In conversation with.... Daniel Linden, Tibber

In this episode, Jon Slowe talks to Daniel Lindén, Co-Founder and CPO at Tibber in Sweden, a company bringing together energy retail, digital technology and smarter electricity consumption. Jon and Daniel discuss Tibber's journey since launching and their future plans.

Episode transcript

[00:00:03.290] - Jon

Hello and welcome to the episode. Today I'm talking with Daniel Linden from Tibber. Tibber, as many listeners will probably know, are a relatively new entrant into the energy retail sector. And I'm delighted to be talking with Daniel as Daniel's firm Tibber, encapsulate much of the innovation that I think the energy sector needs to drive the transition. So, Daniel, welcome to the podcast.

 

[00:00:28.750] - Daniel

Thank you very much.

 

[00:00:31.530] - Jon

Daniel, I think many of our listeners will know about Tibber, you're growing your brand, but unfortunately they won't all know about Tibber. So can you start off with a quick pen portrait and maybe a few facts and figures?

 

[00:00:44.110] - Daniel

All right. Yeah. So I'm Daniel, I founded the Tibber together with my co founder Edgar back in 2016. So we've been around for a while now. It's like six years of development. Right. We started off with a perspective to help consumers be smart and help them in the in the journey of understanding energy consumption and truly act upon that. We realised quickly that Tibber had to become, at that point at least, I think things are moving in the right direction in the market. But at that time, in 2016, we had to become an energy retailer. It wasn't by design that we wanted to become an energy retailer, it was basically by if you want to truly disrupt the part of the digital chain here, we realised that data and consumption and access to price data and access to certain real time signals were only available to retailers. So we have to establish also that role.

 

[00:01:50.440] - Jon

Okay.

 

[00:01:52.210] - Daniel

Today, six years past, there are approximately 350 people between four markets. We're in Norway, Sweden, Germany, Netherlands, currently live as what we call a digital energy supplier. We do help consumers basically shift load to cheaper hours and we help them to consume less energy, or basically energy, I say, but it's electricity as fact. We don't deliver gas or anything else, so we deliver electricity. So it's sort of our take on what it's supposed to be of being a strong supplier of services and digital technology to help consumers take control of their power, basically.

 

[00:02:36.880] - Jon

So being an energy or electricity retailer isn't a means to an end, it's what you need to do to drive that goal of helping customers to minimise their consumption and shift their consumption to the cheaper hours.

 

[00:02:52.790] - Daniel

Yeah, because basically the thing that we saw in the market was that there was a lot of talks about renewable energy, building renewable energy power plants, making that scale, sort of facing out the fossil fuels, but there was so little talk about the consumer or the consumption side of this equation. Right. And we realised that in a world where we're going to shift the way we're going to produce, either we need to store massive amount of energy or we need to shift our consumption behaviour.

 

[00:03:26.610] - Jon

Or a bit of both?

 

[00:03:29.010] - Daniel

For sure, right. But it's like the discussion was never like how are we going to engage consumers truly in this fact. So we felt that that was sort of under executed heavily so we had to do something about it. So that's why we addressed it in this angle. Right?

 

[00:03:47.110] - Jon

I completely agree. My listeners to the podcast Daniel will know my view is that the energy sector has large, historically largely ignored customers. I think they've had meter points and addresses rather than customers. I think that's starting to change now but I still have many conversations with people in energy companies that say customers don't want to be engaged, they don't care, they just want to pay their bill every month. Now I don't believe that but how do you respond to those probably not unfounded views that customers aren't that bothered?

 

[00:04:24.450] - Daniel

But they are bothered when the energy costs are like it is right now. Right? So then now it becomes a friction point. I think a lot of the environmentalists that has pushed legislation and they should increase costs connected this has proven their point. Right. Currently with the current crisis we have in Europe with the price points of energy has spiked the curiosity of the population has increased which means also the investments, the amount of startups, the amount of risk capital going into the sector has sort of boomed. Right? So we're going through a phase now that is extremely exciting I would say on the fact that how you should deal with customer engagement. I think the fundamental emphasis on this has been wrong is like how do you engage people to care about you, has been the solid topic. If you're the E.ON and Vattenfalls of the world you think like okay but the customer don't care about us. We have a hard time making them engaged about the topic or the sales that we try to do. The problem with that is that people don't of course care about them, they care about themselves. And when we can shift the behaviour and mental perspective to this it's about the consumers, about their contribution, about the society's long term playwright then it becomes something different.

