Matt Jaworski: Hello and welcome to Scaling Green-Tech with Katherine Keddie and Matt Jaworski, the co-founders of Adopter, the marketing agency for climate tech and adaptation. We take you behind the scenes of climate tech's most inspiring journeys, from breakthrough scaling wins to game-changing innovations. Join us for practical lessons and stories from the founders, investors and changemakers who know what it takes to solve some of the world's biggest problems.
Katherine Keddie: Amandeep Kalra is the co-founder and CEO of GreenFlip, where he's helping investors create the kind of homes people genuinely want to live in. Warm, comfortable, low-energy homes that deliver happier tenants, better returns, and a better carbon footprint. He's backed by Carbon13, and his work sits at the intersection of design, technology, and climate. Amandeep is an architect by training. He previously co-built and co-led the design team at Be First, shaping the delivery of more than 2,000 award-winning homes, 70% of which were affordable housing. His leadership extends across the sector. He is also a trustee of the London Neighbourhood Scholarship. He's a lead ambassador for the Design Council's Homes Taskforce. He chairs multiple design review panels. He's also a non-executive director for Eastlight Community Homes and a guest architectural reviewer at numerous universities. In today's episode, we will discuss Amandeep's hard-won lessons on building better homes, building better teams, and building in public, with actionable advice for founders innovating in property, retrofit, and climate tech. Enjoy. Welcome back to Scaling Green Tech with me, Katherine Keddie, and Matt Jaworski.
Matt Jaworski: Hello.
Katherine Keddie: We are here today with a very special guest, Amandeep, who is the CEO and co-founder of GreenFlip. Hi, Amandeep.
Amandeep Kalra: Hi, guys.
Katherine Keddie: Thank you so much for joining us today. We're going to start with our classic opening question, which is, how would you explain GreenFlip to a five-year-old?
Amandeep Kalra: OK, my five-year-old has the same name as me, by the way. He or she is called Amundi because names in Sikh are also unisex. So imagine that your room is full of loads of broken doll's houses. And in some of these doll's houses, there's also a treasure. You have some keys that can open some of the doll's houses, but you don't know which of those doll's houses your keys is going to work for. So GreenFlip gives you some magical glasses that shows you which homes your keys will open. And once you open these, you fix those homes, and you find the treasure, and the dolls inside are happy.
Katherine Keddie: What a masterclass in how to answer that question. Okay, I mean, fantastic. And then for our slightly older listeners, please give us an elevator pitch of GreenFlip.
GreenFlip's ROI-led approach to home decarbonisation
Amandeep Kalra: I think that older listeners should get the same pitch. Yeah, so for the older listeners, I would say we analyze every single home to understand which homes have the highest ROI, return on investment, from energy upgrades. If I was going into more details, that would mean… Well, I was going to say how. Go on, ask how.
Matt Jaworski: Well, I'm asking how.
Amandeep Kalra: So, what we would do then is we do a couple of things. When you work out ROI, you've got to work out what something costs and how it pays. And if you work out what it costs and how it pays, that gives you payback in years or an ROI percentage. So for energy upgrades, we've got to work out what the baseline cost of running these homes are. What it would be after you've decarbonized them or retrofitted them through energy upgrades. How much it would cost to do those upgrades, and then what the savings are as a result. Those numbers give us the calculation to be able to give ROI, but underneath that is a complex set of heat loss calculations, electricity generation calculations, solar potential on a home, all of those things put together using a complex bit of standardized data sets, and our machine-learned models give us that predictive capability.
Matt Jaworski: And that's essentially the magic glasses?
Amandeep Kalra: That is the magic glasses. Not everybody's going to have these magic glasses, and that's what we bring. So you can go around to those houses with your keys to try and open those. You won't be able to open them without these magical glasses.
Katherine Keddie: I have a very strong next question, which is why?
Amandeep Kalra: Why should people open these?
Katherine Keddie: Yeah, why are you there as GreenFlip? What's the gap that you're filling?
Why leading with sustainability misses the commercial value drivers
Amandeep Kalra: The gap that we're filling is… I feel like in the space of decarbonizing, people have been asking the wrong question. And actually the question has been, how do we decarbonize and how do we make the built environment or homes more sustainable? And because we've been asking that question instead of how do we make homes higher quality? How do we make them cheaper to run? How do we increase their value over time? How do we future-proof them? How do we eliminate fuel poverty at a time where almost a quarter of the homes in the UK have fuel poverty households? And those are questions that are independent of policy downs and ups, and they're independent of you having to justify paying for something because the output is decarbonizing or sustainability. These things just make sense because you are trying to do these in a value-driven way. So these are the questions we try and answer. How do we improve the quality of homes, make them cheaper to run, and improve their value over time?
