20 - How smart tech is revolutionising the energy industry with Peter Bance (CEO @ Origami Energy)

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Hello, Peter.

Hi.

Thanks for coming on the podcast.

My pleasure.

We're here in our new London office, Modo's new London office. So anybody who's watching this, please do come and see us in our office. And we've got a dog with us today because he insisted on coming with us. So please meet Ted, the newest member of the team.

Peter, thanks for coming on. We're going to talk today about--

well, we're going to do the founder story a little bit, so where you come from and what's all that about, what's Origami up to.

You, of course, are CEO and founder of Origami Energy, which has done a lot in the last seven or eight years, and it's got ambitious plans for the future.

And then we're going to talk about the general energy system, what's happening. So firstly, Peter, who are you, and why are we speaking?

Yeah, so who am I? You can probably tell by my Canadian accent I grew up not here. So I grew up in Canada, and I guess as an outdoorsy kind of person.

I always wanted to look after nature. So when I ended up training in technology, I thought, maybe I can combine the two. So really I'm a Canadian who cares about the planet, the environment, nature, but actually I'm a techno geek, and that's really become my career. So that's kind of who I am, is a technology-based entrepreneur that's trying to do stuff in the sustainability sector.

And so you are a STEM person? You're in physics or something?

Yeah, I did a PhD in physics at Oxford University. That's what got me over here from Canada. So I've been in the--

been in Britain since the mid-1990s.

And let's--

for a second--

we were having a coffee before this, and we've got to talk about one thing, which is skiing up mountains. So what's the skiing thing?

Yeah, there are two types of skiing. Most people enjoy downhill skiing where the hard work of going up the mountain is done by a machine and then you cruise down and look cool and wear the nice sunglasses and then go to the cafe or the bar. Cross-country skiing is quite different.

That's all about spending most of your time, by definition, skiing up a hill with a lot of effort, pain and hard work, and then the reward is going down. But yeah, usually it's up and down up and down mountains for hours and hours and hours while you're sweating and working very, very hard.

It sounds enjoyable, perhaps. Do you do it on your own or with a big team, or with dogs?

Yeah, it can be both, alone or as a team, sometimes as a relay.

Usually with someone else just for safety reasons. If you're going to be in the middle of the Arctic Tundra somewhere, it's best not to do it by yourself in case you break something, including your leg or just a piece of equipment. So yeah, usually I did it with friends or family or something, especially if it's a point-to-point multi-day kind of week-long ski in the middle of nowhere. Back up is good--

Oh, wow, this escalated. So we're now talking point--

these are all words that sound very impressive. Point-to-point week-long escapades.

Yeah, unless you get to the cabin at the end of the day, you die. So it's good incentive to keep going.

And so now instead you're running a company that is mostly in offices or on laptops. The complete opposite. A nice, warm trendy offices, just basically coding all day.

Yeah, exactly. We're a bunch of software geeks typing in laptops or on the phone with a customer or an investor or somebody else, yeah. So it's a much more sanitized environment than the backwoods, that's for sure.

And what's Origami about?

Well, yeah, we're going to talk about your previous business and experience before that in a second, but let's talk Origami. You've been doing it for a few years now. What's the company all about?

Yeah, so why did I create it in the first place? Maybe I'll start there. Because when I finished my first stint as CEO and I took that company public--

and I was tired. I wanted a break. I needed to recharge. Pardon the pun.

So I spent two or three years doing a few different things, including working in an investment company here in London. It's called Octopus. You might know it. Anyway, so I was working part--

Octopus. Never heard of Octopus. What on Earth is Octopus? Who is this guy, Greg? Yeah.

So I was working actually with their venture capital team that were investing in digital startups, not in energy actually. They didn't like that. And also a bit with their energy asset investing operations, building out huge solar farms basically, and nothing in between. I thought, that's interesting.

When is this? Is this like early 2010s?

Yeah, exactly, exactly. So I thought, there's a really quite good investor, they know what they're doing, they invest millions into digital startups, cool, and they invest billions into physical energy assets for the green energy transition, but literally zero on the overlap. I thought, this is crazy. This is an opportunity.

So that's why I thought I'd create a business in that intersection between the physics of energy assets and the economics of markets, and the digital glue in between was going to be Origami. So when I quit Octopus just to go full bore at Origami, they said, hey, pitch me the deal. So I pitched them the deal and they gave me a 2 million pound check as I left the building. So that was kind of the origins of Origami.

