The Lucent Perspective

Overcoming Barriers to Net Zero: How a Fintech Startup Tackles Energy Efficiency, with Robin Peters

• Rebecca Hastings • Season 1 • Episode 16

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Climate change is a global crisis that affects everyone, regardless of location or industry. In this episode, you will hear how Snugg, a fintech based in the UK is playing a significant role in contributing to net-zero initiatives. My special guest is Robin Peters, Snugg’s Co-Founder and CEO. Robin revealed the idea behind their astonishing platform and how they make it easy for both consumers and other businesses to overcome the barriers to energy efficiency.

Episode Outline and Highlights

  • [01:38] How Robin came up with the idea of simplifying home energy efficiency which led to the foundation of Snugg.
  • [06:04] Robin discusses long-term mortgages and other solutions that can help drive energy efficiency and home improvement initiatives.
  • [08:45] The global market potential for energy efficiency solutions and the significant amount of investment needed to address this issue.
  • [10:53] Simplifying solutions and presenting consumer data in a simpler way for consumers.
  • [14:33] The B2B side of Snugg.
  • [18:54] Challenges and opportunities in the supply chain for improving homes and implementing net-zero energy efficiency initiatives.
  • [23:27] Talent-related challenges that Robin faced in their startup.
  • [26:29] Building a psychologically safe working environment.
  • [27:39] Tips on building and scaling by hiring the right people.
  • [35:57] Transitioning from the corporate business to the startup world.
  • [39:56] Leveraging transferable skills and where to look if someone is interested in engaging in climate tech.

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Rebecca Hastings, Founder and Director at The Lucent Group

Connect on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hastingsrebecca/

Rebecca has extensive talent and executive search experience supporting digital and technology businesses through complex changes and fast-paced scale-up periods. She works with businesses advising on C-level, technical, sales, and commercial appointments, workforce planning, strategic talent management, recruitment processes and associated technology, and employer brand development.

Rebecca Hastings, Founder and Director at The Lucent Group

Connect on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hastingsrebecca/

Would you like to be a guest? Book a time to speak with Rebecca: https://calendly.com/rebeccahastings/discovery-call

The Lucent Group Ltd website - https://www.thelucentgroup.co.uk/

The Lucent Perspective website - https://thelucentperspective.com/

Rebecca has extensive talent and executive search experience supporting digital and technology businesses through complex changes and fast-paced scale-up periods. She works with businesses advising on C-level, technical, sales and commercial appointments, workforce planning, strategic talent management, recruitment processes and associated technology and employer brand development.

Rebecca Turnbull:

Welcome to the Listen perspective. I'm your host, Rebecca Hastings. I've spent over a decade working with executives in the tech sector, and help successful companies build their leadership teams and scale. During my career, I've been lucky to have the privilege of learning from many exceptional leaders. In these conversations, you'll get perspectives from peers, be inspired, and learn what it takes to become one of the best. This is your chance to listen to experts talking about the challenges, solutions, and the vital insights they've gained in their careers to date.

Unknown:

When you're in a business, money is absolutely irrelevant. And he just basically trying to deal with 100,000 challenges all at the same time and the risk that it could, in a few months alter into nothing, so you've got to want to do it because you want the challenge of doing that. If that is the case, go for it.

Rebecca Turnbull:

Today I'm joined by Robin Peters. He is the CEO of really interesting FinTech called snug or snug energy as some people may know it, he's going to share his insights on like where FinTech meets Net Zero, explain how this happens at snug, and talk us through how he and his team are growing b2b, b2c business while creating solutions that ultimately you should hopefully help decarbonize the economy. So I just want to jump straight in Robin. Tell me how did you come up with the idea for snug

Unknown:

I had an idea when I was Aviva of simplifying the way that people buy insurance. And the team was working with their took the process to buy insurance down from 156 questions to three questions. And after I left Aviva, I thought well, why don't I try and do that in home energy efficiency. And because trying to insulate and put renewable energy in your home can be really confusing and really complex. So therefore a snug up to make energy efficient homes simple and affordable for everyone.