Matt Jaworski: I'll do a spin on the question that Kat asked you because, okay, that's the business why, but what I would be also interested is your personal why. So kind of what inspired you guys to get involved in this? And yeah, what drives you?
Amandeep Kalra's personal journey from council housing to founding GreenFlip
Amandeep Kalra: I mean, my own personal mission. I grew up in a council flat in Southwest London, in a tower block. It was three sides of external walls, single glazed windows, damp and moldy, all of the things you can imagine. And I, to be honest, as a child, you don't really know what is the cause of all of these things that you're feeling. But what I knew was my mom typically had asthma throughout the time we spent in that house. The council done a bunch of things, like they added internal wall insulation that created more damp and mold, it just perpetuated that condition. When we moved out of that house, Her asthma cleared up overnight when we moved into another place. I didn't know it then, but I went on to study architecture. I don't think I would say I studied it because I was there to solve this particular problem, but I really, really was interested in designing, developing, and creating better homes. So that's what I ended up pursuing. Then I worked for the public sector as well where I developed and designed social housing in East London for a council-owned development company. In there we created 2,000 homes on a 1.1 billion pound development program in five years. We were building one in five of affordable homes in the UK in one borough. And these homes were high quality, cheaper to run and worth more over time. And my mission has been quite strongly like housing is something I deeply, deeply care about. I genuinely feel like housing is a foundational pillar for your life. It can either be a springboard or it can be a sink. And for many people, it is a sink. And when I was at this last job where we were building all these incredible homes, I was also tasked with decarbonizing 29,000 homes in an estate, which is the biggest estate in Europe. It's called the Becontree Estate. It's four square miles. Unbelievable. And in this, I was tasked with that question. How do we decarbonize it? How do we make it more sustainable? Because we've got a government mandate. And it was really frustrating for me that I could see all the pieces of the puzzle. We had a landlord that was incredibly willing. We had tenants and homeowners that really wanted this change to improve the quality of their homes. We had installer networks, and we also had patient capital that wanted to invest in this space. But what was really missing was something that connected all these pieces of puzzles together so that capital could flow in a meaningful way where everybody in that chain drew value from it. And that was missing, so I was like, yeah, I'm going to quit and start something, because I think I can tackle this. And that's where I applied to Carbon13. It's an incredible incubator. I met my co-founder. Incidentally, I met my co-founder on the very first in-person day, and he just walked in. And I could hear him. talking about having just retrofitted his own home. So he'd just moved into his bungalow a couple of years ago. and he was quoted £11,000 for his energy bill. So I was like, do you live in Balmoral? Are you in Buckingham Palace? Show me your, he's like, no, it's just a bungalow, just any other bungalow. And he just had a young born as well, so he's like, well, me and my partner can survive with a really uncomfortable house, but we can't be doing that for our newborn. And he looked at the numbers and he was like, okay, we're gonna have to do something about this. So he did all these energy upgrades. He insulated, he changed to a heat pump, he added solar panels, battery, And he got that way, way down. Of course, the £11,000 was during the energy crisis, but still, it's significant when you compare to the average house at that time, which is more like £4,000. So he did all of this, and he was incredibly frustrated himself. From the moment he decided he wants to retrofit to the moment it was all done, 95% of the time he spent was on research, phone calls, finding contractors, working out if this was actually going to do something, if it was going to save him money. And the reason he was pursuing it was because he can't have comfort for £11,000 a year. That was why he was pursuing this. And we met for the same reasons, actually. Him from the end of a homeowner trying to increase comfort that's affordable, me trying to create better value for an entire neighborhood that's affordable and higher quality. And we immediately connected through the same problem from a very different lens. So yeah, that's what turned into the mission for GreenFlip, which is decarbonizing a million homes a year through creating value rather than pursuing sustainability directly.
Katherine Keddie: I mean you said that at the beginning and then just now that one of the problems in terms of the way that we approach decarbonisation is we're emphasising sustainability over other value drivers, over comfort, over saving. Why? Why do you think that is? It seems so counterintuitive.