OK. And how big is the company?

Where is the company based? Where do you operate? Who's involved? Let's get an idea of scale.

Sure. So we're--

depending how you count--

around 60 or 70 people full-time, some contractors. Main operations are in Cambridge. It's kind of tech alley in the UK for those of you listeners who might not know. It's a bit like the MIT of Europe and university [INAUDIBLE].

Well, we say that in Birmingham we're the tech canal.

PETER BANCE: OK, very nice.

And there's a tech roundabout and there's a--

so we're going to have some sort of--

there'll be some sort of Harry Hill style fights about this at some point.

The silicon fan in Cambridge and the silicon roundabout around [? Old ?]

[? Street. ?]

QUENTIN SCRIMSHIRE: Oxford's got one as well. What does Oxford call itself? The Silicon--

Silicon Spires, maybe.

Yes, something like that.

Anyway, there'll be some sort of contest, I'm sure.

There will be a winner. So yeah, you're based in Cambridge.

That's right. We also have an office in London, about a dozen people in London, but the majority of them are in Cambridge. We have a few people in Europe and Germany and Austria in the kind of center of Europe because that's a growth area for us. So yeah, we look for people who are talented. Geography is secondary.

OK, cool. And who's the customer? And what's the problem that Origami solves for them?

Yeah, OK, so we are an out and out tech company. And I think a lot of startups find their way in the early years to really focus in on what we actually love to do. And I put my hand weigh up saying we were clearing the fog in the early days as well as the business. So now we've nailed our colors firmly to the mass, that we're an out and out independent tech platform.

And that independent word I'm sure we're going to come back to. But basically, we're not attached to a particular asset fleet or a particular trading desk or a particular route to market. We're an independent tech layer that our customers use. And our customers can, in theory, be anybody, but actually right now we're absolutely focused on asset owner operators, usually around flexible assets, batteries in particular, but also other types of flexibility because renewables energy systems need flexibility to work. So we're focused on those kind of assets, but also energy services companies that also build out assets but maybe behind the meter for customers.

So one way or another, our customers are into physical stuff, into assets, usually flexible ones that help balance green energy systems, and either in front of the meter or behind the meter, so there either is another customer on site or there isn't. It's just plugged into the grid somewhere.

And what problem does the platform solve?

OK, so I guess the three simplest English words I can think of that would describe why a customer--

QUENTIN SCRIMSHIRE: Let's do it. Talk to me like I'm a five-year-old.

Yeah, exactly. So dear five-year-old, or my son when he asked what I do, so we help our customers see what's going on, decide what to do about it and then do it. So see, decide, do. There's a chain of events where you need to see what's going on to make good decisions and see what's going on from physical sources like assets or financial sources like markets or contractual sources like power purchase agreements or other legal things.

Decide what to do about it. What's the best thing to do to either make money or save carbon or any other kind of use case you're trying to optimize and then make it happen, do it. And that do it can be something physical or something financial, dispatch an asset or place a trade. So you kind of bridge that physical, financial divide across that chain of events, across see, decide, do.

OK. And what sort of--

are you able to name drop some customers so we can get some--

we can put--

I don't even know what the phrase is here. Insert phrase here that's going to help us know what's going on.

PETER BANCE: That's right.

Who are your customers?

Plant a flag.

Plant a flag. There you go. I can't do this right. Who are your customers?

So one customer we've recently announced is a customer in Manchester, that's where they're based anyway, although their global is Elim, Elim Energy. So what they do is they call themselves an energy services company, so they offer their customers a way of going green, a way of saving money, about of generating new revenue.

So quite often what they do is they deploy some new assets.

It could be combined heat and power system or batteries or solar panels on the roof, and they combine that with energy that's being used or generated on that site, and they give an economic and environmental return for all of that stuff pulled together. And really what we do for them is we provide a layer of technology. In fact, we just signed a 20 year software as a service deal with them. So they'll be using our platform for the next 20 years and plugging various stuff into it over that 20 years.

And I guess that's the key feature of an independent tech platform like Origami, is that we don't know what the future is going to hold. If anybody claims to, they're probably a liar or delusional or something. So by putting that layer of technology down for a multiyear period, you can then decide, or the customer in particular can decide, what route to market they want to plug in or whether they want to switch trading part of their portfolio with a different route to market depending what returns are being generated. So it gives them that control and transparency to decide how they want to run their operations, their business, and whether they want to plug different stuff into that platform over time.