Rebecca Turnbull:

And energy efficiency is, you know, not just topical, but it is expensive if you're retrofitting your home, especially if you're in I don't know, like a Victorian tenement, like a lot of people in the UK. So if you could just like explain to me a little bit more like how snug is a fintech? Because initially, I thought it was like a really smart idea but took a degree of lateral thinking. It wasn't like blindingly apparent. So talk me through that, please.

Unknown:

The reason it's a Fintech is we are linking closely with financial services companies to help make it affordable for people to retrofit their home. The average cost of of fixing a home to be energy efficient, is in the order of 30,000 pounds. And wow, most people don't have that available in sort of ready cash. So the private sector financial sector has to play a big role in making that happen. And one strap line that we use in snug is that we're trying to make the business case we'll turn the business case for investing in home of energy efficiency, from a no hoper to a no brainer. And most people will look at energy efficiency. And if they spend 10,000 pounds on doing their homework, they might reduce their fuel bills by 300 pounds a year, which means that it's going to take 30 years to pay back. And that just doesn't make sense given that most people only spend 10 years in their home. What we're doing is applying technology and a little bit more data insight to help reveal other ways that it's worthwhile and help them fund that.

Rebecca Turnbull:

Because I think that having a more energy efficient home not only does it reduce your outgoings on a monthly basis. Certainly we have lots of solar panels and we changed all of our lights to LED lights shortly after moving in. There's still lots of installation things that we can do apparently, but we are like we have seen a visible decrease in our bills, I suppose that improves affordability for a bank they they may feel more confident lending the rest of the money to me to do help the rest of my house.

Unknown:

Yeah, affordability is definitely one thing. There's a number of ways that we're trying to help people better understand the whole business case for for doing their home up and one of the key ones is is definitely that their affordability will go up if their fuel bills have gone down. Also, just If you invest in your kitchen, and you expect that to improve the value of your home, the same happens with energy efficiency initiatives, and we're trying to understand that better. There are a lot of grants available, it's pretty difficult to find them and to get actually apply for them and get the cash. And we're trying to make that simpler. And obviously, that's, that's important to people. And we can open up people to different financial products and financial incentives. So we're actually working on some work for a project for Desnos, which is the zero department then government's looking at innovation and green finance. And there's a number of quite quite interesting financial products coming through, that can make it easier for people to afford these investments.

Rebecca Turnbull:

Because I have seen that you can get like slightly cheaper mortgage rate, sometimes if you have a really good EPC, or energy performance certificate grading for your house, what other kinds of financial products are coming down the line,

Unknown:

two things are very mentioned, first, is a long term mortgage. So people, you know, again, if you're a 30 year payback, then on investment, then it really makes sense to have a 30 year mortgage and those 30 year mortgages are very common, particularly in the US not so common here. But that that that can have quite a big transformational effect in terms of affording this. And the other innovation, which is coming through is a thing called heat as a service. So you, you basically only pay for a solar or or heat pump as you deliver the savings on your fuel bills, and that those two products are going to become more prominent.

Rebecca Turnbull:

That's really interesting and very positive to hear. So all this stuff is really important. You know, there's a lot of work that needs to be done by householders governments and businesses, towards helping us reach net zero and decarbonizing the economy. When I started looking into snug initially, one of the things that absolutely blew my mind was the amount of finance carbon in the economy that was linked to mortgages. I just had no idea that mortgages, were such a large source of carbon.

Unknown:

Yeah, I mean, and banks are, I think it's very good news that banks are looking very hard at their carbon emissions from the, what they call the financed emissions from their mortgage portfolio. So just in terms of, you know, every business is looking to reduce his own carbon footprint from its offices, and you know, the use of non recyclable cups or whatever. But that is a tiny proportion for a bank of the finance emissions for his mortgages. So the typical bank, the emissions from the houses, its mortgage, as mortgages on are 30 times more than the emissions of the bank itself. And most of the retail banks is through a thing called the netzero banking Alliance, have made commitments to reduce those emissions by up to 50% in the next seven or eight years. So the definitely starting to put their money where their mouth is.