The Vinted analogy for sustainability as a byproduct
Amandeep Kalra: Yeah, I specifically feel this in the climate tech space, the founders are very much on creating solutions. And most of their pitch starts with the planet's burning. This is all the problems that are happening around climate. And then here is my really complicated scientific solution that solves this. And like if I'm falling asleep at that, as somebody that's incredibly passionate about that space, and feel like I'm being lectured to and feel like I don't understand the solution, then imagine somebody that doesn't really believe, understand or care about sustainability. So I don't know why we get stuck in this world, but I really like to use like my favorite example to get people to understand why we should be thinking about value over sustainability is Vinted. Do you guys use Vinted? Yeah. Why do you guys use Vinted?
Katherine Keddie: Save money.
Amandeep Kalra: Right. Okay. You save money. Vinted is great. It's like, I think it's like more than a quarter of the UK uses it. In France now it's like overtaken the biggest retailers to become like the most popular place to buy clothes. And just like you, I started using Vinted because I was like, I want good quality and I want it to be cheap and save money.
Matt Jaworski: Right.
Amandeep Kalra: And then sustainability was just a fun byproduct. Circularity was a fun byproduct that I didn't have to think or work hard to do. And the beautiful thing afterwards is how your behavior changed. You will know when you want something from Vinted, it's not going to be like, I'll just look at it and get it tomorrow. You've got to plan this, right? You've got an event coming. You've got to plan in the Vinted, scrolling, searching, negotiating, bidding, having it delivered to your place. And then that can take like one to three weeks. We're currently used to the instant gratification model that we click, and it arrives tomorrow. So my behavior has changed, because I still really value those two things at the front, high quality, cheaper. But if somebody said to me at the start, come on this platform, where you might have to spend three weeks to get something, but it's really sustainable and super circular. And you might save money and it was high quality. You'd be like, hell no. Right. And, and the product could be exactly the same. The solution could be the same, but the narrative and the story and the value proposition is very different. Um, and I think that's where you can get the most successful scalable businesses when it comes to sustainability and climate tech.
Katherine Keddie: Yeah, I completely agree. I think a really common problem that we come across a lot in our work is that scenario that you mentioned of starting the pitch being like, the planet's burning, floods, crisis, crisis, crisis. As someone who works in climate tech, obviously, I feel strongly about that. I think it's terrible. I'm very worried about it. It's why I've dedicated my career to that focus. But at the same time, why are you spending all this time trying to educate someone and sell the whole idea and the whole world vision that you have when you could just say, you could do this much faster, it's going to be much cheaper, it's going to help you meet your KPIs. And by the way, you can feel good about it because it's sustainable, it helps meet your sustainability criteria.
Matt Jaworski: And I mean, you know, if you start by leading with sustainability rather than the actual value that people will care about more, you also risk getting boxed with a green premium solutions. So if you need sustainability, people will be like, okay, it's three weeks. So it's longer. Okay. So it's sustainable. So it's worse. And it's probably also more expensive, even if they say that it's less expensive, but you know, it will be not as good and not as pleasant.
Katherine Keddie: It's one of the most basic principles of marketing that you lead the problem statement with the problem that your customer has, right? So is the problem that your customer has that they need to save money on this project, or is the problem that the customer has that they're broadly concerned about climate change? Which is more pressing to them and which is more relevant to the context of the conversation? Both can be important, but leading with the one that's actually going to help you make that sale is what you need to be able to actually make an impact at scale.
Amandeep Kalra: even better if you're reaching clients that don't care about sustainability.
Matt Jaworski: The sustainability becomes almost a byproduct of your well-designed business model.
Amandeep Kalra: Exactly. And I don't know if it's where in this space some founders feel like they have to prove that they really care about this mission and you should care about it as a really important starting point and they think that's the thing that will sell their product and it really, unfortunately, is not. It makes people feel bad about themselves and it makes people feel like, oh, I should be doing this to be a better person and you're making me feel like I should be. And that way of trying to persuade people and communicate and story tell just doesn't really work. And I've also learned that through experimenting, because when you set about on this mission and you've left a career and you want to pursue this, you often think this is how you have to lead with. It's the process that you learn. Some of my really early slide decks would have led with 20% of the UK's emissions come from homes. This is the problem. And now I lead with the cost of running homes, the value depreciating over time, and all of these other things which are directly relatable by people. And you can hook something on that rather than something that feels far less tangible and visible.
