Hey guys, what if the key of Europe's energy future is
sitting in the trunk of yesterday's electric car? Today on
StartupRaid IO, we're talking to David Odansia,
CEO of Voltfang, the startup that turns EV batteries
into grid stabilizing green powerhouses. We'll
ask how did a broken camper battery lead to a
15 million US dollar raise? What's behind Europe's
biggest second life battery factory? And how do you pitch
a vision bold enough to replace coal?
You don't want to miss this. Stay tuned.
Welcome to Startuprad IO,
your podcast and YouTube blog covering the German
startup scene with news, interviews and
live events.
David Usanti is the CEO and co founder of Voltfang, a
German climate tech startup that transforms used electric
car batteries into cutting edge stationary
energy storage systems. With a background in
industrial engineering from rvthen
R wth Aachen, David leads one
of Europe's most ambitious second life battery
initiatives. A company that just raised 15 million
euros, opened the continent's largest second
life battery factory and secured projects with
partners like Stuttgart Airport and grid operators.
WorldFunk's technology is not only reducing
CO2, but also decentralizing energy security
across Europe. David, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me. Totally my pleasure. We. We already made some
jokes before we started, so we both pretty relaxed.
Take us back to the camper trip that sparked
world fun. When did you realize there was a business
behind repurposing EV batteries? And are you still
camping? I wish. I
actually wish I was still camping. It's. It's a
long time ago when I. When we were camping the last time.
But to start the story, I'm David, co founder and CEO
of Vol. I'm originally from Cologne, so in Germany we say
Kung. Then I moved to Aachen because of my studies 10 years
ago, roughly 11, where I also met my two co founders,
Afin and Roman. So we. We started studying
together at the rwth. And if you
are studying there, you always want to escape
when the exams, the exam phase is over.
So what we did, we bought a camper van together. And the
reason was just to get out, to get to the Netherlands, to the Belgium,
to every kind of party, festival or vacation
we could to get some freedom back. And that's what we did.
We bought a camper van, an old time of year Ducato,
which we lovely called Mia.
And with Mia we did everything. And the
problem was just that Mia is an old timer
with not such a huge motorization and the batteries
was as old as MIA. And in Germany you need to be 30
years or plus years old to be an old timer. Therefore you know
how degraded the battery was. So our idea was to
change first of all the battery storage system inside of
it and also to integrate a solar panel on the roof. Because
if anybody, everybody wants to charge their phones, then the battery gets
empty extremely quickly. So we decided to do that. Roman
just jumped on the roof and put a solar panel
from ebay Klein inside, inside of it or on top of it.
And then the idea was, which kind of battery shall we take? And
we found out that you could buy Tesla batteries
just out of the Eber Kleinenzeigen. And
therefore we said, why shouldn't we take them? Easy
answer, way too heavy. And the motorization is so bad we just
go downhill if we want to get up a hill. Therefore
we decided not to do that and
we bought another battery storage and then we put it
inside. Everything was fine. But a few weeks later,
Roman's father just asked him why, whether he knows where to buy
a storage system for his workshop. So he has a
solar panel on the roof and he wants to consume as much solar
as possible. And we engineers are really
naive and we think we can do everything. Therefore Rohan just said,
we can build you one. And that's what we actually did.
We just closed the doors behind ourselves
for we anticipated three days. In the end it was two weeks
to build a storage system with these kind of Tesla modules, everything
based on open source. And after two weeks and a
lot of, no, not a lot really less sleep,
we were able to actually run the system.
And then we thought, look, we are at the end of our
studies, we don't want to just end up in a corporate, we want to do
something which matters. And actually we want to be free also in our work.
Therefore we said, look, let's just sell it from the
neighbor to the next neighbor and maybe to five other neighbors. So that
was the idea, just to sell one by another. And we
didn't even thought about VC startup and raising
a lot of money and so on, so forth. We just thought, maybe that's a
solid business. And after the university, when you
don't do it after university, when shall you do it then? And therefore
we started World Fund.
Interesting story. I have to admit. Taking it
from there, what was your first major
challenge like tech regulation or team that
made you doubt that your idea may work?
So in the end we just started,
we had the tech, we had a prototype running,
we didn't have so much knowledge about batteries. Therefore the tech was one of the
biggest things, we actually didn't care about regulation so much. We just said,
okay, they have pilot projects, we just start and try. And
therefore we didn't, we didn't think so much about regulation
and the team, since we three are friends
and long time friends, we didn't care about the team
either. And also the RWTH has a lot of
engineers who are like minded, therefore that was also not
an issue. So tech was the biggest thing and selling our storage
systems with the limited amount of capital we had
in the beginning. So we just said, look, how could we develop
something with so much so less money? And
then we tried to sell something which we didn't even have and it
was actually really hard. And
then like after a half a year, one year, we still was
wasn't able to sell one. But that was also the time
we thought shall we do that? Maybe it doesn't work out, and so on,
so forth. But since we started, since we said
why it should work, because it's logic
that we need something like this. If you have solar, you need to store it
somewhere either or you will put everything into
the grid and destabilize it. So we said, look, we just do it
for one, two years and if it doesn't work out, we try something
different. But actually it worked out.
