Written by: Jasper Spanjaart – In collaboration with MT/Sprout
Easee, the Norwegian manufacturer of smart charging stations, is led in the Benelux by Alfred Kuijer and Stefan Dekker. Driven by their ambition to become the largest in the industry, the two former Tesla employees are willing to take a risk. “We’ve made every mistake a startup can make.”
“Shaping the future of electricity”: that’sthe slogan of the Norwegian scale-upEasee. The company, founded by Jonas Helmikstøl in 2018, focuses on producing smart EV chargers that automatically adapt to all electric cars and any power grid. “It’s not just about creating a charging station,” says Stefan Dekker, who has been the first employee of Easee’s Dutch entity since 2020.
“Norway has always been seen as a pioneer in electric vehicles and clean energy,” says Dekker. “About 70 percent of its energy consumption comes from renewable sources, while the country is constantly working to maintain grid balance. That’s something we in the Netherlands can learn a lot from. The energy transition is becoming increasingly complex. As a greentech company, we want to play a role in that.”
Doing Business with the Tesla Mindset
Alfred Kuijer, now country director for France and the Benelux, joined Easee in 2021. “The founders behind Easee have a plan to make a real, long-term impact. In my own life, I’ve also gradually shifted toward living as sustainably as possible. Smart charging stations may not be thesexiest product, but they can actually make a difference.”
Like Dekker, Kuijer comes from the same background: Tesla. “Everything you read about working at Tesla is true,” Kuijer laughs. “In 2013, I became the third salesperson in the Benelux, and everything was still in its infancy. I knew a lot of car enthusiasts, but I had to explain what Tesla was all about everywhere I went. You learn that anything is possible. You run from event to event and help stranded customers. You learn to see only opportunities, not problems.”
Kuijer points to a good, telling example from Fremont, California. “There, Tesla once took over a former Toyota factory. The message back then was: if Toyota can make that many cars, we have to do at least as much. We’ve embraced that spirit—even challenging the inventor of Lean—here at Easee as well. We want to become the biggest and reach substantial volumes. You might be skeptical about that, but we see it as a serious mission. We want to be number one, and everything must be geared toward achieving that growth.”
Challenges of (too) rapid growth
Easee’s expansion was, therefore, lightning-fast. After opening its Dutch branch, the company quickly opened branches in the United Kingdom and Germany. But like many startups, Easee also hit a wall. “If you look at the mistakes startups make, we rank high,” Kuijer laughs. “Just Google the most common mistakes, and we’ve made them all.”
“I wasreading *Zero to One*on vacation—the book by legendary entrepreneur and investor Peter Thiel about the most common mistakes startups make,” says Dekker. “I forwarded practically every passage to Alfred at the time, because it wasliterallyabout us. It’s an expensive lesson, but it’s also shaped us. We’re willing to take risks. If you don’t, you’re being too cautious. That’s also a choice, but it doesn’t align with the kind of impact we want to make.”
Learning from Reorganizations
One of those mistakes was hiring too many employees. “That was a painful one,” says Kuijer. “We were growing so fast that having that much money was almost financially unsound. In four years, we went from being a small business—where we were still dropping off the packages at the post office ourselves—to a point where we had to reorganize because we’d simply hired too many people. Having to let people go when you know they’re good at what they do is incredibly tough emotionally.”
“We were so eager to grow that we just rushed into things too quickly,” says Dekker. “We had a huge media presence and could afford anything, but in hindsight, it might have been a good thing if we’d needed money. Then you have a sort of externalsystem of checks and balances.”
Amsterdam as a Hub for the Energy Transition
“Just as we were signing the lease for a larger office space in B. Amsterdam, we actually had to move on to an even bigger option,” says Dekker. “That flexibility was really nice: you can go from a single desk in the shared space to a full-fledged office. We want to make Amsterdam a European hub for the energy transition. The Netherlands has all the knowledge and expertise needed to make that happen.”
Despite growing pains, the ambition remains high. Easee has now installed nearly 800,000 chargers in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, the United Kingdom, and throughout Scandinavia. And if Kuijer and Dekker have their way, many more will be added there. “In five years, we want to be the largest player in the field of energy management in Europe,” Dekker concludes. “And the U.S.”