 

[00:05:42.160] - Daniel

If we can integrate into people's lives and move the shifts to the consumers then we're getting somewhere. Then we're talking about something that's actually not making people's behaviour different but basically making energy a natural part of their life. And I think here's where the industry has gone so wrong. It's like you believe that you will be able to shape something of you call high engagement. The topic is really like how can we integrate this in a natural part in people's life? Because people do care. They care about economy, they care about finance, they care about society and they do care about their environment.

 

[00:06:20.730] - Jon

Well they care about having warm or cool comfortable homes. They care about when I look at stats on how often people engage with their smart thermostat it's clear that people's home environment is something they care massively about because they're really engaged with it. So, yeah, I completely agree. It's the people's comfort in their homes, people's impact on the environment, people's bills. They're huge, huge points of interest. So what have you learned in six years? I bet they, in some ways have flown by in those six years. If you think back to what you've learned about working with customers, whether we use the phrase engaging customers or working with customers, building your products and services into their lives, are there one, two, three big things that you highlight that you've learned along the way?

 

[00:07:19.130] - Daniel

Yeah, obviously, I think it would be natural to see it. But there are, of course, huge differences in segments of the market, right?

 

[00:07:31.520] - Jon

Yes.

 

[00:07:32.670] - Daniel

I mean, we tend to talk with the people that is highly engaged. Everyone around us is usually highly engaged in the topic. And then when you realise that when you cross that bubble or burst it and you go beyond it, you realise that it's not the same topics that you're talking about. Right. So it becomes different. The perspective to this energy is quite different. So then what you need to understand is for you to reach that wide audience, you need to stop talking and packaging this like you would do when you're talking to your peers in the industry or with your people or colleagues. You need to think beyond and you need to structure this in a way that is actually being able to consume by everyone. And that is a fundamentally kind of funny. We had the discussion about virtual power planting right on the office the other day. It's like, what a horrible word. How are we, consumers engaged about the virtual power plant? Sorry about that's. Sort of crazy. And that isolates the topic. Right. We're so obsessed with our own environment that but we want it to be spilled over to someone else where you want someone else to use it.

 

[00:08:46.920] - Daniel

Don't call the VPP thing. Right? It's like all the craziness.

 

[00:08:52.810] - Jon

How have you actually done that? Because I imagine that's partly building a culture within Tibber to not just talk with each other, but think like the majority of customers. How much is it culture, how much is it process? And doing customer research and focus groups, what have you learned about how to achieve that?

 

[00:09:13.570] - Daniel

Good question. It's 80% culture, 20% process, I would say, because when you're doing something that is not done yet, something that is undiscovered or going to uncharted territory, you're getting into perspectives where there are a lot of opinions and very little facts. How do you do it? It's hard to determine how you do it, so you need to try it out. Okay, so then you have two perspectives to it. Either we try to do a very thorough process to evaluate this until we find the perfect solution, or we say that let's follow our hearts. Let's just do this. Let's do it our way we might fail. Let's try to fail fast in that aspect.

 

[00:10:00.020] - Jon

Test and learn.

 

[00:10:03.150] - Daniel

Yeah, and also try to try to be a little bit bold in that and sort of I wouldn't say risk at all, but put something on the table that actually matters and sort of try it out. So I think that's a cultural difference that you can encounter. And I believe that if you look at large companies, it doesn't go only in this sector, it goes in all sectors. It's like being smaller means you can take more risks. Taking more risks means in practise a competitive advantage, because if you need to evaluate to be 100% sure that it will fly, you're probably going to get a 50% good solution because it won't fit the bill for everyone. It's going to be controversial somewhere. You're going to crash and burn in some aspects and if you can't afford that, you're not going to do the full sort of progression on all areas. I think taking risk is a fundamental piece and in that you can't have too much process on all of the things. It needs to be culture and embrace that. Let's do that and let's also take on our customers on a journey that we don't know the answer and I'm 100% certain that the rest of the society don't.