I see, so at one point
you realized it works out. I was wondering when you
were a student in Aachen,
now you're cleantech founder, helping to rewire your
script, did that also change your self image?
Totally. To be completely honest, it
changed it totally. I in the university,
if you are at the RWTH and you are not the smartest person on earth,
you will be average or below average. And therefore I always had the
feeling of not fitting because all the others
were way better engineers. For example, Afshin, which is one of the brightest minds
I know, Roman as well. And therefore I always had
the feeling of not being being able to do what the engineers are doing.
And therefore I
didn't knew what in the future I actually
will be bringing value of.
And that was something I had in the beginning. Now I know actually somebody
who can, who is not the inventor, but who can
explain what we have invented to people in
easy words is. Is also something necessary and therefore
it changed completely. My confidence boosted.
We hold ourselves humble all the time. But still
after five years, after building up a not
small company anymore, rather a big company,
you have some self confidence in your decisions, in the
skills you have, and therefore it changed.
I see. From our audience, I
would like to Know what made you believe in your
startup, share in the comments and or tag us
wherever you're sharing this. We are on LinkedIn, we are an
ax, we're in blue sky threads and so on and so forth.
From a very good spot. Let's take us
to your darkest day. There must have been a day when
a pilot failed a route, a funding round almost fell
through. What kept you from giving up?
So the most important thing in the whole
journey is Roman and Afcin the team.
Since we we had always like a customer
said I want to have the storage system, huge deal. Then they dropped.
We had funding rounds where we had really,
really less time actually to pay everybody.
And always we always kept each other's back.
That was incredibly important. If something doesn't
work out, it was not like I told you so. It was like how can
I help? Let's keep on doing it, otherwise we do something different
and we will be successful either way. And this kind of
mindset helped us through a lot of. A lot of
phases which weren't good and but we
still keep on doing it because we said what shall we
lose? What have we. What can we lose? And
therefore we just keep on going. The friendship
just grew and actually these
things together were like the resilience we needed to overcome this kind
of. Yeah. Darker times.
I actually plan to put right here some questions about your co
founder and team dynamics. That works really well. You've lived and worked
with your co founders for years. What is the biggest I do.
What is the biggest people lesson you had to learn the hard
way there? Actually my two confidants and I,
we still are living together and
we share a dog and we do a lot of
things together, sometimes also on vacation and things like this. Therefore
one thing I learned which is really important is having
people around you you can trust who have the same values and who
are loyal. This is such a relief in your
whole life and who actually keep on
want to to. You want to compete with them, you want to be better. You
the best of yourself. Therefore this
is something which is really good. But on
the hard way. The most important thing is
sales people can sell themselves really
good. Therefore if you think you
have the best salesperson on earth, you
can be completely wrong. And that's something we learned on
a hardware. A lot of times.
You and your two co founders still live together. Just between you
and me and something like 50,000 listeners, who's the one who doesn't do the
dishes? All three are not so good
at this. Therefore let's Call
it all of us. I see, that's fine
but we don't. Do so much dishes anyways because
we are always late at work. But, but to be, to be fair,
we have really strict things who is
doing what. So for example, Roman is most of the times
like getting the groceries. Afin is the one of the best
cooks and I do the rest.
Okay, I see going a little bit into
a potential emotional toll here you are operating at the heart
of energy, climate and impact. What's
been a personal toll of building this climate
tech rocket ship. So if you don't want to
make it your living or your your life,
then you will probably have a hard time to be
successful. What I heard from my family
in the last few months, a lot of times you are,
you haven't been around at the weekends and so much
you weren't available over the last five years. So much.
Because I actually had a lot of things to
do and if I'm not doing that, I'm
trying to take my time and calm down. So
it needs also a lot of self discipline,
a lot of time and also a lot of focus on
yourself to be the best you can for the company,
for the team and for the growth. So you,
you for sure you have your time with your family, your friends, but it's
lesser than before. Plus
I also do feel the value of just sitting
in the evening outside on our covered porch here. Just
be by yourself, do something you enjoy, for example, listening to an
audiobook and just have to do nothing. No, to do that gets
a very much higher value over time. Totally. Having a
book, reading it and being completely by yourself
is incredibly helpful for calming down. Talking about
breaks here. We will be back after our short ad break
here. Then we talk about make or break moments, founder
misconceptions and vulnerability to value.
Hope to have you back soon.
Hey guys, welcome back to the interview with David
from Voltfang. We've been talking about a lot
already and now I want to dig a little bit deeper. The make
or break moment you've transitioned from a startup
to scale up. Was there point
when you had to pivot hard or double down? Yes, a
lot of times. So in the beginning
we started as a residual storage
provider. So for the home storage we figured out
that's not the best way to grow. Therefore we decided
to pivot into commercial industrial. We did a
lot of things by ourselves which we said no, we need to
focus and focus and focus. Therefore
we needed to pivot from home storage to
commercial industrial storage system. We needed to Also
change sometimes the business plan, the strategy,
so on, so forth. So yes, a lot of times
you need to always evolve yourself. You need to, you
have a lot of evolutions within yourself as
the company leader, but also the company as itself.