Katherine Keddie: Yeah. Right now, which value driver are you leading with for GreenFlip?
Homes as decentralised energy infrastructure
Amandeep Kalra: ROI is the value driver and ROI is made of those two components. How can you make an investment as low as possible and how can you increase the returns as high as possible? And those are value drivers that you as a homeowner and a consumer care about when you buy a t-shirt off Vinted or you add some solar panels on your roof or you're a business owner that owns 100,000 homes and you're thinking about energy upgrades through the lens of value and returns as opposed to, I've got to do this because I've been forced to from a compliance point of view. And I really don't lead with compliance. We almost put compliance in the bin and talk about investing in infrastructure, like energy infrastructure as well. I think I'm always finding interesting new ways to think about the business model. One that I'm particularly really interested in now is seeing homes as a decentralized energy infrastructure that I'd like to compare with some audiences to, should you build a massive wind farm here, a nuclear power plant, or a solar farm, or decarbonize 100,000 homes? You're fulfilling generating energy, which is a huge problem globally, But you're doing loads more other shit on top of that. You're creating a resilient infrastructure which isn't reliant on one central source of energy that could break, could be attacked, could have issues. You have to move energy from there through our grid, which is really knackered. I'm selling you directly to the homeowner through retrofitting but also be protected from power outages and create comfortable homes as a result reduce NHS costs towards treating people with conditions due to respiratory problems from poor quality home you create so many more outcomes through that then and i'm finding different ways that i like to articulate why you do this which is way more value driven than just talking about, you must retrofit your house because we have to for 2050. It's like, why? It's so far away. I don't care about that.
Matt Jaworski: I would like to go back to something you touched on sort of at the start. When you talk about your value drivers, you don't lead with sustainability, you lead with ROI, because that's what investors care about. And the ROI comes from making the house much more energy efficient and maybe self-sufficient. And the sustainability is the byproduct of that. But for investors, again, the money is the main element here.
Amandeep Kalra: It is the main element, but I think what we… Investors like to be seen to be doing good. They just don't lead with that unless you're an impact investor. So if they're choosing between two solutions, and they potentially give the same value, the one that has a sustainability-related impact is a preferred choice, because it's the added bonus that makes them look good and potentially allows them to unlock other sources of funding that's impact and sustainability-related that they wouldn't get otherwise. So we think that that's purely their drive, and it often is the first drive, but there are other drivers that become secondary if the first drive is fulfilled. So I think the point is, we're fulfilling the most important drive, and then we have bonus drivers that make us stand out next to other solutions.
Matt Jaworski: And the value adds keep stacking up?
Amandeep Kalra: Exactly, the value adds just keep stacking up on top of that.
Katherine Keddie: You know what I love about your messaging is firstly that you lead with ROI but then also you talk a lot about comfort like clean homes, dry homes, warm homes and I think it gives people like maybe a tangible sense of the impact of what you do without having to really sell the whole farm. What led you to framing it in that way because I know you do a lot of testing with your messaging and you're constantly iterating.
UK housing quality compared to Germany and the rest of Europe
Amandeep Kalra: I think it's because consumers are not our target customer. But if you think about when you do all these energy upgrades, what does the person that's in the house feel? There is two things they're really feeling. One is, if you think about UK homes, by the way, are the worst in terms of quality. They're some of the oldest across Europe. There's loaded data on how it takes a lot longer for us to heat our homes to a comfortable temperature, which means as a result, many homes don't. and they accept discomfort because it's too expensive.
Matt Jaworski: That just reminds me of when I was visiting a friend a few years ago. He lived in one of the major UK cities, reasonably central, and the house had single glazed windows. They were able to keep it at nine degrees sort of temperature throughout the day. I had to, I was taking some like work holder and I had to put on like a, you know, jacket, gloves, everything because it was unbearable. And that was because it was just so energy inefficient that, you know, whatever they would do with heating, it would be just going through the, through the window. Obviously it was a rental, but that was just traumatic experience in a way.
Amandeep Kalra: Now that is like, for many people, very unsurprising. And when you find unsurprising accepted truths is where I think you can strike. Because it's something that people acknowledge and don't talk about, but it's so obvious. Oh, we're just used to living in homes like this.