Rebecca Turnbull:

And we're talking within the context of the UK because that's where you guys have started up. The amount of money is going to cost for all of the home improvements in the UK over the next 25 years must be absolutely vast numbers of billions. What how does that market translate globally?

Unknown:

It definitely trends. I mean, it's an eye watering number just in the UK. So the the climate change Committee, which is probably the best source of data like this estimates that it's going to cost in the order of 250 billion pounds to fix UK homes. That that's the 29 million homes in the UK. Obviously, that that money is not going to be available through public sector grants. So that that numbers the UK, I mean, it taking it overseas, that the problem is definitely exists in pretty much every developed country. The UK has leakier homes than than a number of other countries. But just taking the US as an example, the US economies is approximately 10 times bigger than the UK. And it has a very substantial issue as well with the energy efficiency of of US homes, particularly in the kind of the Northeast states of the US though at least at least five to 10 times the size just in the US and then if you expand that to Germany, France, etc. You So a very, very significant market need.

Rebecca Turnbull:

So we're looking at trillions globally that needs to be spent on all of this solutions.

Unknown:

Yes and unjust in the US. It's quite, it's very topical. There's a thing called the inflation Reduction Act in the US, which is going through at the moment, which has in excess of $300 billion focused on green tech alone. And again, that's just the public sector components of it. So the amount of the amount of money that's going to be the focus have to be focused to help get houses net zero is going to be pretty high watering.

Rebecca Turnbull:

I gaze eye watering is definitely the right way to look at it. But it's also a huge opportunity. It's, I think that the simplicity with which you've been able to deliver a solution to consumers in the UK is really quite interesting. Can you tell me how you wish to do that?

Unknown:

Yeah, one of my co founders, a guy called Neil Swenson founded one of the London agency called Rufus Leonard, and very much focused on people centered design and easy UX, etc. And he's been really, really at the forefront of trying to talk in custody in real people's language, demystify things as much as possible that there are loads of people in the sector, trying really hard to fix things. Quite a lot of them come back come from a technical background and tend to default to kind of technical speak. So Neil particularly has brought us to really just trying to talk in in humans, human beings terms and not overcomplicate things. And I mean, one of my bugbears actually, is that there's no real doubt the most efficient way to make a home home, a home energy efficient is to get a kick out the owners, and to fix the house from top to bottom in one go, and, and then let them back in when it's all being done. And that's definitely cheaper and more efficient. But that's not the way that human beings think. And most people will want to do things, you know, a bit at a time, maybe do some renovation to some improvement while they're changing the kitchen or when they're moving into a new house or what have you. And that's what we need to overlay to actually make this work in practice with what's called the The able to pay sector or the or the, you know, the average homeowner in the UK think, you

Rebecca Turnbull:

know, it's a behavioral challenge. And you have to make it simple for people to change their behavior. I mean, you were talking at the start, but how you were able to take those 156 questions, right down to three when you were working in the insurance sector. But one of the things that I find when I looked at Snoke, and I went onto your website and put my details and was, you had connected into a lot of public data, so you already knew a bit about my property, what I had done, what I hadn't done based on various bits and pieces of information, it was incredibly quick. B, have you any tips beyond like making things simple for helping people to change their behavior? Because I know that you, your customer, team, product, and marketing team are really focused on these aspects.

Unknown:

Yeah, and I mean, Jamie, our product guy, she really should be speaking to this. But I mean, his he's absolutely obsessed with brightly with talking to customers. And every single new feature or iteration will be tested with with human beings. And that's a very good way of, of getting us a little bit more real in terms of changes that we're making to the product. Yeah, I mean, just obviously getting into stepping in your customers shoes or whatever is what is what, what is absolutely critical. I think the key thing is I can't remember who mentioned, but it's actually really difficult to make things simple. With there's lots of complex data models in the background, trying to make trying to present something in a simple way to customers. And the easiest thing is just to present all that complexity to people. The difficult thing is, is a is trying to make it simple. And that's why, you know, Jamie's focus on you know, constant user testing is so important to us.