So in that particular use case, I can imagine--

so that sounds like optimizing assets behind the meter to provide--

I really like the way you said that--

financial, economic, and environmental return, which the environmental return is a little bit--

it doesn't fit on an Excel spreadsheet, but it's an intangible, but it's real. Well, you probably can put it on a spreadsheet with carbon and stuff. So your software will serve that site and make sure it is optimized to do either or both of economic and environmental return.

OK. And so I imagine there's a few aspects to that. There's a physical layer. You've got to control assets. You've got to be able to predict market prices.

You've got to have some sort of interface to a human and maybe some reporting, maybe some performance reporting, too, and then some help for people who need to go and do maintenance. There's a few different user types in there. And that's one, that's behind the meter. You guys also do some front of the meter stuff as well--

PETER BANCE: Yeah, that's right.

--for trading desks and some big outfits.

Yeah. So one recent deal we announced was with Gresham House, one of the Giants in the battery world in the UK. And in the particular feature there, which is similar to all of the other customers that were signing, is that there's a third party involved. In fact, there'll be several. Habitat is the optimizer for some of those batteries, those 10 or 40 megawatt batteries that are on our platform. So again, the setup is the same where our customer wants to use our technology.

They happen to have one or several different route to market trade or optimizers that they like to work with. And we can integrate with those different outfits. So being able to plug in different routes to market in either different bits of the portfolio, or in time they want to switch one year from one to another on the same bit of the portfolio, we're agnostic. That's a really important foundational belief that I had when I founded the company, was we need to be scrupulously commercially neutral.

We're not going to play markets or have preferred preferences, I guess what you say. So being able to facilitate different interfaces to different routes to market is absolutely fundamental to what we do.

This is turning on its head though, I've just realized, because until--

well, most deals until now, the way that our--

we're battery people, right? I can only think about things through a battery lens. It's all I bang on about. Everybody who knows me knows me for that.

But for front of the meter assets, until now pretty much all of them you--

we've got Modo Battery Co., and we own a battery.

And we go up to an optimizer, and usually the optimizer chooses the whole like technology layer. They choose how it's optimized, whether the reporting, the data I can get, all of that. Well, this, what you're saying, if I understand, is Gresham House or another asset owner can come to Origami and say, you know what? I'm going to choose the technology, and then the optimizers, the route to market guys, have got to plug into that.

PETER BANCE: Exactly.

I'm a sophisticated operator. I need a lot more data. I understand what's going on with these assets, and I need some sort of technology to help me do that.

That is absolutely what we're doing. We're basically defining a new product category that probably five years ago didn't exist. There were asset investor owner operators that built stuff and there were routes to market traders that made money from that stuff, and it was just two parties in that relationship. Defense and offense. Whatever you want to describe it.

But now there's a third party, an independent technology provider that says, OK, dear sophisticated, increasingly sophisticated, increasingly complicated battery owner, operator, investor, you should probably have your own technology to make your own choices, get your own control, get your own transparency of what you want to do with that fleet and then different traders can interface with that technology layer here, there or wherever. So you give the control and the transparency to the customer. They can then plug in different routes to market through increasingly standardized interfaces into that technology layer, which they then have control over. So it's a fundamentally new category in the market.

I've got to ask you about this then. So that role, one of the things that I can think at the back of my head from my Kiwi Power days was that interface risk and all of the third parties that you have to interface with can be very costly. You can be a fantastic technology and software organization, but half of the interface side is a third party, which is outside of your control.

And we, when I was at Kiwi, one of the things we talked about a lot, but we never quite got there. And I think it was a timing thing. We might be ready for that now. Is standardization for interfaces. So instead of you saying to a route to market, what do you need? Tell me how to connect the modbus or whatever it is you're interfacing.

Instead you say, OK, this is the standard. It's a well-thought out standard. You can do everything you need to this.

In some cases it's a lot more complicated than just an API, but here we go. Here's a standard. If you want to work with us, this is what you've got to work to.

And we never quite got there. And I wonder whether you have to do that, you're standardizing for all these guys. Is that how you're thinking about it, or have I jumped ahead?

Yeah. Not really, but I think the way that our CTO would describe it--

so when I hired Steve, he's an absolute rock star technologist, and I'm so glad we have him. When he joined, during the interview, he said, you know what, Peter? I think what you want me to do is to build a change engine. And I honestly didn't have a clue what the heck he was talking about, and actually now I do.

