Scaling an Energy Management Venture: Martin Manniche, CEO of Greenwave Systems (Part 5)

Martin Manniche: During the process of starting an energy management system, we built proof points on smart cities and smart country. We built proof points in consumer to consumer with connected lighting technology. We build integration with connected cars. We then said, “We need to control the home network.” We make them and get it out to millions and millions of homes. Then we needed to control the software that sits in the home for the voice.

Now we control voice, broadband, the ability to have devices commissioned on a managed network, the ability to build and manage services for these operators so it’s not Google or Apple that own the services store and build a different relationship to limit churn for their customers. That’s how Greenwave has grown today to be a company that is worth more than half a billion dollars. We just started taking off.

Sramana Mitra: Entrepreneur journeys story is a bit more of a granular step-by-step story. Let me probe a bit so that we can understand how you did what you did. You said you got a European utility as a first customer right after your $6 million Series A.

Then you realized that utility was not the place where you wanted to play, because these guys don’t have the relationships with the customers that you needed to do your part of the puzzle. How did you switch your go-to market strategy when you came to that realization? Did you start selling directly to the enterprises who wanted to do energy management?

Martin Manniche: Initially, we were working with utilities around the world in different segments both for integration into smart meters, solar integration, and other integration for smart grid. Then we saw that that market was moving, but it was growing too slow. We were not interested in building a $30 million company. We were interested in building a billion-dollar company. However, we kept it going and didn’t remove it.

We got investment at that time from Eon, which is Europe’s biggest utility. That was a good proof point to show that we were serious in that segment. At the same time, we started another technology segment on the platform, which was the connectivity part to smart home. We wanted to make sure that we could architect it in a way that it would be ready for all the newest technology. We made the world’s first connected lightbulb. We used a partnership with a company called TCP and distributed via Home Depot in the US.

At that point, we proved that we could also make that for the residential home. It’s simplified enough that it can be sold in retail. It’s a little gateway and some lightbulbs. That was the second part of the growing. Now we had the connected lighting solution, and we had energy management. The next step was going into the telco operator space. We talked to a lot of different operators we knew. In the telecommunications (telco) space, we went in and asked, as a consultant partner, “What would you really like to change in the way you do business?”

This segment is part 5 in the series : Scaling an Energy Management Venture: Martin Manniche, CEO of Greenwave Systems
1 2 3 4 5 6 7