Rebecca Turnbull:

Absolutely. And we've talked there a little bit about the b2c side of your business and how anybody who you know it is a homeowner with go and find out how to meet their property and more energy efficient. Tell me a bit more about the b2b side of things. And how that works within snug.

Unknown:

Yeah, I think we want to move paste, and we want to reach a lot of people quickly, I think is probably the simplest way of summarizing. And therefore, it's more efficient for us to work with businesses that already have a significant customer base. And also, we're trying to do the same thing we are, which is help their customers make their homes more energy efficient. So it's also cheaper for us to go via a business rather than to spend, you know, on track attracting customers one by one. So we're working, particularly with banks on working at helping them help their customers and our kind of business model is b2b to see. So we just we try and present them with a really customer centric offer, that can can help help them achieve their their own business objectives. And that does work pretty pretty well, to date, we were speaking to and working with a number of utility companies as well who've obviously got a really significant vested interest in, in driving energy efficiency, that and even beyond that many, many large employers are trying to help their employees with their own energy efficiency measures as well. So there's quite a broad list of businesses that we can work through,

Rebecca Turnbull:

I can immediately see the value for banks there, but adding value to their customer base and helping them with something that's actually quite right. It is complex, where do you start? Where do you get the most return on investing in your property? How much value is that going to add to that individual's home. But I mean, that obviously, then adds value to the bank's assets, if they're owning mortgages and things like that. So it seems very virtuous that way. What other benefits are there for banks, and having those kind of partnerships with you,

Unknown:

banks increasingly want to be seen to be doing the right thing for their customers. And actually, a number of the banks that we speak to, I mean, that there's, you know, there's, there's definitely a commercial benefit to a bank in providing an opportunity for people to take additional lending against their mortgage. And that's, that's, you know, a significant commercial driver. But actually, when we speak to the banks, that they're largely driven by doing the right thing, things for their customers, particularly in the cost of living crisis, giving them ways to reduce their fuel bills, and, and what have you. So yeah, it is depends a little bit who we speak to, but yeah, that the banks want to, you know, they know they will succeed if the customers are happy, and, and can afford to have built their mortgage payments, so So that's largely the driver for them.

Rebecca Turnbull:

So you're really helping them secure the right customers for the future as well, because these are the customers who's, who are gonna have, you know, better financial standing, if they've been able to add more value to their properties, and manage it their costs more effectively. So

Unknown:

yes, but they are also aware of the kind of the risk of people becoming mortgage prisoners and you know, stuck in inefficient homes and not able to, you know, annoying would sell their product, property, etc. So, yeah, they name what we're helping with, or aiming to help them with is being able to target incentives. More specifically, a lot of the banks today, have pretty vanilla offers, that you can get 20 bits off a mortgage, or, you know, 500 pound incentive, if you're doing something that sounds green, there's a lot more sophistication that we can add to help depending on who the customer is and what they're doing to help incentivize them in a in a much more personalized way. So

Rebecca Turnbull:

it's really interesting, it's one of those things that just seems to keep growing as a business case for them. So looking at the wider kind of like net zero, economy and the sector that seems to be emerging a lot around clean tech and things like that. What do you think are the biggest opportunities just now for businesses?

Unknown:

I mean, the whole net zero challenges is absolutely enormous. You know, quite possibly the, you know, the biggest change in the economy, and that's happened for 100 years. So that that that really is it and I think people are starting to wake up to how significant this challenge is. Yeah, there are changes across the entire economy. Just homes make up about a fifth of total UK mission. So it's a big enough challenge in its own right. And even within that there's an enormous amount of organization that's needed across the supply chain to get every everybody from start to finish, able to actually improve these homes. But so I guess my advice would be find a sec find a sector that you're interested in, in the you can contribute to. And just focus on that, because pretty much all the sectors are going to be huge.

Rebecca Turnbull:

Yeah, totally. Are there any barriers to businesses going into those areas? Just naming there? There's obviously like, vast opportunities. But are there any challenges that you're seeing?