And he was absolutely right, which is rather than pretend you've got perfect foresight of knowing exactly what interface you're going to need or what value pool is going to be flavor of the month for this particular asset class, we have no idea. So what we need to get good at is adapting quickly and enabling different interfaces to be spun up within minutes.

So what we could get good at is facilitating change with our technology. That is the absolute essence of what we do. So we do multiple releases a day for that very reason, is that you get good at change. So rather than solving a static problem with a super fixed solution, you still have the dynamic problem by being able to adapt it and adapt it constantly, but with some bedrock that you know is going to be there for the long haul.

And that's how our customers see it, too. That technology bedrock that we provide them, 20 years SaaS is a long time, but they know that they can plug in different stuff to it over the months and years to come, and that gives them the--

I guess historically they're looking for commercial certainty through really long-term PPAs and pricing deals. Now they get that certainty through technology certainty and knowing that the commercial wins will come and go and the sands will shift, but the tech will stay there.

So basically the complete opposite of what I suggested, but yeah, it sounds like you've thought it through.

I guess a 20 year deal--

20 year deals are very rare in [? Sussex. ?]

It's almost like the enterprise sales--

almost like box software thing from the '90s, I guess, because people don't want to sign those kind of contracts these days.

So you must have had to demonstrate so much future flexibility to that customer to get that over the line. So all kudos to you and the team. Everybody wants long-term contracts, and that's fantastic.

Yeah, I'm not going to bang on about Modo, but yeah, we've talked about this a lot. What is the right--

it is it monthly? Is it quarterly? Is it yearly? Is it multiyear? It's a tricky question.

It is a tricky question. And I guess the key thing you have to do if you are positioned the way we are, is to say, OK, there's a third party here, an independent technology platform that you can use, which is distinct and separate from either the asset owner or the route to market provider. You've got to be prepared to build and iterate and support that for the long haul. And really that's what we've set up to do, is to be that totally trusted bomb proof layer on top of which you can put the fast and furious adaptations, new applications can be spun up quite quickly, but the foundations are rock solid.

So I guess that's the distinction I'd like to paint, is that there is a primitive foundational layer of ingesting data or handing physical dispatch or ingesting prices, all that kind of stuff, which is rock solid, but then on top of that, we can't even dream of some of the applications that either we or actually our customers are going to develop on top of that platform over the years to come. So what you get good at is never ending change, but with some foundations which are rock solid.

There's another customer type that I think you guys serve--

some big ones, which is--

you mentioned PPAs earlier. So PPA off-takers or trading houses, I don't know how you want to describe it. Don't you guys do some physical dispatch for those guys as well, and some screens and other bits?

Yeah, that's right. So one of our customers that's in the public domain is Smartest Energy. They're one of the largest renewables off-takers in the UK, and they buy from gigawatts of solar and wind farms. They provide a route to market for those green assets and they trade complicated trading strategies. They're now a trading house really. But contractually, when they sell to customers, they sign contracts called power purchase agreements, PPAs.

So what they're trying to do is deal with the complexity of figuring out what each and every one of those assets is doing. Quite often they're under its own separate contract.

And then figuring out whether the forecast of what should be produced by that solar farm, what's actually being produced by that solar farm is the same or it's different. So trying to do kind of forecast management in a way.

So that's another module that we put on our platform. It's called forecast management. So we don't pretend to have the best forecast, but what we do do is provide a really easy way of saying what they got is a forecast from their renewables customer, and what's actually being produced, is it the same, or is it different? And then they can act on that as a trader. So providing the real time data and the actual insights that lets them adjust their trading on the hoof.

So yeah, we do ingest data and provide that platform to trader off-takers like Smartest. It lets them manage their in balance as a trading house. It lets them either see the overall big picture, all the assets put together, or drilling down into individual sites within a given PPA. They can zoom in or zoom out to their asset fleet.

Cool. Cool. And just to be clear, I think you said it earlier, but you guys don't take any positions in the markets.

We don't and we never will. We've made an absolutely rock solid decision on that, a point of religion.

QUENTIN SCRIMSHIRE: So you're not an optimizer.

We're not an optimizer. We build technology to help our customers optimize stuff, to manage their forecast, to develop cool new strategies, but we won't play in the markets ourselves. We'll help tool up other people to do that, but we're not going to do that ourselves. We're never going to compete against our customers. That's an invidious position to be in.

