Just plug in and soak up the sun!
That is the claim & promise of the Graz based Startup EET- Energy Efficient Technology GmbH which we met 2018. Let’s take a short look back but also dare a look into the future. How has the EET business idea developed further? We spoke to Christoph Grimmer (Founder & CEO) about this today.
EET-Energy Efficient Technology GmbH developed a solar power & storage system for your balcony that anyone can use without any installation. Just plug it into your power socket! Or as we say- ‚plug & play‘
We did a pilotproject with EET where 2 customers testet their product SOULMATE. After this ended succesfully we handed it over to the Energie Steiermark. Where a sales agreement was subsequently concluded.
Mathias: Hello Christoph- we exchange information regularly, but in a nutshell- what have been the main development steps in the period up to now?
Christoph: After the first pilot tests, we started a Kickstarter campaign and since then we’ve been in the scaling phase. So we have gone through all the steps of a startup – so far successfully with a production site here in Graz & around 25 employees.
What about Covid-19? How did it affect you & your business?
Actually it startet very positive for us. Weh ad a large number of incoming orders. But then the downside came pretty quickly with delivery bottlenecks for different components. It is currently slowly starting to normalize again but unfortunately we are still lagging behind with every delivery.
Looking back, what were the ‚lessons learned‘ and also the ‚magic moments‘ on your journey up to this point?
A very important finding was the fact that many things simply take longer than originally planned. Especially in hardware development you need a few loops up to the finished product. And marketing / sales should never be underestimated – the technology must of course work, but it just doesn’t work without customers. Important tips also came from our investors, but also from the ecosystem for startups (university, funding agencies, mentors, clusters, …).
Looking to the future where are you heading?
scaling, scaling scaling (laughs)… for this year weh ave Italy as a new market in the pipeline. Then other countries in Europe will follow but also the USA with of course primarly California. And yes again- scaling, scaling, scaling! Over all I am optimistic that we will reach the climate goals, solar power will will be established on the market and the same goes for e-mobility.