Unknown:

Yeah, I mean, it really is a little bit. I'm not saying this gold rush sounds wrong. But it is kind of, we're really at the start. I mean, you know, insulation has been around for decades. So I'm not going to pretend that the technology is new. But but we're just at the start of what needs to be a complete change in the way that the retrofit economy works. The biggest single barrier right now is there just aren't enough people available or to install heat bumps in insulation, I mean, that there's an all solar panels is just a massive, excessive demand at the moment. That has to get this but there's probably we probably need about another 200,000 installers in the UK in order to make this transition happen, and so that's an enormous change. The other thing is, on average, there's best still a high degree of consumer apathy that, again, given all the other challenges that people have today, decarbonizing their home is is is is not number one, or definitely for them. And it's very easy for them to get put off, because it is, it's difficult if you're in a home, where the only way of really improving its energy efficiency is to add internal wall insulation, that's massively disruptive to our house. And people can get put off really quickly. So we just need to encourage them to stick with it. And, you know, break it down into smaller parts and do it do the right things over time. But yeah, it's lots of lots of challenges. But you know, it's got, we got to do it, otherwise, the planet will burn or will continue to burn.

Rebecca Turnbull:

Yeah, is absolutely critical. And I think that people are only, like starting to wake up to the fact that this is a huge, huge challenge that we have to deal with. I think they're the way that you see there, there is some apathy is very true, people get very caught up in maybe like pushing the problem for the general AI is going to solve that or, or something else, and they maybe see AI as a bigger threat, rightly or wrongly. But this one is a definite, not a potential. So one, we definitely have to take very seriously and put as much of our creativity and innovation and hard work in solving. You touched on the some of the challenge challenges that are involved in this project, that, you know, we all have to see ourselves as part of what kind of talent challenges have you experienced, though, setting up your startup over the last year and a half, two years?

Unknown:

Yeah, I mean, I, this is my first real startup. So I've learned an enormous amount over the last year or so a couple of years. The key thing in a startup is you can't get the hiring decisions wrong. Or where it costs you enormously if you get them wrong. So it's been really critical to get to get the right people in. And to the great, I mean, it's actually it's quite, quite lucky. It's a sector which a lot of people want to work in. So there's people often positively motivated to work in it, which is good. And I think it's, and I'm met, as you'd expect massively happy with my team. And I think it's working really well. But you know, every you hire one person at a time and each new hire we make us, you know, kind of got to work. But, yeah, so, so far we've been, we've been really, really, really lucky. And, and we can we, you know, we've started with a relatively high reliance on contractors, which can kind of de risk things a little bit. And we can kind of look at people before we bring them in permanently. But yeah, just being, you know, obviously, people are the biggest asset and we're just being very, very careful about bringing the right people with the right skills.

Rebecca Turnbull:

And I think that leveraging, like fractional talent at a senior level, or you know, highly skilled free landscapers and contractors early on is something that actually a lot of startups sometimes shy away from doing, they look at the costs. And, you know, it is hard when you're a founder and your finite resources. And so if that is your money that maybe you have toiled and saved over the years, to think about paying people that amount, but it does give you greater access to like, the talent that you need on demand, rather than relying just on your own expertise, or the expertise of a small number of people, we all have different talents, and you want the right tool for the job.

Unknown:

Yeah, and I think ultimately, again, Jamie talks about mercenaries and missionaries that, you know, the missionaries are the people who really come on in the journey and, you know, take a risk themselves and join you as an employee. And, and, you know, contractors can be a little bit mercenary, and basically in it for the, it for the money, I think that's an oversimplification, we have, you know, the fractional resources, and contractors are all pretty dedicated, definitely. But ultimately, that they can, they can move to another job. And often they want to do multiple things at the same time. So we definitely want to move towards more full time employees, people who are in for the journey. And, you know, get back ultimately get rewarded appropriately.

Rebecca Turnbull:

And from what I've observed, you've built a lot of psychological safety and trust into the business people seem to really feel confident in their colleagues.