OK, cool. And I've got to ask you about before Origami. You said that you took a company public.

PETER BANCE: Yeah.

So I assume you mean by that as in floating on the stock market.

Yeah. I joined as CEO when it was a startup.

It actually spun out of a university and then raised some money privately and then took it public on AIM here in London. And then managed it as a publicly listed company for a few years, raised some secondary placings after that. So managing the nomads, the brokers, the analysts, life as a publicly listed CEO is a wild old ride and has its pros and cons, let me tell you,

I've got to ask a couple of questions about it. So firstly, did you ring the bell?

PETER BANCE: Yes, I did.

You did get to.

PETER BANCE: It was exciting.

The whole point. That's the game in life. You've got to ring that bell.

PETER BANCE: It was a moment.

We dream, right? Modo is a small private company right now, but certainly Tim and I dream that one day we'll go public. We're going to take this thing all the way. And we were in the pub the other day, and we were discussing--

because we don't really know anything really about anything, but we were discussing some of the reporting requirements of being a public company.

And so how do they compare? What's a private company like? And we're going well off topic here, but I don't get to talk to these sort of people very often. So what's a private company like? And what's a public company like to run?

Yeah. So they, in some ways, they're the same.

People are important, customers are important, money's--

all the standard business stuff is pretty much the same, but the sheer overhead of managing the public markets is like having a whole new stakeholder group to manage in your life. So you have a day job as a CEO, and that's the same as a public and a private company, but in addition, you've then got this whole new group of stakeholders in the public market. So you've got brokers, nomads, nominated advisors, analysts, institutional fund managers.

You go on roadshows with all of your results every six months or every quarter. You have to be scrupulously careful of what you say publicly because there has to be equal information for everybody, otherwise you're in deep trouble, potentially jail time. So you have to make sure there's fair access to information. So you can't just say what you want or do what you want, you've got to play by a very strict rulebook. So that's one of the biggest differences.

So you have some magic time out of nowhere that you've got to somehow squeeze--

I don't even know--

I already don't have anywhere near--

and then on top of that, you can't even say what you want to say sometimes. So I don't think I'm very well suited to this [INAUDIBLE]..

You may or may not be. I mean, there's some real pros, and there's some real cons. The pros are you've got access to deep pools of liquid capital. So if you want to raise money and do it quickly, then being public is great. Now, there's loads of downsides, like I talked about. The admin, the time, probably a third of your time overall is just managing the public markets and all the stuff that goes around that. So you have to magic up another four, six hours a day on top of your day job to do that roughly throughout the year, which is a big deal.

That's insane.

It just feels like I'm fighting being a grown up in every possible place that I operate. And that just feels like a place that's far too grown up. But hey, ho, it's many years away and lots of success away. All right.

And so what was that company called? What did it do? It was energy stuff?

Yeah, it was energy stuff, distributed energy actually. So really small scale highly distributed power generation, combined heat and power actually, based on some electric chemistry that was developed in Imperial College here in London. So great science, but actually, when I joined, it was just that, it was just great science. It didn't have a product, didn't have customers, didn't have a business plan.

So I tried to do the basics in business, which is to figure out, OK, so what's the customer need here? What are we solving actually? So don't take technology and look for a problem, actually focus on the customer. So that's really what I try to do is bring that discipline in, and then through a bunch of fundraisers and going public, the rest is history. And now it's one of the clean tech unicorns in the UK, which is great.

Great.

PETER BANCE: So I'm quite pleased about that legacy, but wow, I needed rest. After 8 and 1/2 years on that journey, I was just exhausted. So that's why I took a break between CEO [INAUDIBLE]..

QUENTIN SCRIMSHIRE: So you went skiing uphill [INAUDIBLE]..

I went skiing, I went rowing, I went cycling. Exactly.

Cool. And then I want to talk about Origami. So it's clear what Origami does now, but it's been a bit of a journey to get here. And that's not me saying anything is good or bad--

in fact, pivoting and making decisions about strategic direction of a business is a good thing to do. I mean, Modo, we spent a lot of cash before we figured out what our job in this world was to do. And we were very, very fortunate to have a team that was OK with us changing directions.

We've done twice now we've realized we were going in the wrong direction and done something completely different, which is scary and I'm quite proud of it, but I'm getting that off my chest because I didn't want to go into this thing saying Origami has changed a couple of times, that's not--

this isn't a safe place and I judge you. I actually think it's a great thing.