 

[00:11:09.330] - Daniel

So if we're going to shape this, we need to do it in so many different angles that we will fail in some aspects, but hopefully and gracefully, people will accept that and we can move along and sort of continue iterating.

 

[00:11:21.050] - Jon

Have you got an example, Daniel, to sort of bring that to life for our listeners of something you've, I guess, launched and learnt from and iterated or something you're thinking about now?

 

[00:11:34.910] - Daniel

This was early on, but it's like a super simple stupid thing. When we started off, we started off in the perspective that, can you build a subscription business in this area - similar like what you've seen in music or streaming media, et cetera, and looking at how we wanted to mimic that behaviour, we wanted to also mimic the way that we will perceive that type of product. So if you want to be streaming media or sort of Netflix equivalent of energy or Spotify, how do you do that? So then you look a lot about the onboarding journey, how do you do that? And sort of trying to mimic it to the fullest. So actually, the first version of Tibber included credit card payment. It makes perfect sense from some perspective. Like, if you want to sign this up, like Spotify or Netflix, let's do that. And of course you do that. You start off there and then you run a few months and then you realise the credit card fees here is going to eat us up because we're invoicing energy, which is quite expensive, obviously, in your respect, sounds completely stupid, but the thought process behind it was correct.

 

[00:12:43.240] - Daniel

It was a cultural bet, like, yes, but why should you send an invoice that should be paid with OCR number and sort of a fee, let's charge this with a statement and a credit card and charge it on the day instead. But it the benefit of that could eat up a credit card fees and we weren't big enough to negotiate it down, so unfortunately we got stuck in that. But it's like a silly mistake, but built from a cultural perspective that you want to be different, right? You want to do this in a different angle. I'm not saying copy, but I'm saying inspired by other industries to realise where is the world heading? Right?

 

[00:13:22.450] - Jon

That's what customers are used to. Customers are used to that sort of offering, they're used to subscribing, they're used to paying in certain ways. So the old sending an invoice to many customers who are quite old fashioned, so I can completely see why you experimented with that.

 

[00:13:44.710] - Daniel

But I was advised not to do that.

 

[00:13:46.190] - Jon

Unless you can negotiate the fees down. Daniel, in terms of where you are today, so you've got electricity retail, you've got products that you sell, like smart thermostats or EV chargers. And tell me a bit about how you work with customers to shift their demand, because that's something becoming more and more of a topic in the energy sector. You're at the leading edge of that. This question is around automation, around interoperability, around how involved customers need to be in that. Can you paint a bit of a picture of what it might look like from one of your customers point of view as to how they shift demand or how you help them do that?

 

[00:14:35.690] - Daniel

Well, there are basically two ways of doing this. Either you apply behaviour science and try to shift behaviour based on communication right. Or you shift people's behaviour based on technology. And when dissecting this and looking from our viewpoint, how do you do it? I do enjoy the behaviour side of this equation because it shows that if you want to make a mass market movement in idea and concept, you need to not only work on technology, but you need to work on behaviour. But the big volume is not in behaviour, it is in automation.

 

[00:15:19.590] - Jon

Because the big long term volume, short term, not everyone's got the technology for the automation, I guess. So do you mean longer term when you say that?

 

[00:15:29.290] - Daniel

Well, I basically mean that the technology is available now, it's just not in everyone's hands. Sure. That's our purpose. Right. So for me it's just untapped potential that we are trying to close and we are talking quickly with behaviour part is like it's not possible for people to get up at night and start their electric vehicle charging. It's not possible for people to turn off their thermostats when they're leaving the home and turn it on when it's coming home. Right. It's not applicable. They can move this washing with timers. They can move laundry with timers. They can try to be cautious about high peaks and high urgencies in certain areas that will have a certain effect. And it's definitely the biggest effect of that will be emotional because you feel that you are actually contributing in a fairly big emotional factor in a society's big challenge that we have right now with big peaks in energy consumption that might actually lead to disasters in outages. But the big potential is in automation and that's what we have been aiming for all along. So basically, once again we talked about how to integrate the physical and digital world together.