Unknown:

Yeah, we're pretty open team. And we say we kind of you know, people do what they need to do. I mean, people are pretty clear with the way we manage kind of accountabilities is through OKRs, which is objectives and key results. And that's been a really, actually a really good discipline that our one of our fractional welting people brought in as helped coaches on just having the whole team focused on quarterly objectives for the business, everyone being clear that we're all trying to achieve, you know, the common goals has been massively, massively got good. And culturally? I mean, I don't force I think, you know, lack of defensiveness, we will, everybody will challenge everyone else constructively. And, you know, just making sure that we, there's no defensiveness load, I think is super critical. But yeah, so, so far, so good.

Rebecca Turnbull:

I know that you have been, like building out your commercial function over the course of this year. One of the things that I find when I'm speaking to founders is they find it really hard to transition sales away from the founding team. And, you know, it's a combination of things like the, you know, getting revenue and growth is one of the most important things and ultimately, you know, the reason for being or what your investors might be looking for, but what tips do you have so far on building out a function so that you can start to release some of those responsibilities and skill?

Unknown:

Yeah, I mean, I don't think a founder can ever step away from growing the business and being accountable for the business. But yeah, you can't do you can't do everything all the time. And yeah, we made a really important hire, relatively recently, we've got absolutely spectacular head of business development. I can't remember who actually helps us find her, but they have to remind me but but we, we got Michelle on board, who is kind of, you know, just brilliant core FinTech BD capability. She hasn't really got climate tech background. But this picks it up incredibly well, I think just, you know, giving her enough confidence to get confident in her role bring her and skills to the role has worked really, really well. But I mean, I'm definitely still accountable for the overall kind of growth of the business, as Michelle pursues just helps us do just spectacular skills.

Rebecca Turnbull:

Well, that's really positive to hear. I think that one of the reasons that you have found that a smoother process than a lot of CEOs, so a lot of CEOs, they have a couple of false starts, or they don't quite know how much they can give away or it can be quite hard. You know, the salespeople can be expensive as well, which is another consideration. I think you were quite clear about what needed to be done. And, you know, could be that maybe some of that OPR discipline helped and that you knew what your end result was very clearly and the timescales around that. So that's definitely something that I would recommend that if if you are in that position, you want to make your life easier and have someone else bolster you in delivering the goals that are there in your business, be super clear about what they are. Because that is something which a lot of startups struggle with, especially when you're you could be you can we sell into these people at this point and those people, and then maybe there's another market that someone else identifies, and I think that you have been quite disciplined and focused.

Unknown:

Yeah, thank you, Rebecca. I mean, I think the, you know, the environment for FinTech at the moment is pretty, pretty tough. And, you know, in terms of where we are in our life cycle, where we, you know, we're early stage revenue. But we've got, you know, there's a ton of, we've had some great, great investor support, and we built a great product and the team, etc. And we've, you know, it takes time to build b2b relationships that we need, but you know, we're now at the point of, of driving revenue, and we, you know, that is a, you know, a key result, and particularly in a tough investment market, people want to see you delivering revenue. So, and that is, you know, to get that revenue is worth paying people to do it, because, you know, the business. If you costs display had to say higher than revenue for too long, you're going to have a pretty unpleasant end.

Rebecca Turnbull:

And I think understanding the goal also helped like and that timing of rounder with OKR, helps ensure that you don't get to solving that problem too late in the day. So it's really easy to delay making that higher, because it is expensive, plus, forgetting that that is your future runway that you are giving away sometimes that you're you're reducing the lifespan of the business, depending on the investment climate.

Unknown:

Yeah, exactly. And I think that's kind of I'm not saying I found you, I've got it, everyone's got a plan somewhere. In some PowerPoint somewhere, but actually, the hiring process has been really quite straightforward that we've had an urge of pretty urgent need for somebody and brought them in. And it's been clear where we've where we've needed to fill the gap as we've gone along. So far, and you know, with with the BD when Michelle, you know, it was it was becoming really critical that we needed some additional support to to get more discipline around around the revenue side. And again, we've got, I mean, there's just absolute transformation in terms of discipline on managing the CRM and managing the pipeline effectively. And we just just implemented HubSpot, which is just, you know, in last few months, absolutely nine day between, you know, trying to run stuff on a spreadsheet or even worse, versus actually having far, far more discipline in terms of our magic CRM.