So what has the journey been like for Origami? Because I remember Origami developing battery assets and doing other stuff. At one point there was perhaps--

Origami may have moved into the optimization space and I've seen FFR bids with Origami's name on it. So what's happened in the last few years? It's clear you guys know where you're going now, but how did you get here?

Yeah. So you're right, the business success is not a linear journey.

We've had a bit of a random walk, but with a very clear north star. So I think one of the things I'm proudest of, a bit like how you said it. And I think if you ask my team, I think they'd probably say this is true, is that the founding vision of the company hasn't changed one iota.

So that's been absolutely rock solid since day [? dot. ?]

But the how we should operate the business and the precise operating model and business model, that has tweaked and tweaked several times. So what we're in business to do has remained the same, but how we go about doing it, we've adapted that for sure. And sometimes we've done things tactically to learn and then kind of retrench back into our core focus. So the battery projects, we developed a couple that we developed and then we sold to Gore Street. Then our technology platforms used to manage those things post construction.

We never really set ourselves up to become a battery project developer ever. That's a completely different business discipline. But to get going, to get started, it was just a means to an end, I guess. But in the outside world it could have looked like, whoa, they've kind of pivoted from over here to over here.

The technology that we're building every step of the way was the consistent thread. And I guess now I can wake up in the morning and say, OK, we're true to who we are, we're this kind of independent technology platform, as you described, this third party that offers our solution to our customers as opposed to being bolted on to either a trading desk or an asset fleet.

And how did he make those sorts decisions? Because--

so I talked about this with [? Stephen ?]

[? Myerson ?]

from [? Sonobi, ?]

I feel like if you want to grow really fast as a startup--

you guys are a bit beyond a startup. We're still a startup. It's about making lots and lots of small bets and figuring out which ones have got an asymmetric return because you've got less cash than the rest of the world.

Our competitors have got 10 times more cash than we have. So we got to do something that's 100 times better with less cash. So lots and lots of small bets and then keep doubling down on the things that matter. So for example, video podcasting is something we found was pretty good. So we spend a lot of time and money on it. But you then have to have a team that is capable of hearing no, we're not going to do that, we're not going to do that.

And that's really tricky, because there's pet projects, and there's passion, and there's specific skill sets for certain jobs that perhaps you're not going to do anymore. So developing sites. Origami developing sites. Just one example. You might have heard a team of developers who were good at developing sites and then suddenly you didn't need them anymore.

And so how as a business do you stay agile in saying no and doubling down on the asymmetric return bits and clearing the rest of the chips off the table and--

how are you thinking about that problem?

So you can treat that problem as a bit of a process. We've tried to do that. The geek in me says, OK, if you're clear about what you are going to do, this stuff is on strategy, you should be equally clear about what you're not going to do. And if you do have any kind of legacies hanging around, do you stop them?

Do you sell them? Do you divest them? Do you kill them? Do you renegotiate them?

To get them on strategy, you've got to do something. Letting them hang around just creates a drag on the system. So that's the discipline we're trying to impose on ourselves is every time we clarify and reclassify and realign on that core strategy, we reexamine anything that's not aligned to that and then you either stop it, sell it, kill it, renegotiate it. You've got to do something. And that's really the hard part because people are involved and customers are involved or employees are involved. You know, you've got to bring people with you, and sometimes you can't bring people with you and then you part as friends and it's all good, but you got to do something.

You can't just have stuff, which is off strategy. It will slow you down. It will be a drag on your resources, also a drag not just on money and time, but it's also a drag on your emotional energy. The journey that we're on is not an easy one. We're doing something super ambitious, super scary, super exciting. And unless you really up for it, you're going to lose the will to live and just go do something easier probably.

So maintaining people's enthusiasm, commitment through alignment and good communication stuff, even when you do pivot or whatever you do want to describe, is absolutely essential. Because it's like climbing Mount Everest, several full summits along the way, you can't--

you've got to go for these sprints and just keep going.

Yeah, I can't count the amount of times I've just wanted to run away to the beach but you can't. So I want to talk about the future. Because Peter, I know you think a lot about the future, and I'm not going to use the word visionary, because it's a bit of a silly word, but I know you have a lot of visions for the future and you talk a lot about it in the public space.

