High Energy: Yoav Lurie of Uplight

Eva: Welcome to the Beyond Capital Podcast. In our purpose driven world, leadership is increasingly crucial. Now more than ever, stakeholders are demanding the integration of social values and causes in everything, from shoes to soap to investments. We're bringing you the stories of leaders that are marrying profit with purpose. I'm Eva Yazhari, CEO of Beyond Capital. Ed: and I'm Ed Stevens, CEO of Preciate. Eva: and this is the Beyond Capitol Podcast. Ed: Today's guest is Yoav Lurie. Yoav is the founder of Simple Energy. Simple Energy was designed to make energy efficiency a simple, fun and social experience for consumers. The company's digital marketing platform leverages behavioral science and analytics to engage utility customers and encourage energy savings. In July 2019, Simple Energy merged with Tendril to form Uplight, for which Yoav now serves as COO. Uplight serves 100 million residential and business customers, working with utility companies in 40 states to create a more sustainable future. Yoav has a background in socially impactful work, including co founding Camp Kesum, a free summer camp for the children of cancer patients. He was also a managing director at Teach for America. Eva: Welcome, Yoav. Yoav: So happy to be here. Eva: It's great to have you. Let's kick it off by talking a little bit about your desire for purpose driven work. As we've heard with your background, you have been seeking that at at all times. It seems in your career, tell us a little bit about how that motivated you to start Simple Energy. Yoav: Unfortunately, gonna start with a fairly morbid and, uh, maybe maybe dour note, but the, uh the when I was seven years old, my father passed away and and I when I was wrestling with it a very young age what life was about and what, um, what impact and what, uh, significant. Next. And I was really referent with it. And what I came to you as a seven year old was the one way to on away cheek that, since insures that you be remembered or last longer was was by impacting the lives of others. And so for me, really, as long as I can remember, I mean, uh, people who I looked up to where those hopes would build enterprises of some sort that a massive impact on other people. As I grew older, I discovered that, uh, business and the incredible force that business can have to have a positive social impact and leveraging the capital markets, leveraging all the force of the business for good could actually yield a much bigger and more positive outcome, then another means. And so as I went into my career, it was with a shift towards from the very beginning, using business as a force for good, really, from a very personal perspective, too tread to maximize impact in my life. Eva: That really resonates with us. Thank you for telling us that story. Um, you're the platform you've created specializes in consumer engagement. What opportunity did you see in the consumer energy usage in utility market both from a financial and social perspective when you were building your business? Yoav: When will my co founder and I started building Simple Energy? It was clear that there was a disconnect between the producers and consumers of energy. Consumers didn't know where energy came from, and producers of energy, electric and gas companies, would refer to their customers as ratepayers or meters uh, not people. And we knew that that was gonna be a huge and ever pressing gap where there would be both a great business opportunity, because utilities were being challenged in their businesses, but also in probably most absolutely most importantly, was, if we could do that, if we could change that dynamic to bridge that gap between consumer and producer of energy, we could leverage that intersection point to change how utility thought of their own business. I helped them get out to the right side of history makes them more sustainable companies. And what we've seen is in the last two years, utilities has actually led the way in reducing carbon emissions by drastically cutting and greening their energy fleet. Ed: I think a lot of people would be curious. Why do utilities want to do that? Genuinely speaking. Yoav: Yeah, it's, uh, it's great question. In very few businesses, in fact, this is the only one I know of, it will a company pay another company to convince its customers to use less of its products, and that's exactly what we do. We work with our customers are utility partners every day to convince their customers and users like you and me to use less energy. The reason utilities do it because they're regulated monopolies and in the regulatory compact that allows them to exist and earn a rate of return on the capital's they build to serve us all energy. They've signed up for all sorts of other objectives, objectives and measures where they will dictate what their performances financially. Among those is, how well they get customers to save energy. And so we literally have goals and earnings jacket based on that thing, even though it's counterintuitive that they would want someone to go used less of their products. Ed: Interesting. So it's mainly from the regulatory point of view? Yoav: And certainly if we have all the time in the world, would you go through the 51 regulatory environments in the U.S. alone? So I'll spare you, it looks