Rebecca Turnbull:

And it's good to hear that you have used hirings a chance to kind of like level up and do things that you never get round to doing yourself when it's ultimately a much smaller team. And, you know, putting their kind of future scalability in place quite early on is something that's important.

Unknown:

Yeah. It's so difficult. And I kind of, I say, to be, you know, my, my kind of core skill is probably in a scale up. And I've worked for large organizations for most of my career and built and grown large organizations. And doing, you know, literally being employee number one of our businesses is a very odd position. And each of the hence the highest we've done, there's always a question, well, this person could be the future C suite person in a much bigger business, or they could not. And frankly, it doesn't really matter what depending on what their ultimate capability and ambition is. But they're there if they're the right person, for the role now, and they've got capacity to grow 510 folds in the next couple of years. That's fine by me. And, yeah, I guess the key thing in a in a startup is you can't you can't just hire for today's role, because things are moving so quickly. We need people to be ready for what they're going to be confronted in 18 months, two years. No.

Rebecca Turnbull:

Totally. And getting that balance can be quite challenging, which is I think, where understanding the difference between competency experience and skill comes into play when you're working out what you really need. I mean, you need to have the skills to deliver now you want the competency that's really gonna grow and experience. You need some but it's not as important as attitude. I would always say, when you're in a growth environment

Unknown:

Yeah, exactly. And I think that the ability of the team to help each other as well, we've got some gray hairs mine included in the business and, and some, some really young people coming through. And I think just that common combination of that, you know, some massive enthusiasm, and McAfee abundance with a bit more experience, I think can can work really, really well. But yet, you know, we want to we need to grow the business really rapidly. And we need to grow rapidly without wasting the shareholders money. So, you know, people know, I'm pretty tight on money, but equally I'll spend, I'll spend it appropriately I need to, and I think we all just need to have that. That mission, you know, I want to be Yeah, any, any investor. So the next stage is gonna be looking for 1020 time growth opportunity in the business, and we just need to be confident that we can make that happen. Yeah, definitely.

Rebecca Turnbull:

And, you know, obviously, one of the things we haven't really touched on yet is you actually transition from corporate life. What are you Lashley, international Digital Development Director, Aviva into the startup world? So you would have been fully aware of that going into this venture. But what kind of tips do you have for people who are in senior roles in corporate businesses that are considering founding a business? Because it is, you know, it's a huge change?

Unknown:

Yeah, I think you've got to want to do I mean, I always, despite having worked in corporate on those kind of psychographic profiles always came out as a bit of a risk taker. And I think that's, you've got to be willing, sure, to deal with a huge amount of uncertainty. Otherwise, I think his stress levels could be pretty enormous anyway, but I think they could, they could be pretty unpleasant. I actually thoroughly enjoyed it. I think it's fantastic. And, yeah, there's a dip in financially such a weird way of looking at it. I mean, you know, if other people say, you know, the wealth is that if you want to make if you want to make a lot of wealth, do your own business, if that's the way you know, get the wealthiest people in the world. But genuinely, the people who make most money, generally start their own business, but when you're in a business, money is absolutely irrelevant. And he just basically trying to deal with 100,000 challenges all at the same time, and the risk that it occurred in a few months, or turn to nothing, so you've got to want to do it, because you want to run a startup. And because you want the challenge of doing that. And if that is the case, go for it. And I personally I've used I've built various skills over the last over the years, and I'm just trying to leverage them as much as possible into this business.

Rebecca Turnbull:

So it may give appetite for risk, and you know, fully understanding what that means to you. And not not just you, but to the people around you, I think is something that's quite often overlooked when people are considering these decisions, it can be hugely rewarding, but it does, it does take a certain level of resilience,

Unknown:

ya know, something you don't really ever turn off. I mean, the hours aren't really relevant, but it's something that I don't it was just me, but when you're when you're your own business, it's something you're constantly thinking about. And if that's not something that you enjoy, or willing to tolerate, then you probably should think about another role. But I just have to say, I love it. And I got I think the other thing with the team is, you know, it's important to kind of transfer that enthusiasm to the team as well. I mean, they're not all as motivated as you might be, you know, for the success of the business. But it is, you know, there are other reasons why they come to work other than just, you know, what, having founded a business themselves. So, yeah, it's tricky, that enthusiasm with people is is important.