 

[00:16:43.940] - Daniel

And I think that one of the biggest leaps that we have done towards consumers is not that we are providing an app where you can cheque energy, pricing and consumption because that you will do in multiple aspects. Multiple vendors about the market, but the truly fact that we have connected the physical and the digital infrastructure of people's homes. So they're actually being able not only to understand how they use energy consumption and what the prices differences are and the impact of this, but essentially that they are able to use automation to basically do something about it. And that's a super strength and we call it power ups. It's basically integrations to physical things. It can be Tibber hardware or other hardware third party connections that we do where you basically can connect your car charger, your solar panels, batteries or heating systems, et cetera, smart home systems in order to automate this behaviour in a smart way. And on that fact it's like for us, if you bought an electric vehicle, it's usually already connected. If you bought a charger today, it's usually connected. If you buy a heat pump in the recent five years, it's usually connected.

 

[00:17:52.570] - Daniel

I think the manufacturers of these devices, they put in connectivity because it's the way of the world. I don't think they understood the potential or the consequence or actually the means for it. But it's like you're buying a humidifier and suddenly say it's WiFi inside. Yeah, exactly why? But it's like because it's modern.

 

[00:18:13.640] - Jon

Well, you can even buy a toothbrush that's got WiFi inside so I don't quite know why you do that exactly.

 

[00:18:19.630] - Daniel

The good part with that is that that brings a lot of potential to us because if there is connectivity, it's reachable and if it's reachable, we can do something about it. It can be horrible tech within the actual physical product. It might be a welding company that's put together a heat pump and don't know squat about code yet they bought something from a third party vendor that put into it. But we can decipher it because of technology. Which means that we can most likely turn it into I wouldn't say gold, but something very shiny and good and utilise that for the behaviour of you utilise it for the time of use and utilise it for the society and as a whole. And that's a lot of the journey we are on, and we have done. So maximising automation with all of these devices is a key thing.

 

[00:19:07.570] - Jon

Now, that interoperability, that getting to the products, being able to steer them optimise when they're running. I know that can be super hard work because a lot they may be connected and connectable, but they may be fairly closed in terms of how accessible they are. Is that Tibber's job? Is that third party's job by opening up APIs on your price signals? Is it both?

 

[00:19:37.370] - Daniel

Well, should we standardise this?

 

[00:19:43.290] - Jon

Yes, of course we should, but that would take a while.

 

[00:19:45.950] - Daniel

Will it happen? Yes. But in a time period, who knows? When will this happen? Who knows? And the interpretation of this is different. Who will carry the problem? Will it be the one that is trying to get all of this to work? In the beginning, yes. Will it be the vendors that wants to get into this ecosystem? In the beginning, yes. How will it work in the long term? I don't know. We will see how it will pan out, right. The story of this is like, if you want to get into this game, you need to get dirty, you need to roll up your sleeves.

 

[00:20:16.250] - Jon

You need to do that connecting yourself.

 

[00:20:20.230] - Daniel

That's why this company is not built on business developers and salespeople, it's built on engineers and people that want to do this. Right. So basically, it's not a simple path to success, it's a very hard path to success. Do we need to do it 100%? Yes. For what? Well, we set these sales out for the society's own good, for the planet's own good. If we don't succeed in this, someone else must do it. It's not the question if consumption needs to change. It's like we won't be able to literally survive long term if we're not able to change our behaviour. And I don't believe with billboards and communication going out that will change people's behaviour to the fact that it actually works. I'm technology optimist here. I believe the only way forward is for us to crack these things, make full use of technology so we can actually live our lives probably better than it is today, but with much lesser impact than with much more sustainable society. And that's the only effect we can probably survive in this.