a little different in every state. But in almost every state, there is an incentive for the utilities to be driving their customers either to use less energy or to change what kind of energy they use or to change when during the day they use it. Ed: Right Eva: What I'm trying to connect in my mind is how a personalized customer experience links to lasting environmental impacts. Yoav, can you unpack that for us? Yoav: Yeah, so I'll give you an example. We turned the customer a message that says, based on your energy usage and information we have about you in your home, we know that here's three ways that you can save energy. And on top of that, here's an instate rebate that we will give you. If you come on to one of our e-commerce sites and by say, a smart thermostat, and so you then click through and you get $100 off a new Nest or Ecobee thermostat and then ship it out to you and what's great about it. Not only do you get this incredibly cool device that you can put on your wall, and it will save you energy and pay for itself within the first heating or cooling season. But also, if you don't roll that device at that same point of sale in many of our programs, you can actually change what time of energy what time of day it using the most energy, which then allows it to literally track the sun, for example, to beacon pre cool your house during the hours when energy's cheap. It's because the sun is shining the most solar panels and that will both stay the customer money as well as support the development of new renewable and improve the grid. So by getting that message incident and the customers by motivating them, using behavioral science and advanced digital targeting to get them into the platform to get them to take that action that creed that gets a product in your house, changes their behavior, signed him up for me bill plan, um, helps them get an electric vehicle. Any of those things really moved them to being a more sustainable user of energy. Eva: I didn't even know my Nest could do that. Yoav: It's not just the world's coolest thermostat, also has some incredible functionalities. Eva: I'll check it out. Ed: Okay, so I was wondering how you came to be so focused on the consumer side of this business versus commercial energy usage. Was that just a a lucky accident, or was it something very intentional? Yoav: So when we started Simple Energy, it was with an eye towards how residential customers were impacted by the utility of engaging with their utility rather and we we found that that's really where there's a bit of connected that there were already a lot of companies focused on helping large commercial and industrial customers because those customers spend a lot of money on energy. And so, in fact, the consultants who would go out and how Wal-Mart or McDonald's save money on their energy bills weren't interested in helping people like you and me. That's because our energy bills on a relative basis to those big companies are quite small. The fact that someone who have is a software background in the last company I helped build with a software company, I I knew that we had a problem here. We had many people who needed a very efficiently delivered solution, which is really where Softworks thrive and where services fall down. And so we were able to build software solutions because effect now, over 100 million people and give them, uh, messaging and solution virtually and very efficiently to get that message out to customers. Eva: I know that Simple Energy merged with Tendril as we mentioned in the intro. Can you tell us a little bit more about the merger and the mission of Uplight? Now, the new company. Yoav: absolutely. About eight years into building Simple Energy, we'd done a lot of incredible things. We were working with 40 or 50 of the largest utilities around the country. We were going to do $75 million in revenue and things were going incredibly well in every vector of what we did. We're having a huge impact. Our employees were incredibly outside and engaged, and the return to our investors were shaping up to be really great. But we came to a realization for both because of movements were seeing in our markets, typically software company based in utilities, as well as just generally the incredible time pressure we have to fight this climate emergency and at the intersection of those two things we said, we have to do something much bigger. We took our life's work in this company. We said we will take that into this. We'll find the best way to build a platform that can do much more. And at the same time our friends across town Tendril were doing a similar soul searching exercise. They were trying to figure out the future of their company and how they were going to bring companies together. And so we got together with them and between us also bought three other companies - First fuel, which is focused on commercial and industrial customers. Energy Savvy, which is focused on delivering solutions to the utility chief customer roster. And Ecotagious of Vancouver based company that delivers residential energy efficiency solution. Specifically focus on low income customers and took these five companies and we built with us a platform that now serves over 110 million. Business is business and consumer, any residential customers that serves close to 100 of the