Matt Jaworski: Yeah, that's how it is, right? That's just how it is. Having sort of grown up in Poland, I'm not used to that. For example, double-glazed windows are a standard. That's kind of like everywhere. Here, I keep spotting single-glazed windows again. Now I'm getting used to them, but at first I was just surprised. How is it possible? It seems like this problem was solved a long time ago, but obviously there are costs, there's sort of, let's say, legacy residential infrastructure and all this stuff.
Amandeep Kalra: And for most people, you can't detach. If you're going to have comfort, it's going to cost you a lot. And if you're going to not have a lot of cost, you're going to deal with discomfort. And then to really be able to tell people, actually, you can have both, that really strikes home for people. And I think people can really imagine what that could feel like. And then it becomes really tangible. It's the same with me. My wife's from Germany. Whenever I go over to her parents, I just, I'm walking around like opening the doors and seeing the details, how airtight it is, and I'm just like, all of these things that are very standard in Germany, I'm like, nope, we don't have this, we don't have this, we don't have windows that can open in this way that allow loads of natural ventilation while, you know, stopping burglars coming in. Like all of these basic features that I don't think Germans think about twice. are just embedded as ways of life. And we have stuff that's embedded in our way of life, which is probably many of those things need to change. And we've adapted over time because the homes are a certain way. And that means when you do some of these transitions, like changing a gas boiler to a heat pump, it requires you to change your behavior as well. You know, for example, you turn a boiler on, it'll be hot in two minutes, you can, like two hours, you can touch the radiator, it burns. A heat pump doesn't work like that. It's like gentle heat. All through the day, always, you don't turn it on and off. So there's no responsiveness. But again, if you're led with all of these crazy changes that you'd have to adopt, people would be like, no thanks, I know what I'm getting. But if you go with that Vinted approach of you've got something that's warmer and more comfortable, and yeah, you might have to change some behaviors, then it's just a lot easier for people to make those behavior changes when the things that they really care about are dealt with up front.
Matt Jaworski: It strikes home for me quite a bit because I, like a month ago, moved to a new place. And I just had a heating upgrade done. It's a flat, so I cannot have a heat pump. But I switched from panel heaters to storage heaters. And obviously, they work differently. I'm getting used to it. But as a result, they are more sustainable, but they're also better for my pocket, which was one of the key drivers. And, you know, compared to the old panel heaters, they have, for example, temperature-based control, right? Before, it was kind of like blowing heat at full capacity until I realized that I'm getting too hot and I had to switch them off. And then I had to switch them on in like 20 minutes. But now it's just like, you know, it's pleasant, it's warm, it's nice. It's just kind of like the change that you are describing in those properties you are working with.
Amandeep Kalra: yeah and those things are also valuable for investors right because if you have tenants that are warm comfortable and they're not spending loads of money compared to to run it compared to the house next door that another investor might be owning or a council might be owning this home is going to stand out it's comfortable and it's cheaper on their pocket so for an investor yes it could be higher higher returns from a direct point of view because your assets worth more and you can create an interesting model that combines rent and energy bills. But you get to keep your tenants longer, the happier. And that just means that you have less churn, people aren't changing, you haven't got the cost of people coming in and out. And there's a value to creating high quality products that do hit positively the bottom line for them as well.
Katherine Keddie: Yeah, very win-win. Something I'd love to get into more is your practical experience growing the company so far. And I think we'll have lots of people listening who will be on a similar journey. How did you go about building early traction so far? So getting those early customers, building relationships, what were your first steps?
