Sympower raised $80M to expand its renewable energy grid-stabilizing technology. This episode discusses the company's growth, pivoting to commercial.
Sympower raised $80M to expand its renewable energy grid-stabilizing technology. This episode discusses the company's growth, pivoting to commercial customers, and the founder's journey in the energy transition sector.
So I have been extremely lucky to have at different stages of the company different people around me leaning on those those people I've been lucky enough to have have around me and then doing so with with curiosity what is out there what are the options how do other people do things how things worked well in some places and not worked well in in others and uh yeah just kind of continue asking questions 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 clean and sustainable energy and and quite the story, you know, and how he's been able to build his business. So the building, the scaling, the pivoting. I mean he's he's been all over the world too. I think that that really is gonna is gonna let you let you all know you know what kind of perspective that gives you when it comes to execution. Uh but
anyhow you know quite the inspiring information and conversation in front of us. So without further ado let's welcome our guest today Simon Bushell. Welcome to the show. >> Thanks Alejandro great to be here. >> So originally born in Fiji but then you know Netherlands UK you know move moved quite a bit. So give us a walk through memory lane. How was life growing up for you? >> Yeah, so I I was born in Fiji where my my mom mom was working for for a couple of years. Didn't spend that much time there, but then uh yeah, was briefly in the Netherlands before before spending most of my life growing up in in the UK. I guess my formative years in a in a very small village uh in uh in the middle of England where I was uh outside a lot of the time. And I think that 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. So now in your case you know one of the things that that is interesting is you know energy you know energy has been something consistent you know whether you were at Imperial at Cambridge you know right after I mean quite the collection of academia references as well but but energy I mean you were talking about like growing outside and being outside quite a bit what about energy you know really caught your attention >> so yeah after my first studies uh at Cambridge in in sciences. I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do to be perfectly honest. So I I spent some time trying to figure out what it was I wanted to do kind of with my life. And I really thought that for me kind of climate change is is is really the kind of 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 problems important problem 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 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 uh and and the yeah energy system renewables that that whole transition I think is the most important thing we can do to solve solve climate change. >> So so talking about this you know basically for you after the studies you went into consulting a 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 from the space as a whole. 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 uh in supermarkets, all sorts of different things. And um I I guess it gave me a good exposure to to those sort of customers and and the and the problems they have. uh and it was a you know fairly small business about 40 people that had just been acquired by by a big business in the US. So it was also interesting to be kind of on the on the receiving end of a of an acquisition and I think plenty of plenty of lessons learned there as well. I think that I I after a while I I felt kind of frustrated by the lack of impact that I was having both in the kind of traditional sense of the word impact. Uh 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. Um, and also it's been something I've kind of brought with me into into Sin Power is I I really, you know, I I want everyone at SM Power 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 sol problems that they're solving as individuals kind of every day. So what was that 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 is now is obviously has developed quite a bit in the last I would say 10 to 15 years 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 you know branch out on your own and and start something from nothing. I wish there was some kind of some kind of amazing Eureka moment, but it kind of it wasn't wasn't quite like that. A friend of mine had uh but 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?" It took me about, I think, 30 seconds to to decide to say yes. and uh yeah and then so quit my job and then moved to Estonia to to to start working with him on uh what eventually became Sin Power. >> So so how did it become Simpower and walk us through what were the early days like and what were the
actions that needed to happen for you guys to bring it to life? >> The early days were like almost too cliched a startup story to to so you know we had we we were lucky enough to have George's um parents apartment in Talin which was like a one-bedroom apartment. So we had the other room was you know my bedroom, the office, our kitchen and all the rest of it. But it was Estonia so we had a sauna which was the the meeting room. Um but yeah we we started off trying to trying to build uh 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. and and that kind of took us through the first I guess yeah six nine months or so um yeah from a from a bedroom in in Talin and then we um 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 in 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 by household and that's also then when we started to hire our first employees and you know raise our first funds and and and so on >> because for the people that are listening to get it what ended up being the business model of Sim Power. How do you guys make money? >> So we the problem we solve is that the the grid uh needs to be balanced at all times. So 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. And what we you how that problem used to be solved is that the big gas fired power plants basically constantly adjust how
much electricity they 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 that are doing that balancing disappearing, but they're being replaced by renewables and wind, which make that whole balancing problem a a lot harder. So effectively we replace those that that balancing aspect of those um gas fired power plants using either demand side resources which is kind of our first business model or batteries which is our our kind of which we've we've moved into over the last couple of years. And with both of those, we're essentially um 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…