 

[00:21:28.250] - Jon

So if you think about Tibber's USP or Tibber's magic source, there's quite a lot you've talked about behavioural science and behavioural response, but there you talked quite a lot about technology and developers and making that technology stack work. What if you had to pull out one or two things about what makes Tibber special? Well, can you pull out one or two things? Or what would be the key skills, the key USPs? The key difference that you'd highlight.

 

[00:22:07.130] - Daniel

The first thing would probably be what we touched upon earlier is, like, the culture, the fact that people come and work here because they want to be part of a mission, because we want to achieve something and with the perspective to it that it's not a job done. When you reach a certain figure or sort of you achieve this and that. It's like we're up against not to beat the old classical dino energy companies. We're basically here to try to shift the mass market population's view on this topic. It's going to be super hard. But actually, and that's the cool thing that we've seen in the last recent years is like, it's doable, it's actually doable, which means that it's not an impossible task. We can probably shift mankind's view on this topic. In a sense, we can go from fossil fuels to something else. It's just that we have only reached a very small piece of the humanity yet.

 

[00:23:12.360] - Jon

So it's a scaling and a speed that then takes you on to scale and speed and how you - got off on a slight tangent, but let's follow it for a minute. How you've achieved success. You've got hundreds of thousands of customers. How do you scale that and what affects how quickly you can go? Is it capital? Is it finding the right people to come and work at Tibber? Are there more things you need to unlock?

 

[00:23:41.670] - Daniel

Yeah, you have time as well in that aspect. It takes time. It actually takes more time than you might expect. Like six years ago, if we would draw a line, I would say that coming to this point where we are today, it's a very long time period and it requires large time to shift mentality and consumer behaviour in the market. But yes, you need great talent and you need talent that needs to come from other inspirations as well. A lot of the people that is working in Tibber today comes from I mean, I'm physically located in Stockholm where we have one of our biggest offices. A lot of the people here comes from successful companies like Spotify. Klarna, iZettle from different angles that has been through once or twice or three journeys of digitalization, of an industry. They've learned many different things from this. Can it be applied 100% to energy? No, but some of the lessons are essential in order to know how to scale this, how to build operations, how to build the mindset, how to develop this in the right way. So I believe it is the people and it's the culture that is essential.

 

[00:25:00.210] - Daniel

Then. It of course is a little bit about the timing. When you can achieve certain things, like if you go to a market that is not fully regulated or the Lego pieces are not in play at full, you're fighting against a fairly hard stair to walk up towards. The market, the regulatory is sort of in a good state. It's a downhill from there. Right. So basically you need to apply the technology and the ideas that you have, but suddenly it's rolling and most market will probably eventually end up in the good state, but not all are, which is a complication.

 

[00:25:40.100] - Jon

It is, and it's one of my I guess I've got two frustrations. One is the speed at which regulation and market structures move because they never move fast enough and we don't have the time, I think, for them to move at the speed they've been moving historically. Secondly, it's easy to complain about regulation and market structures, but working with them and working around them. So that's where you've built your business out to, what, four countries already? I don't imagine you want to expand that list as quick as you can and as quick as you can find countries with good enough regulatory environments, even if they're not perfect.

 

[00:26:20.010] - Daniel

Yeah, for sure. And I mean, it takes time. And it's not only based on regulation hinders, it's also the effort of actually scaling something across multiple markets because on topic level, like trading and supply switching and billing and invoicing and payments looks fairly simple. But when you go into depth in things, it's like the engineers in every market has basically looked at the neighbour and said, like, they did this whole completely wrong. Let's make our own book on this one, let's put our own things. How you should settle solar consumption or how you should discount this or that or rules. So every market is quite different when you go into details. And I mean, building something that should scale between markets, you need to be able to find a common denominator. In the beginning, in the Nordics, it was fairly simple to find a common denominator. The more you go out of that, the harder it becomes. So basically you need to find that core and scale that and then you need to work hard in order to scale this into multiple markets because it will look very different depending on where you go.

 

[00:27:24.850] - Jon

How would you describe that common denominator that you found?