largest utilities across North America and that has the most robust platform for building the new digital energy future that has ever existed. And so that's now the platform. We can go have an even greater impact on our customers and enable them to impact their customers. We picked the name Uplight pretty literally, because it was we were going to China like up onto our utility partners, enabling them to accelerate the clean energy future. Eva: What does it look like to quote unquote walk into a utility and convince perhaps the Chief Customer Officer or someone else to work with you? Yoav: Good, interesting. Historically, and actually, every time we've raised capital, people would say choice, no utilities or terrible customers, and then we would have to correct them. You know, they're actually wonderful. They're really hard prospect because their risk averse and they know that they have a lot riding on their shoulders of some 200 years of history in their company and lots of assets. So they very methodical about how to make purchasing decisions, and they really want to make sure that the solution they put into the hands of their customers ah, has been fully vetted, and it has a lot of rigor behind it. But what's your customer? They're incredibly, ah, lined what we're trying to do from objective perspective, and they're moving forward with us pretty dynamically. What's been great as Uplight is that we have so many of these utilities already as our partner, and so we're able to walk into an existing customer and tell them about a new solution that will push them forward. And we're able to do that with the past performance, what we've already been able to achieve with them to date. Now I'm not gonna lie and say it was always easy. Uh, we're about nine years since we started it Simple energy right now, and for the first four or five of those years we was a lot of beating our heads against the wall, trying to get in and convince them. But in hindsight, I'm gonna be really honest. We didn't have the results for the credibility at that point, and we we launched our marketplace product in 2015. It's really what changed the direction of our company because it was unique. It met a real need for the utility, and it was incredibly successful in terms of the results would drive within consumers and those things together enabled us to change the conversation with our customers and drive them to really much different outcome. Ed: Tell us about the marketplace product. Yoav: Simple Energy built Marketplace, which is a an online platform that marries the utility rebate that has been around for a long time. These are intensive for buying energy saving products service is with an e-commerce experience, and so, by doing that, you've taken what has been around for a long time, which is the utility will give you money back if you buy an energy saving or demand shifting products. But that project has been you would buy the product at Home Depot or Amazon. You would take the receipt. You take the utility rebate forms, you fill it out and mail it in and wait 8 weeks to get it back and what marketplace did for the first time and then we patented was, he said, we're going to take that process and put it right into the transaction. And so, as a software company, we had to build a e-commerce company within ourselves with all of the ability to deliver product in tow to run the utility branded experience for some of the largest utilities. And then you go on to the marketplace site, which you got an email from from us through our integrated marketing and and then you enter your address and based on your address, we validate your eligibility for a rebate, and we then give you that rebate right in the cart. If you're buying a Nest thermostat, for example, and utility has $100 rebate, we will sell that Nest thermostat you for $149 retail 249 so it's a great experience for the customer. They get the product just like they would two days later right at their doorstep, but they never have to fill out a form they never had to take the risk that they might fill out the form incorrectly or that may be eligible for the rebate for some reason, we make sure that they're eligible on the front end. Marries their account information to that transactions and then later settle up with utility. Ed: Cool. Eva: Yeah, there's tremendous opportunity there to make it easy for the customer amid everything else you have going on. I mean, just so impressed by the depth of your company, you have decided to go through the process of becoming a B corporation. Um, which to those that don't know is known as a benefit corporation. Tell us about that decision what stakeholders were involved and why did you think it was important to do? Yoav: In November we announced that we had become a certified B corporation and Simple Energy had been a B corporation, a certified B corporation, certified B corp, since 2013 and as well as a public benefit corporation. And these are really to think the Public Benefit corporation is a statute within the state of Delaware that, uh, because we're no longer the the only driver of the company, is not just return shareholder value. But it's actually balancing returns for the shareholder as well as balancing that with the social mission that's the public benefit corporation. The only a minority of