So how are you thinking about technology playing a role in the future energy system? And what kind of problems are around the corner? And how are we going to solve those?

So yeah, I'm a geek. I can't help myself. I love thinking about what will be as well as what is. And why I founded the company a few years ago is I could see a future coming where it was moving from simple and static to complicated and dynamic. So if you look at what energy is becoming for absolutely essential environmental and social justice and other reasons, it's going to be really complicated, really dynamic, really granular, and that needs a technology sledgehammer to manage it, to solve it, to kind of deal with it, to harness it.

So I think all the futures I see coming involve more and more data, more and more complexity, more and more granularity. You're going to need a more and more powerful evolving technology set for that future. You'll also need more physical stuff. So energy worlds to go green are probably going to suck up $100 trillion of infrastructure capital between now and 2050. That, by anybody's estimation, is a lot of money.

That is a lot of money.

PETER BANCE: That's a lot of money.

I couldn't even imagine what that even--

I don't even know how many--

I can't even imagine that many zeros in a page. How many commas?

If you stack up pound coins, does it reach the moon? I don't know.

QUENTIN SCRIMSHIRE: [INAUDIBLE]

four. Yeah, it's a lot.

It's a lot. It's a lot. So I think the physical energy world will be transformed through a wall of infrastructure money pumped into everything from solar and wind to batteries and EVs to grids and other stuff. Green electrons are going to rule the world. I think everyone's pretty clear about that.

And to harness all that complexity you're going to need more and more data, more and more tech, more and more software. So that adage from Silicon Valley that software will lead the world, I think in this space absolutely technology is essential. Humans with good gut instincts and spreadsheets and post-it notes no longer cut it. They will fall over. They're already falling over, I think, in a lot of areas. So that's why you need to do things well with tech.

One of the ways I--

just hearing you talk there.

Yes, software is eating the world. I also think optimization is eating the world, because we've got to the point where there's I don't know how many billion people on the Earth right now, but arguably a lot for the amount of resources we have on our planet. And so we're now in a--

I don't know, commodities super cycle, blah, blah, blah, but everything is about minerals, commodities, getting stuff out of the ground and putting it elsewhere.

So it feels like every aspect of the world, whether it's food, supply chains, energy, whatever, it's all becoming an optimization problem. It's not a can I build more farms? Can I build more copper in the ground? Because there isn't.

We don't have enough land space. There isn't any more copper you can get out--

there is. It's more expensive to get out of the ground.

We don't have the carbon--

we can't burn carbon in the way--

create carbon in the way that we wanted to. So then every single part of human existence becomes an optimization problem, to use the resources we have more efficiently rather than create more resources, which is cool and that applies across energy and flexibility and sort of the--

I want to say, it's almost a micro scale compared to the global problem. But that applies to shipping and oil and gas and water and everything.

And so technology is going to play a big role in that, and data, too. So, well, I just went off on an absolute ramble there, but I've never really thought about it like that.

No, it's not a ramble at all. It's because if you look at what--

if you're smart, if you're trying to go green and you do it in a dumb way, you're going to dig up half the world for those minerals. If you go green in a smart way, the amount of physical stuff you knew is dramatically lower.

So that's really the optimization you talk about, is if you do your systems, whether those are traffic systems, energy systems, food systems, logistic systems. If you do those in a super smart way, by seeing real time with data, et cetera, et cetera, you don't need nearly as much physical infrastructure, as many physical assets to achieve the same utility value, the same actual outcome.

One of our geeks from our advisory board, [? Gora ?]

[INAUDIBLE]

at Imperial College, he's done a lot of these sums. You can save dramatically on the amount of renewable generation you need or grid wires you need if you've got a smart energy system. You don't need nearly as much physical stuff to achieve the same outcome. So yeah, every industry you look at around the world is going to have to tech up and get smart and harness data and optimize, otherwise the physical building sledgehammer just destroys the planet.

You just can't do it. So that's why we have to go smart is to minimize the amount of physical stuff that we do need to do. It's still going to be huge, but isn't going to be nearly as huge as it otherwise would be if we do this transition in a dumb way.

Absolutely. And every system needs a self-awareness, whether it's an energy system, electrical system, whatever, it needs a self-awareness of how bad is a sledgehammer doing, and how do I avoid doing more of it. It's funny though because basically every part of human progress until now has been make more stuff, get more stuff, burn more stuff. And now it's like, OK, so you've got everything you need, now make it work.