Building early traction and selling before the product is built
Amandeep Kalra: You really have to Fly the plane before you built it, unfortunately, and that can feel really scary. Going and sitting in front of large investors, corporations, when you know you haven't actually got a solution for them just yet, you will. So it requires a lot of confidence to start those journeys, especially with, it depends on who you're dealing with. For us, it is big enterprises, and I know enterprises are super slow, you need time to build trust, which means you've got to start conversation and in some cases, one particular customer of ours, we'd started a conversation before we had even incorporated the company, before we even had our first check, because they were launching something super interesting and I was like, okay, we've got, I've got an idea that's going to be incredible for them. And I think I was like, if I approach them directly about this, they're probably going to be like, man, who's this guy? So I, I kind of went into a channel that sent me through to being a potential developer, which I was in my past. So all true. Um, but when I talked to them about some of the ideas we're thinking about and what we're about to do, they were like, okay, this is great. Let's set up a call biweekly and see where this goes. And that was hugely surprising because I was like, we don't even have a company yet and we've got incredible ideas. And you know, that person eventually became our first client with a service agreement and a contract and they're piloting the platform. But that journey was about seven months from the first conversation I had. And if I'd started that conversation at the point we had our first product, And then we would have that lag, another six, seven month lag before somebody trusts you enough to start using it. And then there's a lag on you trying to fundraise and all of those things. It is really hard, but we're really approaching that methodology because if you take this process of building a company in a very linear way, you build the product, you then try to sell the product, and maybe you have a first sale, then you try and fundraise, then you try and hire a team to grow after you fundraise, that linearity will take you a lot, lot longer to get any traction and do anything. And the scarier thing is chopping that up and basically going, I'm going to build, sell, fundraise and hire all at the same time. And the scary part of that is they all have to sort of magically align in the middle when you've got a useful product or MVP that you're able to sell to customers, because that's the moment where you're able to attract funding. That's the moment you can actually get customers using your product. That's the moment you're potentially hiring and scaling the business as well. So it's a lot scarier to do that and a lot harder, but that's how I've been working at this. And so far, it's been pretty good. And it means we can get traction a lot faster than you would otherwise following it linearly, which it seems like the safer thing to do in your mind as a founder, because you're like, I can't sell something I don't have yet. But you really need to sell something you don't have yet, because you might not then want to sell that thing that you think you want to sell, because actually nobody wants that solution.
Katherine Keddie: In a context where trust building over time is really important, like you say, how do you walk the line between being early enough so that you're not then stuck with an MVP waiting seven months to have your first customer and overselling and then ruining that trust for later relationship building, for later selling when you have that MVP and then also when you develop later as a company?
Matt Jaworski: That's a concern I heard, I think, quite a few times, especially from scientific background founders who say that, okay, we don't have it yet. We don't want to spend time, for example, on marketing or sales to get customers in or lined up because we might have a delay or they might lose interest and we're just not there. Well, you're proposing something that's more of a, let's say, bold approach, obviously with a slightly different type of solution, right? That is not as deep tech as something that would be very hard science, but still different philosophy. So what's your take?
Finding early customers through pain, mission, and personal backing
Amandeep Kalra: A good point. I think if you're trying to find really, really early customers that you can work with, I think they've got to fall in like a couple of buckets for me, maybe in this order as well. Firstly is finding somebody that has this serious serious deep pain point. That they're not really able to solve right now with anything else that's out there because they will genuinely give a chance on a half cooked half baked thing. And when you're in a conversation with a customer. where that happens, it's magic because you can just see they're like, I want this right now, I want this today, when can I get this, what can I give you, can we invest in you, can we advise you, like they will offer everything they possibly can as a customer because they've not found anything else that solves their pain point. You obviously got to make sure that that pain point isn't such a niche pain point that you can't then scale it as a business. But those people will take a chance on you even if your products four, five, six, seven months, even longer out because nothing else is remotely out there and they're willing to work with you to get there. Then after that is somebody that truly backs your mission of what you're trying to do. So this is another step further. So if beyond that, like ideally you have somebody that has that deep point point. If not, then it's somebody that really backs your mission. And if it's not that either, it's somebody that really backs you as a team, as an individual. And they get progressively harder if you're a first time founder and doesn't have much experience and hasn't started a company before for somebody to back you. who's taking a high-risk chance on you when you have no proven track record, that will be the hardest. So I'm a first-time founder. My co-founder, thankfully, isn't. He's a serial entrepreneur. So as a team, we then have that experience of starting businesses before, which is very good comfort to investors. So I think it's in that order. And everybody can try to… If you do enough customer discovery, you will find somebody that has pain that they need serious help with, and they will come on that journey with you.
Katherine Keddie: How did you approach the customer discovery? Because I know you're coming into the situation with a personal experience, so that obviously gives you a really good sense of what the pain point is, as is your co-founder. How are you approaching the discovery? I know Carbon13 are always like, customer interviews, customer interviews, customer interviews. Every founder that I've met who's come off that program has done 100, 150 interviews. How did you go about that? What were your results? Tell us the process.
Customer discovery at Carbon13 and the pivot from B2C to B2B
Amandeep Kalra: Yeah, our business actually started on, we, me and Tom were like, we actually want to help homeowners. So the business initially was on helping consumers. And we did about, as you said, lots of Carbon13 founders, 50, about 50 interviews, like half an hour interviews, surveys of over 150 people. Um, that was incredible learning. It really told us that is not a place for us to scale a business.