Rebecca Turnbull:

And I imagine that it's much easier when you have the kind of purpose and the challenge to overcome the small gays part of the solution for that one of the things I've noticed is like Tech for Good is something that many job seekers, especially like senior C level execs, are looking to be more involved in. I think that people want to be more involved in a company that has a strong purpose, especially with a netzero mission. Maybe like something to do with health care or education can also be quite popular. What kind of advice do you have for people who are looking to come by something like pure FinTech or gamble, gambling, that want to get involved in something like net zero, and Tech for Good? Yeah, I

Unknown:

think the key thing is is thinking about the transferable skill. And, you know, not be it, you know, someone who's a gambling, vertical expert doesn't have to spend their time in that at all. I mean, I think one of the eyes used to work with a guy, he was worked for one of the big gambling, businesses, and they are spectacularly good at behavioral economics, behavioral economics, nudges, etc. You can apply that there in that, that technology to climate change as much as you can to getting someone to spend another 10 quid on the Roulette. So I think those trends, those transferable skills are, what what to think about, and there's tons of them.

Rebecca Turnbull:

Yeah, and it's good to hear that you are so open to people from different sectors. But I think netzero and clean energy and climate tech in particular, are fantastic opportunities for people from more traditional backgrounds that want to get involved in startups, because we just don't have enough people who have got that domain knowledge and expertise, it's still early days, are there any things you would advise people to look at if they're interested in getting into the climate tech, any websites, conferences, books, resources,

Unknown:

actually, I went to a great conference, I only found out about a week before it was on but innovation zero was in London a few months ago, it's gonna be kind of in June next year, as well, that conferences was really, really good it was it was free to go, which was good as well. And had a whole bunch of people across Xero activity, talking about their challenges. So those conferences, particularly the free ones that go to often just subscribe to, you know, subscribe to every newsletter you can get. And you'll quickly work work out which ones are useful or not. I've got to do my bragging rights. And so I'm just going to the New York climate week that has been supported by Scottish Development and International, which is great, and that, again, that that I think that that's a combination of multiple different conferences all in New York at the same time. And I'm just going to immerse myself in all the stuff that's going on and see what I can bring back here and see what we can take from, from our business here into into the states,

Rebecca Turnbull:

totally. And even if you're in the UK, and you're wanting to learn more about the home energy market, then just signing up for snug and looking at your social media is a great place to start to learn about all the things you can do on a personal level and just gain a bit more of an understanding of the sector.

Unknown:

Yeah, definitely. Thank you for that blog. It's no problem. So it's been lovely catching up with you again, Robin,

Rebecca Turnbull:

I will obviously be in touch. I hope to have you back. I can't wait to hear all about the weekend, New York that you have. And, you know, there's a lot more things we could have touched on it if someone is listening to this. And they're also facing that chicken and egg challenge arrived marketplaces that should listen to a recent episode with shoresh Nadkarni that was recorded. And you know, he he has a phenomenal track record in building marketplaces. I think one of his companies, he got nearly 15 million users in three years, nine months, something impressive like that. So well worth worth checking out if you're a startup in that space. So yeah, thanks very much for joining us and sharing all of your information and experience.

Unknown:

Thank you, Rebecca.

Rebecca Turnbull:

Thanks for listening to the Listen perspective. I'm Rebecca Hastings, founder and director at the Lucent group, a tech sector executive search and talent consultancy. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, share it with others posted about it on social media or leave a rating and review. If you're a company looking to hire top technology leaders, or you'd like to discuss your next move, please reach out to me on LinkedIn or send me an email to Rebecca at the Listen group at dog co.uk. Thanks again for listening today.