I think we'll start to value our human experiences more than our physical goods. Hopefully that's the direction of travel that we're all signed up to, but yeah. I think--

I'm going to plug it in.

I'm going to get a really comfy chair and some--

I don't know, some small batch millennial IPAs. I'm just going to plug in. Plug in all weekend.

You'll find me in the metaverse. And then I can--

at least I'm going to--

at least I'm a good person because I'm not using any carbon.

Yeah, I think very few people are going to put on their gravestones I wish I owned more stuff.

I think most people are going say I wish I went for more bike rides or spend time with my kids or did the fun things in life. So yeah, if you look at the big, big changes in the world, doing it in a smart way will make it cheaper, greener or better for the planet.

It will become obvious that you have to do it with the benefit of smarts and technology and optimization and data. The alternative is just too crazy, too expensive, too disastrous for the planet.

And so last thing I want to ask you about is a bit off topic, but international. So you guys--

we did talk about it earlier. You guys are in Europe, too, so what are you doing internationally, and what do you see is where the growth areas that you're excited about?

Yeah. So we have been building something which right from the very beginning was to become a global technology platform. We always had that vision. We've overspent on the foundations unless it's going to be a global technology platform, but you got to recognize that each country, each market is each traded, exchanged a bit different.

So you have to recognize that the local factors matter, but the foundations can be truly global. So that's really our founding belief, is that we can build a technology platform, which is literally the same everywhere in the world at its most primitive layer, and then you can build applications which acknowledge the local needs around a different grid topology, a different traded exchange, a different customer base, a different asset mix, a different regulatory model, a different pricing model.

Different language.

Exactly. A different time zone, a different settlement period, all that kind of stuff.

This is a fun game. Different national food.

PETER BANCE: Exactly.

Different sides of the road.

Yeah, different approaches of how humans want to live their lives or go to work, remote or in office.

Let's take the whole summer off. That's what we should be doing.

Exactly.

Look like the Scandinavians.

So really that's the approach we've been taking, is try to build a truly global platform, but also acknowledge that as you roll out in different markets and different territories, maybe with the same customer that they themselves are international or global in nature, they're going to have to by definition work with some sort of local actor or some local exchange or some local trading house or some local grid operator. That's just a fact. So if you can pull off the best of both worlds, which is give your customer this kind of truly global tech layer, which is the same in Britain, in Germany, in the US and Australia and Japan, and also allow them to plug in stuff for the local factors, a local application for a local trading partner or whatever, then they can get the best of both worlds.

And I think that's really what we're trying to do simply as a business. As it happens, most of our customers are truly global operations already. We're just choosing to work with the UK subsidiaries to focus. So let's really walk before we run, get good before you get big.

Yeah, GB is hard enough. GB is hard.

PETER BANCE: It's complicated. It's a great training ground. It's a great test tube to build something in this space, because a lot of other countries are following a similar, not identical but similar regulatory model to encourage competition or more freely traded commercial products, all that kind of stuff, and technology as an enabler is going to help that commercial innovation.

Cool. And then to finish up, this is over to you. Anything that you want to plug or you want to talk about or you want to moan about. Anything that you think we got to do.

I'm not a moaner. If I wasn't an eternal optimist, I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing. So I'm definitely a half full kind of guy, but I'm not delusional that there aren't challenges, too. We're doing a lot of heavy lifting as a business.

So I guess the plug would be if you're interested in working with us, we're hiring people. We think talent is super important to any kind of ambitious journey, so yeah, come talk. We're really keen on speaking with people who want to go on this wild and crazy but ultimately very fulfilling ride. That would be my plug.

In Cambridge or London or anywhere?

Yes, or anywhere. Our preferences are to be close to one of those two bases because business is a team sport and I think it's important to get together physically in person for a white board or a project session or something, but we do hire people from anywhere in the world, really, but it'd be great if you could spend some time in Cambridge or London.

OK, guys, you heard it here first.

Get [INAUDIBLE]

and, yes, speak to Origami about your next move.

And Modo, by the way, we are also hiring. So thanks, Peter, for coming on.

And guys who are watching, listening, the last few weeks have been great.

We've had loads of feedback. People contacting us on LinkedIn and through the Modo platform telling us what you want us to talk about and telling us what you think about the podcast. So please do keep on being in touch and helping us iterate and get better at this thing. All right, until next time. Thanks very much.

It's been a pleasure.

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