I was wondering, is there like one moment that extremely,
extremely has been sticking to your mind for that. When
we started, we wanted to give the people
the opportunity to actually
produce and own their own energy. So if you
have, if you own a home or you are living in a home, then the
solar energy, the storage system, you can be
as self sufficient as possible. Giving away this
kind of dream of being able to
help everybody to decentralize the energy, that was a
hard moment. So what I mean is
the pivot from home storage to commercial industrial was
hard times. You misconception. I'm very sure
not everything worked out the way it should be.
But what were you completely
wrong about when you launched like tech readiness, market
demand, or was this something else? And how did you fix it?
Yeah, the misconception is really in the
DNA of an engineer to be able to do everything
by yourself. So we started to, to develop and testing
facility, we, we wanted to develop
and certify a Bennett battery management system, the whole
system by itself, then the energy management system. So we
wanted to do everything on the horizontal
to actually on the tech side because we thought, okay, Tesla can do
it, why shouldn't we do it? And there was
actually one of the biggest mixed misconceptions we,
we had since you need
to focus, you need to focus, focus. And again, you need to
focus to be able to grow fast. And that's
something we figured out rather sooner. But
for us it was late after two years or three years.
And therefore we burned a lot of money and
time by following different
paths, which in the end we needed to cut and just
focus on the main things we need to do.
You've shared openly about building in a
tough space, what part of yourself felt like a
liability, but turned out to be an asset.
So as I mentioned, when I was studying,
I always had the feeling that not being able to actually
get to be able to invent something new
is a huge liability. To not be able to
understand everything on point in the first second
when you were in mechanics or physics or something like this. That
was in my opinion always a bad liability for
myself. But this
turned to be something my biggest asset
where because I believe being able to understand them and
after a while and then being able to also
explain it to everybody was extremely important. If you
are in a team of really true engineers.
And therefore this is something I believe
which is from liability to assets.
For our audience. Guys, what's
one founder trait you've turned from a liability in a
powerhouse? Let us know on threads or LinkedIn.
There are always surprises when you're an entrepreneur.
What was the most unexpected insight you've
learned from a customer? Supermarkets, airports or grid
operators? So
what we actually found out
was that all of the companies didn't have so much
knowledge about their energy space. They didn't knew how
much they are actually consuming and how much they're producing, how much
they need, what they can actually avoid
on cost of the energy. Therefore that was
something we actually figured out really quickly that
we can, we need to show
everybody what they are capable of. And
this is something we didn't expect. But
that's actually also something which helps us a lot to grow because
there are so many potentials we with
our battery storage system can take for any kind of
customer. Therefore that was amazing to figure out. If you are a huge
company like Bayer or something, then you know everything about your energy.
But everything below that there you don't have the capabilities
of actually figuring out everything. And there that's something
we want to help with. It's like almost
my level. I know there's a power outlet, I plug it
in and every year I go to the cheapest provider. So
that's it.
Thank you for the answer so far. Now I would like to look a little
bit ahead five years maybe. What's your moonshot for
Voltfang? A coal free grid. European energy independence.
So we want to decentralize Europe. We
want to give Europe the resilience of being able
to protect their energy transition, energy grids, everything.
And that's something where we believe as Volfang we
can help by becoming one of the biggest
energy providers in Europe. We want to put
smaller and bigger storage system everywhere in the countries
and then also connect them to a virtual power plant with who we
then can for example, which is also our vision
to shut down Weissweiler which has 1.6
gigawatt. That's actually our
our moonshot of Voltfang getting rid of
coal as soon as possible with the resilient
energy grid of Europe. As a last question, I
would like you to reflect a little bit. If your 40 year old
self could speak to you now, what would they say about this
moment in Voltfunk's journey? Good
question. If a 40 years old
self would tell me or would look at the moment right now,
they would probably say how The F
did. How the F did you come so far and how did
you manage to get over the next steps? Because right
now we have so many things which are incredibly cool,
which we are developing right now. Where two or
three years ago it didn't. It was like slow growth. And now
we can really show the hockey stick, which I always promised the investors.
But now we are able to do that. Therefore, I believe
they will. If you look into the retrospective,
then you will figure out how much myself,
Voltfang and the company grew within this short amount
of time, within the last year to the next one or two
years. I know that from some projects, looking
at the presentation, then looking at the real thing and think, huh, that really
worked out. What a surprise.
That's a. The funny thing is I'm. I never
know how we got here, but I know where we'll go in the
next years.
Okay, we close with this indirect Heisenberg quote.
David, with such a pleasure having you as guest. Best of luck and
hope to have you back in a few years doing an update. I would
love to. Thank you. Have a good day. Bye. Bye.
Bye.
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