Written by: Jasper Spanjaart - In cooperation with MT/Sprout
Norwegian manufacturer of smart charging stations Easee is led in the Benelux by Alfred Kuijer and Stefan Dekker. In the ambition to become the largest, the two former Tesla employees dare to take a risk. "We have made all the mistakes a startup can make.
Shaping the future of electricity: that's the slogan of Norwegian scaleup Easee. The company, founded by Jonas Helmikstøl in 2018, focuses on producing smart ev chargers that automatically adapt to all electric cars and to any electricity grid. "It's not just about creating a charging point," says Stefan Dekker, the first employee of Easee's Dutch entity since 2020.
'Norway has always been seen as a pioneer of electric driving and clean energy,' says Dekker. 'Some 70 percent of its energy consumption is renewable, while the country is constantly striving to balance the grid. That's something we can learn a lot from in the Netherlands. The energy transition is becoming increasingly complex. As a greentech company, we want to play a role in that.'
Entrepreneurship with the Tesla mentality
Alfred Kuijer, now country director for France and Benelux, joined Easee in 2021. "The founders behind Easee have a plan to make a real long-term impact. I myself have also slowly shifted in my life to someone who wants to be as sustainable as possible. Smart charging stations may not be the sexiest product, but you can actually make a difference with them.
Kuijer, like Dekker, comes from the same school of learning: Tesla. 'Everything you read about working at Tesla is true,' Kuijer laughs. 'I became the third salesman in the Benelux in 2013, and everything was still in its infancy. I knew many car brand enthusiasts, but I still had to explain everywhere what exactly Tesla stood for. You learn that anything is possible. You run from event to event and help stranded customers. You learn to see only opportunities and not problems.'
A nice typical example comes from Fremont, in California, Kuijer observes. 'There, Tesla once took over a former Toyota factory. The message then was: if Toyota can make so many cars, we should at least do the same. We have embraced that spirit of challenging even the inventor of Lean at Easee. We want to become the biggest and to substantial numbers. You can be skeptical of that, but we see it as a serious task. We want to become number one and everything has to be set up to make that growth.'
Challenges of (too) rapid growth
Easee's expansion was therefore rapid. After the Dutch branch, branches were soon opened in Great Britain and Germany. But like many startups, Easee ran into the wall. "If you look at startup mistakes, we score high," Kuijer laughs. "Just Google the most common mistakes, and we made them.
'I was on vacation reading Zero to one , the book by legendary entrepreneur and investor Peter Thiel on the most common mistakes made by startups,' Dekker says. 'I then forwarded almost every passage to Alfred, because it was literally about us. It's an expensive lesson, but it also shaped us. We dare to take risks. If you don't, you're too cautious. That's also a choice, but doesn't fit the type of impact we want to make.'
Learning from reorganizations
One of those mistakes was hiring too many staff. 'That was a painful one,' Kuijer says. 'We were growing so fast that it was almost financially unhealthy for us to have so much money. In four years we went from a small SME, where we still put the packages on the bus ourselves, to a phase where we had to reorganize, because we had simply hired too many people. That you then have to let people go, when you know they are good, is emotionally heartbreaking.
'We wanted to grow so badly that we just pushed too hard,' says Dekker. 'We had a huge media profile and could pay for everything, but in hindsight it could have been good if we had needed money. Then you have a kind of external checks and balances.'
Amsterdam as hub of energy transition
'While signing for a larger office building within B. Amsterdam, we actually had to move to an even larger option,' Dekker says. 'That flexibility was really nice though: you can go from a single desk in the shared space to a mature office. We want to make Amsterdam a European hub of the energy transition. All the knowledge and expertise is available in the Netherlands to do that.'
Despite the growing pains, ambition remains high. Easee has now installed nearly 800,000 chargers in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, the United Kingdom and across Scandinavia. And if it is up to Kuijer and Dekker, many more will be added. 'In five years we want to be the biggest player in the field of energy management in Europe,' Dekker concludes. And the U.S.'