companies have gone down the path of becoming the public benefit corporation actually take the additional step of also becoming a certified B corp, which means you we've held ourselves up to a much higher standard and had a rigorous third party assessment of our practices and performance. And so, as a new company Uplight, we have now started as a closed benefit corporation and now about 100 days into Uplight, we came with certified B corp. Uh, it was something that was incredibly important to us that the energy was really valuable, important for all of our employees and in fact, for some of our customers as well. And so when we made the decision to merge Simple Energy with Tendril together, one of the one of the principles and we started with it was a new company would have to be both a Public Benefit Corp and a certified B corp because we wanted to make sure we're going through a change of ownership in a change of control structures that forever and always the company would be grounded in its mission and it would always be in pursuit of the building, a more sustainable future. I think it's a practical matter. It's core to our business and its core to what we do. But I also think it's something that we want to make sure was codified in our governing. Ed: I cannot resist mentioning that just today we, my company Preciate, just got its approval of its B Corp certification just today, just today, yeah, so I'm all with you on that. That's, Ah, amazing process in very eye opening and powerful, we found it to be. Yoav: And when we started on it, uh, many people were concerned that this would have an impact on our are investors or that somehow they would think that this was not a good thing. Hopefully, everyone's kind of scratching their head when I say that now, but that was five years ago. But I think the results have spoken for themselves that the financial outcome of being a mission driven business are clear and the performance were able to drive for investors is actually much, much greater because we're able to leverage a very clear and focused social mission that brings our employees together. That inspires our customers and that ultimately there's no gap there. There is. There's no tradeoff that we're making between our mission and our investors, in fact focusing on our mission ends of maximizing value for our investors, Eva: Absolutely. Shifting gears a little bit, you have about 400 employees of all types, including engineers and user experience experts as well as customer service. I know that you as ah, the leader and a young leader have spoken about the importance of finding meaning at work. How do you bring meaning to your employees? Yoav: So way have the easy, then maybe of being a company that from day one was focused on doing well financially by doing good for the world and that that was so core to our DNA that every time we hit a bump and we've hit many, we've been able to harden back to the mission of what we do and to the first principles of building this company, which is to go and create more sustainable future to change how the utility industry work to change how millions of customers engage with an act on saving energy, and so in the hardest time, we're able to bring it back to that. Sure, we still have to make sure that everyone has their corners reviews and they get one on one with their manager, and they feel like they're doing in tactical, important work and do all of those things. Ultimately, I honestly wouldn't know how to run a company if the only thing I could drive the people around was going in making a profit. Eva: Yeah, that's that's fascinating and definitely on the cutting edge of leadership and one of the main reasons that we've decided to interview CEOs like you. So, um, perhaps kind of staying in the same vein what advice would you give to companies looking to create more meaning and purpose, perhaps for their employees, if if they're not linked in the same way to their social impact as your businesses? Yoav: So the first thing is, I was encouraged to think really hard about what kind of impact their building in their company, and if in fact, they're not having an impact. I think you probably want to start there, um, and and I would encourage them to think very broadly about it. Uh, I know I know. Many leaders of many different kinds of businesses B corps, not services or products who, in fact are improving the lives of their customers and changing the dynamic of what they of the markets in which they're operating. And for those leaders, they need to take that and frankly, the leader can you... We talked about that as if we as leaders are completely impervious to, uh, bad days or to feeling depressed or feeling something isn't quite going our way. We're practically even more than most folks within a company because we're exposed to all the data and so certainly will help prop you up and then take that take that same meaning that is driving you forward now and make sure to share it and then talk about it. We're left nothing. The thing that I have found that at the point that I feel like I've heard the message 20 or 30 times too many, probably just getting to the place where my employees and the and the team as a whole is really internalizing it. And so it requires to putting into every piece of communication and every piece of how