in the company. And I think that was one of the drivers to then go and go and found found a business.
Simon Bushell: And also it's been something I've kind of brought with me into Simpower is I i really, you know I want everyone at Simpower to feel like they are making an impact and they're able to make an impact both on the world, but also on on the problems we're solving and and the solve problems that they're solving as individuals kind of every day.
Alejandro Cremades: So what was that the moment where you were like, okay, I'm going to go at it? you know Because as you said, you know like you've been at it now for 10 years, but Europe people say now it obviously has developed quite a bit in the last, day i would say 10 to 15 years.
Alejandro Cremades: But before, you either became a banker or a lawyer or a consultant, not an entrepreneur. So that was quite the decision for you to really branch out on your own and start something from nothing.
Simon Bushell: I wish there was some kind of some kind of amazing eureka moment, but it kind of it wasn't it wasn't quite like that. a friend of mine had, well, I actually persuaded him that he should start a start a company. And about a month after he started, i was at that point already thinking, okay, this isn't quite working for me, this consulting thing. What am I going to do next? And about a month after he started, he called me up and he said, hey, don't you want to do this with me? and It took me about 30 seconds to to decide to say yes.
Simon Bushell: and yeah And then so quit my job and then moved to Estonia to to start working with him on what eventually became SimPower.
Alejandro Cremades: so So how did it become SimPower? Walk us through what were the early days like and what were the actions that needed to happen for you guys to bring into life?
Simon Bushell: The early days were like almost too cliche to start up story to, so, you know, we had, we we were lucky enough to have George's parents' apartment in Tallinn, which was like a one bedroom apartment. So we had the other room was my bedroom, the office, our kitchen and all the rest of it, but it was Estonia. So we had ah a sauna, which was the the meeting room.
Simon Bushell: um But yeah, we we started off trying to trying to build a, yeah, a product for for consumers, so basically a consumer demand response product, which is all about helping consumers to reduce their electricity bills by by having them shift when they use electricity.
Simon Bushell: and And that kind of took us through the first, I guess, yeah six, nine months or so um yeah from ah from a bedroom in Tallinn.
Simon Bushell: And then we, yeah, after about a year or so, I think we we pivoted to working with much bigger consumers. So working with with commercial industrial customers, the type of customers that I've been working with and in my previous job, really because we saw that that was just a way to scale a lot quicker than than going kind of household by but by household.
Simon Bushell: And that's also then when we started to hire our first employees and raise our first funds and so on.
Alejandro Cremades: Because for the people that are listening to Get It, what ended up being the business model of SimPower? How do you guys make money?
Simon Bushell: So the the problem we solve is that the the grid needs to be balanced at all times. That means that the the electricity that that is produced needs to be exactly matched by the amount of electricity that is consumed at any one time.
Simon Bushell: And what we know is that problem used to be solved is that the big gas-fired power plants basically constantly adjust how much electricity they produce to match how much we're consuming in a country. If we want to move to a fully renewable electricity or even a mostly renewable electricity system, not only those gas power plants that are doing that balancing disappearing, but they're being replaced by renewables and wind, which makes the whole balancing problem a lot a lot harder. So effectively, we replace that balancing aspect of those gas-fired power plants using either demand-side resources, which is kind of our first business model, or batteries, which we've we've moved into over the last couple of years. And with both of those, we're essentially
Simon Bushell: adjusting how much electricity those those those commercial industrial machines produce or those batteries charge and discharge in order to help keep the whole grid in balance. We get paid for doing that and then we share some of that revenue with with the customers. So that's kind of the the basics of what we do.
Alejandro Cremades: So you were talking about it earlier, the the pivot that you guys did. in Pivots are scary, but they're also necessary because you've got to adjust to whatever the market is telling you and and listening is key.
Alejandro Cremades: So... At what point do you guys realize, make us insiders there, because there's a lot of people probably now listening that are in the early days, you know, behind the trenches, like figuring out how how to get to product market fit and to to get to scale.
Alejandro Cremades: How was that for you guys? Like, what was that thought process and that journey to that moment that you were like, I think that maybe we're going after the wrong people here?
Simon Bushell: Yes. So I think the, the, there were a few stages and in, in, in the beginning from moving from kind of the, the, the residential to the commercial industrial. And I think that. That we had some, you know, we had a couple of times where we had some very interesting projects that we had been pitching and what kind of looked like they were really going in the, in the right direction with, for example, big energy companies.
Alejandro Cremades: Obviously, the amount of time that you’ve pushed this is really remarkable. Ten years is like 200 years in corporate, right? It’s unbelievable. A lot of lessons learned, wins, ups, downs, you name it. I guess, if I were to bring you back in time, maybe to that moment where you were a consultant and thinking about doing something of your own, and let’s say I was able to bring you to have a conversation with that younger Simon, and you were able to give your younger self one piece of advice before launching a business, what would that be and why, given what you know now?
Simon Bushell: I think it’s extremely clichéd, but focus. It’s the one lesson that everyone tells you, and it’s the one lesson that I think is really hard as an entrepreneur to actually listen to. As entrepreneurs, we want to say yes to things and follow the next exciting opportunity, and so on and so forth.
Simon Bushell: The way I see it, it’s kind of very binary. You have to be in one of two phases. In one phase, you’re default yes, and almost from one day to the next, you’re in default no. In default yes, you are saying yes to those opportunities. You’re testing what’s out there. You’re seeing what opportunities there are.
Simon Bushell: But then I think you need to make this really conscious decision to go into that default no phase, where anything that comes in, you’re saying no unless it is the perfect possible opportunity. And yeah, I think that’s definitely me to blame for that. We have too often been somewhere in between, and then you can’t have that real laser focus on the opportunity ahead of you and execute on that very, very well. I think we’re doing it a lot better in the last few years, but I think if we could go back in time and have that real laser focus in those default no moments, it might have changed some things along the way.
Alejandro Cremades: Obviously, for you, it was your first company and first business. You have to make sure that the company is not outpacing you. What you’ve built is tremendous, right? I mean, 150 employees, $80 million raised, and what you guys are doing across all these different regions where you are now present.
Alejandro Cremades: What do you think has helped you along the way to educate yourself and grow yourself, so that you made sure you kept the same speed as the company?
Simon Bushell: It’s two things. It’s curiosity and the people around me. I have been extremely lucky to have, at different stages of the company, different people around me: mentors, angel investors, board members.
Simon Bushell: All sorts of different people who I have been able to lean on and turn to for advice. I kind of always say, every day that I wake up, it’s the biggest company that I’ve ever built. It’s the most number of employees, and so on and so forth. I’ve always gone into that with a very open mind. I don’t know what the best thing to do is because I’ve never been in this situation before. What I can do is ask around me, ask people who have been in this situation before, and gather advice.
Simon Bushell: Then, obviously, eventually it’s me making the decisions. It’s me deciding where we’re going. But yeah, leaning on those people I’ve been lucky enough to have around me and doing so with curiosity: What is out there? What are the options? How do other people do things? How have things worked well in some places and not worked well in others? And just continue asking questions.
Alejandro Cremades: I love it. Simon, for the people who are listening and would love to reach out and say hello or learn more about SimPower, what can you tell them?
Simon Bushell: Yeah, please do get in touch, especially if you’re in the energy sector, where we are growing in the Nordics, in Greece, and across Europe. We would love to hear from you, either via our website, simpower.net, or you can find me on LinkedIn, of course.
Alejandro Cremades: Amazing. Well, Simon, thank you so much for being on the DealMaker Show today. It has been an absolute honor to have you with us.
