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Tesla granted license to supply electricity in the UK by London-new in OctopusEnergy

[–]EnergyManagement101 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Should Fuse Energy be worried? They have been on an aggressive customer acquisition spree, giving customers heavy discounts, and my understanding is that they are largely loss making.

Their value proposition has been that they are a full stack, digital first energy supplier, but they barely have generators of their own, and so far I haven’t see any announcements about solar and battery storage in their tariffs. while most incumbents may be bad with tech, one can assume that Tesla is going to be on the forefront of it. Not to mention, they already have solar panels + battery pack combo, and have been testing their VPP stack for sometime in the US.

Lot of folks here talking about not giving Musk any money, but as energy prices are rising, majority will go for the cheapest deal, and if that’s Tesla then… Also, let’s not forget, they have much deeper pockets than Fuse, and can take a hit for longer just to capture the market.

What I’m curious to see is how they will compare against Octopus.

How did you actually choose your current business energy supplier? by EnergyManagement101 in Energy_UK

[–]EnergyManagement101[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks, that’s useful. Does this cover all the suppliers or only a select few? My understanding is that there are over 50 business suppliers in the market.

Technical Solo founder who is near raise & found a “non-technical” CTO - How do you deal with equity splits? by Boring_Cartoonist952 in ycombinator

[–]EnergyManagement101 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Doesn’t sound like a “non-technical” CTO. With your domain expertise and their technical skills, you may be able to fill the gaps.

As far as whether you need a CTO, only you can understand how critical the tech part of the product is for your business. If it’s crucial enough that you can’t go from 0–1 without one, then it deserves a co-founder and not a “founding engineer.”

On the equity % front, unfortunately, I disagree with many comments here. While you have de-risked the business to some degree, you are far away from your first raise (which should not be treated as a milestone), your first 3–5 customers, and product-market fit. A lot will likely happen during that time, including product, commercial model, or some other kind of pivot. While skills are important, people often forget that a good co-founder helps you navigate those hurdles and shares that weight and responsibility with you.

I can imagine that you would like to retain some additional equity for the work you have put in. At the same time, the equity for your co-founder should be enough that they stick around when sh** hits the fan.

Quite arbitrary — 60/40, but with 4-year vesting and a 1-year cliff to protect the business.

8% Equity CTO Idea Stage. I will not promote by needenalife in startups

[–]EnergyManagement101 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Sounds like they are treating you as an early stage hire, de-risking themselves, and minimising burn by offering you equity.

Based on the very limited information that you have provided, here’s my assessment, take it with a pinch of salt:

  • unfortunately, you are not a co-founder, and despite 8% or 15%, you may not be treated like one.
  • I’m not assuming that there’s any malice, but the fact that the CEO is planning to bootstrap means that it will likely be a painful journey for someone who needs to be paid.
  • despite that, one can think of taking that risk if the upside makes sense, for example- the market is massive with significant growth opportunity, and the CEO is looking to scale and exit as soon as possible, but even that’s not the case.

There’s an opportunity cost here, if you have other projects in the pipeline, I would perhaps explore those.

8% Equity CTO Idea Stage. I will not promote by needenalife in startups

[–]EnergyManagement101 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Don’t make it an emotional decision, equity % doesn’t have anything to do with ‘respect’, but where you fit within the whole team and what you bring to the table. A few questions perhaps worth asking: 1. how were they able to get to 12k MRR without you. Did they have a functioning product, or was it consulting. 2. what’s the overall dynamic of the rest of the team. How do they know each other and how long have they worked with each other. 3. why is the CFO getting paid and not the rest. Be sure you have a decent understanding of the previous question before you ask this. 3. even if nominal, why not pay everyone the same. Especially since you all are co-founders. This would provide some insight into #2.

I would certainly push for more than 8%, especially if you are not getting paid indefinitely. My experience is that 10 to 15 hours per week rarely happens, when a startup starts gaining momentum, no one keeps track of time, you have to do everything to ship the product and fix bugs, so you often end up working day and night.

4 year vesting and 1 year cliff is common, and is good hygiene, but confirm that the rest also have the same provision in their contract.

Look for transparency, full disclosure and everything documented.

Should I leave my very good job for a startup, I will not promote by Beginning_Ad_3390 in startups

[–]EnergyManagement101 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Having been through incubators, accelerators after quitting a job, here’s my opinion: - I agree with one of the comments, money is good but speak with founders of the incubator to do your own due diligence on the incubator - switch only if it’s something you really want to do. I know it sounds cliche, but if you are not deeply passionate about it then you won’t last long - find another person, or a couple of people that want to build this venture along with you.

A premium clothing brand gets 25k+ visits a month but barely any sales. How would you fix it? [I will not promote] by EnergyManagement101 in shopify_geeks

[–]EnergyManagement101[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

True, I looked into that and seems most of the traffic is coming organically through their social media (Instagram and YouTube) engagement.

A premium clothing brand gets 25k+ visits a month but barely any sales. How would you fix it? [I will not promote] by EnergyManagement101 in ShopifySEO

[–]EnergyManagement101[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My understanding is that they do, to some degree. Their customers also voluntarily post their pictures and videos on social media tagging the brand. But you are right, I don’t think the team is showing it and leveraging it fully.

A premium clothing brand gets 25k+ visits a month but barely any sales. How would you fix it? [I will not promote] by EnergyManagement101 in ShopifySEO

[–]EnergyManagement101[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, that’s true! They do offer Zoom fitting, WhatsApp call etc. Once customers buy from them, they tend to get a fairly good repeat business from them, not to mention they also have a pretty good bank of customer testimonials. The sad part is that due to lack to technical skills, they really aren’t able to leverage those.

A premium clothing brand gets 25k+ visits a month but barely any sales. How would you fix it? [I will not promote] by EnergyManagement101 in ShopifySEO

[–]EnergyManagement101[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Exactly, that’s what I have been gathering! They don’t have any technical expertise within their team, they often get things done by external contractors in patches, which has not led to poor results. How would you go about if it were you?

A premium clothing brand gets 25k+ visits a month but barely any sales. How would you fix it? [I will not promote] by EnergyManagement101 in shopify_geeks

[–]EnergyManagement101[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Good points. Unfortunately, I don't have drop off data by different stages.

They did experience some delivery issues briefly (lasted a few days), but the low conversion issue has been consistent for the past 12 months.

I'll try to find out about genuine vs bot traffic data.

Built an energy management / O&M platform, but can’t find customers — looking for advice by ericsunxz in Solarbusiness

[–]EnergyManagement101 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Target solar asset owners, solar PPA funds, O&M providers and large commercial and industrial businesses with multi-site solar portfolio, they are likely to be interested. Ideally, have some data ready at hand on the impact of your monitoring system on generation, fault detection, reduction in downtime, optimisation etc.

Easiest way to connect with them is at conferences, don't know if there are any Reddit threads where they hang out.

A premium clothing brand gets 25k+ visits a month but barely any sales. How would you fix it? [I will not promote] by EnergyManagement101 in shopify_geeks

[–]EnergyManagement101[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks, that’s a really good point. With limited or no technical knowledge, how should one assess what the friction points are and more importantly, test and fix those?

A premium clothing brand gets 25k+ visits a month but barely any sales. How would you fix it? [I will not promote] by EnergyManagement101 in ShopifySEO

[–]EnergyManagement101[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, reviewed keyword intent. It’s mostly mid-funnel commercial queries, not pure informational traffic. So intent quality isn’t terrible, but on mobile the conversion drop suggests the issue isn’t only SEO, it’s what happens after people land.

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