we're working as a team. Ed: Can you tell me a little bit about the dynamic with Tendril? The company that you merged with? Were they a B corp as well? Or is that a whole new process to bring them in? Yoav: So Tendril, in fact, was had previously gone through B corp certification and ultimately wasn't able to get the investor buy off at the time the number of years ago to create a public benefit corporation. And to sustain and keep their B corp status. So they ultimately lost it. And so, for that change it was, I think, a breath, of fresh air that we put it into the merger agreement that we, uh said this have to happen. And there was one of our conditions from the beginning quarter and they were really excited about that. And to their credit, all of the investors who were behind that fight that were pushing for it. Were all on board that they saw the value. They took some time to explain to their lawyers and make all of their lawyers comfortable with it. But the investors ultimately understood the value of why bringing a team together around this specific mission will drive better outcomes, drive more customer and employee loyalty and ultimately higher return rates for them. Ed: And do you work just in the U.S. or are you international? Yoav: So we work in the U.S. and Canada with a handful of customers in Europe, and we're looking to expand throughout Americas in the year to come. Eva: You strike, I think both of us is a very entrepreneurial person and have a have a great entrepreneurial spirit. Does that come natural to you and maybe just give us some of the background about how you decided to start a company? Yoav: I think I'm generally unemployable as a person. If I wasn't doing this, if being an entrepreneur wasn't a thing one to go do, I don't know for what I'd be doing otherwise, Uh, I appreciate the sentiment. The first company that I started, I started with my brother when I was nine years old and they didn't go very well. Uh, and way think we preserved our relationship, that business didn't go very well. And I always threw my life just known that my calling and while I was intending to do with my life was to build are building businesses to build, uh, enterprises to build operations of whatever kind by pulling together a group of disparate, incredibly talented people and bring their diverse perspectives, backgrounds and ideas into a single and common mission. And by doing that, I'd be able to go have the impact that I've been called on to have in this world and so so whether it's because I'm unemployable and this is just what I have to do as a fallback or because that's truly, um, with the best calling in my life is, I don't know but I can't imagine doing anything besides this. Ed: Well, you've mentioned it a few times. And being entrepreneurs ourselves, we understand that there's no end to the challenges when you're when you're building a business. And I'm just curious. If you have on your radar, you know, one or two challenges that you think might be, you know, the most important for you to focus on for the next year. Yoav: For Uplight? Ed: Yeah, yeah. Yoav: Yeah, so for Uplight we're about 125 days in to pulling together five companies, as you can imagine, that's an incredibly difficult task from the perspective of integrating the cultures and the teams and bringing together all of these different approaches to building companies on top of that. All of the companies that came into Uplight had a level of commitment they had made to their customers who are now our customers. And that was something that was actually really hard to diligence on the front end of the merger. And now that we got over 100 days in time, we're able to see touches such company or a product line mean a commitment to this customer, and now we have to collectively need it. And so I think the biggest challenge that we have over the next year is not innovating some new crazy thing that none of us could have done on our own. It's actually stitching together the five companies, making them work really well and effectively as one team and then go deliver consistently every day on the promises that all of those companies had made before the merger and making sure that our customers have a whole lot of trust in our ongoing ability to deliver. If we can do that and on the front end of stitch together, our product offerings a bit more to integrate a little more tightly, think if we do that the company is gonna be off really a phenomenal future. Ed: Yeah, that's so important. When I sold my last company, we became part of, ah, broader private equity sort of roll up. And in the first year we ended up integrating is four or five companies in the first year. I think it was five and just, uh, had some some good and some bad memories flash back at me as you were just talking about that challenge. We had companies all over the country and product commitments that were made and just finding time for stitching the products together and getting everybody aligned on a single customer service system or or any of those types of things was was monumental. And I really admire your your energy towards that. It's it's not easy work. Yoav: Well, it's funny, actually, since we announced Uplight, we've gotten dozens of of emails from other entrepreneurs or customers or partners who said, Wow, you pulled