 

[00:27:28.830] - Daniel

I mean, consumer behaviour are quite similar. Electrical vehicle brands are typically the same, they are the typical same type of behaviour people adopt to solar. They have the same needs when it comes to that. So then when you want to build it, then that similarity stops, right? Because then you get into solar problems where a market has realised that it should be designed in a certain way in conjunction to consumption or whatever. It's like everyone has reinvented their own market and how to switch. Can you have an electricity contract for consumption in one part and a production contract in another? Can you have two different retailers? Can you have a feed in tariff? Do you not have a feed in tariff? I mean, there are so many different aspects of this, right? The stuff that is very close to regulation used to be quite different between market to market. The things that people would like to do is very similar. Which is the point, too, that if people want to do the same things in every market, it's just that the regulation of politicians that have failed to find a common denominator to sign this it English companies like Tibber to go to all European markets or to large quantities of the world.

 

[00:28:40.950] - Jon

So from what you're saying, Daniel, I'd maybe pull out two things that you're scaling. One is that tech stack around the interface with the PV, the EV and how to do that. And then the second would be the interface of the customer and the behaviour and how to relate to the customer. And then you got to put those two together and it sounds like, yeah, there will be differences country to country. Some countries have a lot of electric resistance heating, some have a lot of heat pump heating, et cetera. But those are the two core things that you can bring together and then use that to scale across multiple markets.

 

[00:29:24.310] - Daniel

Yes, I would say so. That is the current view on things. How this will evolve is probably the interesting thing is because you could be saying that that would probably be a recipe for success. We find a new shift into consumption behaviour where you're paying and the things they're going to do right and how you can change the consumer behaviour. Well, the thing is like it is now adopting that in large quantities in the market, which means that now we're probably ready to take a few next steps in that. So the future of this is probably the most interesting fact because now we have started to digitalize the infrastructure of people's homes. What does that mean in the long term? It probably means something completely different from what we see today, like integration points to time of use, usage of your car or your heat pump. Well, yes, it is a huge shift in how it was in the past, but the opportunities about that can truly be disruptive. It's been disruptive from this point because suddenly customers can automate and impact this. But I believe the next steps beyond this will be even bigger.

 

[00:30:36.990] - Jon

Well, at this point in the podcast, typically, Daniel, I bring out the talking new energy crystal ball and use that to look into the future. So let's do that now and set the dial to let's set it to ten years time. So 2032, I think the next ten years in the energy sector will whizz by. And are you able to share some thoughts on what those new things might be, or what Tibber will look like or could look like in 2032? Or maybe if you don't want to make it specific to Tibber, the way in which companies like yourself will be working with customers.

 

[00:31:21.530] - Daniel

Well, I have a few aspects on that one, but we can start with the first one is like companies like us, my. perspective to that is that today we're defined as a digital energy company, a retailer, right? We're selling it. We're based on the traditional topology of energy. But we are delivering energy in a new way or basically selling energy in a new way because we're not delivering energy and then controlling it. Right? We need to survive the shift to a new system. So the operating system of your home for energy needs to survive in that transition. So us as a company ten years from now will probably not look the same. Our role might not be a retailer, it might be completely different. It will not be just an aggregator or whatever word we call for it. It's probably something bigger than that where it's integrated and sort of works in people's homes. Okay, that will come to my next point is like maybe ten years could be enough, but maybe this is a little bit longer term as well to that topic. The centralised energy production to the decentralised way of doing this will probably be a major shift much bigger than we can anticipate.

 

[00:32:40.750] - Daniel

And I do believe that we saw this a lot in the 2000s of the world when we shift from sort of broadband and mobile carriers, et cetera. It's been the hypothesis for energy. But I do believe that in the next ten to 15, maybe 20 years we're going to have a major shift where the world in Ukraine showed us how fragile this is. It's just a bomb on a substation and suddenly we lose connectivity to power which is so essential. So how can we make that a more networking aspects of things? And I believe it's highly likely that the role of the DSO will be highly challenged. I don't believe it will survive long term. I think that's a wrong design of the perspective that grids will only be a concession of one, will only be a monopoly, will only be delivering this. And the only way to basically nominate your position here is like building huge base that you will continue to swell and swell and swell in order capable of delivering large high quantities of energy. And at the time when we can start building parallel grids or connect real estate to each other battery, local production, we might not need the grid in the same way we do today.

 

[00:34:00.270] - Daniel

We need some quarterly grid, but not all.

 

[00:34:04.990] - Jon

I think the model for the DSO is a really big question. But we're just kicking off an innovation project with one DSO looking at a cellular approach to networks. So each different cell could be different sizes but around a community. And then you put those cells together so fundamentally different way of thinking about a DSO. And I completely agree with you. I think as we move to more PV, more batteries, more flexible demand in homes, vehicle to grid eventually then we move to a truly much more decentralised model and the role of an energy retailer might become an energy optimizer, for example. You've talked about two points, very interconnected points. Daniel, anything else you want to highlight in terms of ten years time?

 

[00:34:58.430] - Daniel

I mean the adoption. I think that on the short term period, I think that a lot of companies will try to do similar things as we are doing, transition into it, and that's going to be a big game. I think that's a big win for society. I'm very happy for that and I think that sort of trying to help to digitalize consumer behaviour here and connecting it to a digital infrastructure is essential. So I'm looking a lot forward to that. I'm hoping that standardisation, as we talked earlier, will probably happen, but who knows? Ten years, it's a short time in the standardisation world.

 

[00:35:29.180] - Jon

Yeah.

 

[00:35:30.490] - Daniel

So let's see what's going to happen in that. But I'm very excited about what's going to happen in this aspect. And the ball that we got rolling is going to have some massive impact. I think it's much bigger long term than we might perceive. The started of the sort of the revolution here has already started now. But I don't think that a lot of the players in the legacy value chain have understood how big it's going to be. It's just that the snowball is going to roll and it's going to roll and crush many of the different classical roles. For example, I think DSOs. And if you ask someone in such a company today, they probably think it's unheard of or unthinkable and it's like how will it ever work? Right? And you have so many obstacles but a little bit longer perspective, it's going to be challenged in a way that's like – pooh! Why would we build up multiple cell network stations? Because it was the way of the world. And why would we build up parallel grids? I don't know. Because the one that built the first one was not smart and innovative enough to basically try to evolve it.

 

[00:36:33.330] - Daniel

And it's not the people there. It is actually the model itself that hinders it. It's the creativity of the competition that comes into play that has these massive opportunities that push the needle so far that you won't be able to sketch it because it's so many people thinking in parallel and that's the exciting thing.

 

[00:36:52.530] - Jon

Well, Daniel, it sounds like your own snowboard at Tibber has taken maybe a bit longer than you first envisioned six years ago to get momentum and start gathering speed. It sounds like certainly gathering speed now and it sounds like a very exciting next years ahead as you take what you've learned and look to scale. That both, I imagine, within the markets you're in and to new markets as well. It's been fascinating talking with you. If you had to highlight one challenge, your biggest challenge in scaling just in a few words, what would you say?

 

[00:37:37.410] - Daniel

I think it's the consumer nurture right we have taught ways of doing in decades of times. People perceive this topic in a certain way, we even talk still as it's a commodity, it's boring, you shouldn't sort of invest, why should you work in this industry, etc. So I think it's the biggest hurdle for them. Everything we're doing is like, we need to convince that first. We don't need to win over a competitor, I need to win over people's attention to this topic. But the excellent piece is that it's changing now and it's coming with the crisis we're going through. So I said this challenge seems to be roadblocks that is also moving away. So I'm super excited to see what's coming out of the market. It's going to happen so much based on all of this, so many startups scale ups that's going to generate new things in this market. So it's going to be a pleasure to follow.

 

[00:38:30.210] - Jon

Yeah, well, congratulations on everything you've achieved so far, Daniel, and the best of luck and all the success for scaling that in the next years. Thanks very much for your time and joining us.

 

[00:38:41.810] - Daniel

Thank you very much. Thank you.

 

[00:38:43.670] - Jon

And thanks as always, everyone listening to this episode. We hope you enjoyed it, got some new perspectives and go back to your day jobs, your desks, with some new ideas and new enthusiasm and new ways of thinking to accelerate the energy transition further. Thanks and goodbye.