together the best in class marketplace with the best in class customer engagement solution into one company. Here's the amazing brand new thing you could go build, and I think, uh and we thank them for their input we've welcomed, and we've kept a long list of all the crazy, great things we can do, and I think that in a year or eighteen months from now. It will be a time to dust that list off to make sure that we do those things. Right now, there's a whole lot of blocking and tackling that we need to do. And it turns out that we did a knock of all of our products and all of our customers, and we plotted them together. And even though we have over 20 products collectively as Uplight, none of our customers have bought more than five. And so every one of our customers has a lot of innovation they can get just by buying something we already have without having to build a brand new thing. And as an entrepreneur, my entire life inventing building new, primarily software products it it's a little hard to resist the temptation to go build the brand new, exciting thing that we want to go build but rather just focus in on who we have to stitch these things together and really effectively execute on the commitments we've made customers because that's really what's gonna then enable us to go to that. Right now, our customers are looking at us with excitement, but also with a little bit of trepidation because they understand that that there's some amount of risk and what we're trying to do. And they want to make sure that we can deliver on our commitments. Eva: Yeah, and I think the key is really meaning behind the mission and the purpose that gets everybody through all all purpose driven leaders through really hard work. And, as you say, kind of the blocking and tackling and the arduous work. Um, I think that at the end of the day, at least, we both know that working with purpose behind us is ah, a little bit easier sometimes than just just doing it for profit only. Yoav: I think that's right. Eva: Yeah. Um, just to wrap up, how about you tell us your kind of large vision for Uplight? I love that you mentioned that you're looking to tackle the climate emergency. What does that look like in 10 years? Yoav: So we have some very specific goals at Uplight in terms of the amount of energy we're looking to save. If you look at our commitment around in the next five years. How much energy and CO2 we're planning to update. It's on par with the largest nations in the world. Paris Clinic. It's that aggressive in terms of the amount of cardinal we're looking to you to bait and to in the touch of environmental impact. At the same time, we're looking at saving customers a tremendous amount of money on their energy bills, and we want to ensure that the $10 billion or so of end customers savings that were able to drive inure to the benefit of people regardless of their socioeconomic backgrounds. We want people of all classes and all backgrounds to benefit from stating and participating in a new energy future. And the third thing that we're actually that we're up to is trying to change how business is done. We think that in Uplight and certainly in Simple Energy, we were able to will you be able to show the best way have a massive, positive social impact by leveraging the tools of a company. We think that we will 3 to 5 x the scale of our business for our investors and more than more than that for our mission. And so we're hopeful that when the next entrepreneur is coming out of college or endeavoring into what he or she is going to do next and looks at the impact they want to go see in the world, that they feel compelled by our story compelled by the example that using all of the tools of venture capital and private equity and software and customer driven biggest bottle will actually allow them to have an even bigger impact in the world for their social mission. And I think that, yeah, the three things were massive impact in terms of the carbon savings of, uh, energy savings that we'll have this incredible impact in terms of the financial results for end customers and what we see them on their utility bills. And we will demonstrate that, in fact, leading a business in a different way you can have a giant impact on the world. Eva: Thank you so much. You off for sharing your vision with us and all of the work that you've done already. We are truly impressed. Yoav: Well, thank you so much. Thanks for shining a light on business like ours who are we're trying to figure out a way to to do this, and then we certainly do appreciate it andwould love to have much more company with others doing the same. Ed: thanks you have. It's been great talking to today. Yoav: Likewise. Eva: Bye. Once again, it's clear that a business leader with good intentions can create an impressive social, environmental and ethical impact. There is always a way to put meaning behind the mission of a company, and we can all make a difference. Ed: You've taken the first step by listening to the Beyond Capital Podcast. Thanks for joining us. Don't forget to rate and review. And if you haven't yet, subscribe on your favorite Podcast platform. For more information, go to beyondcapitalpodcast.com. You can follow me on Twitter at @EAStevens. Eva: And follow me on Instagram at @ConsciousInvestor. Until next time. Ed: Bye, everyone.