Matt Jaworski: Sorry, that sounds like a big success of customer discovery, contradictory to what some might think.
Amandeep Kalra: No, I totally think it told us that. And did we need to do 50 and 100? Yes, because I think even 10, 15, you get wide ranging. After 50, you start getting chunks of solid pattern. And then when you do broader surveys, and it's kind of irrefutable, like evidence against something. And what that was telling us, that people that were the most sustainable conscious, able to pay individuals, would not justify retrofit, green upgrades, because they didn't see the value in it. We were like actually this is not this and that's that's a very rare crowd then the rest of it needs the whole narrative that also told us about what. What what value are we telling people what value are we selling people how we talking to people it taught us a lot about what we lead with cuz we would lead with retrofit with pump and then later we were like. Um, actually, um, some of the interesting things we found out through there was that though individuals were not willing to do the work themselves, they would pay a premium to move into a low carbon, low bill home. They would pay, um, Quite significantly higher and we got really good data around that. So what that tells us is for investors, there's a growing market of people that want this kind of stuff, but they just don't want to do it themselves. That was validated with one of our first, um, LOI customers. And he, and I asked him and he used to, he used to actually, um, he had one of the first Real estate impact funds that built new build across the UK and he left that to do retrofit real estate business. Why would you get a really profitable business is also impact like why would you do that and he was like. There's two reasons. One, homeowners and renters are not able to, even if they can, do it themselves. And I've realized that myself through all my work. And two, institutional investors are really desperate for this type of investment. And he knows that world way better than I do. So he was like, this is where I'm betting. And I was like, okay, well, if this is where he's betting as well, this is similar time, we're speaking to this person. And this is tricky, because I knew this person from a former life. And I came to this idea that we had. And he was like, Oh, my God, how do we help you? What do you need investment advice, contacts, and he actually introduced me to his competitors. That's when you know when someone cares about an issue and a problem beyond themselves that they're willing to introduce you to their competitors it gets it's quite interesting. So yeah that's I think that's the approach I would take really. How you can go down that chain of identifying the right people based on pain, mission and backing.
Matt Jaworski: I think for Problem Discovery, there was also another part of this story that you told during your pitch at Carbon13 Venture Arcade. Or maybe I'm confusing two stories, but I think you mentioned that there was someone like this, and they were looking for houses to retrofit. And they analyzed, I don't know, like thousands of properties?
Amandeep Kalra: Same guy, right? Same person. that said why they're leaving new builds for retrofit was when they eventually did their first zero build retrofit and they're looking to do 20,000 in 10 years time, so that's a lot of money. They analyzed 700 to just do one, 699 they didn't do, that spent nine months of work doing that. That's exactly what we do instantly. So we cut the 699, 699 really quickly so that he can get on with upgrading, investing in the one that will actually have return on investment. And that was, that was a really strong learning curve because we've, we had loads of calls with him to understand his business model, what he's looking for, what he's after, and then similar people after that. And I think when one introduced you to others, then you're getting introduced to that type of customer profile through others. Um, so that, that led us to from customer discovery, homeowners, not that we actually iterated on probably seven or eight business models before we ended up where we are. And one thing I remember from the investment committee feedback after Carbon13 gave us the news that they're investing in us was that. We don't think you've quite nailed the idea you've landed on, but the speed at which you iterated based on customer research and an obsession with customer, we know that you're going to nail the solution in the right marketplace and scale because of the speed that you're iterating and how you're learning from customers. And that goes back to the whole thing of when you're founding a team, you're Looking for an A team would be ideas because as a strong team that understands customers and has the right complementary skill sets, you can take any idea and grow it to an incredible business. If you then land on an A idea as well, then the world's your oyster.
Katherine Keddie: Actually, that brings me on really nicely to ask you about team building, because I know you've recently hired a founder's associate, you've been growing your team. As you mentioned, you've been hiring, fundraising, getting customers, building the business, iterating, all kind of in one frantic motion. But when it comes to hiring, how have you approached that? How have you found the right people and how have you made sure that that instinct for iterating that entrepreneurial spirit is throughout your team at an early stage?
Hiring slow, firing fast, and cognitive diversity in early teams
Amandeep Kalra: We take hiring slow and firing fast very seriously. Like the first hires have been slow. I gave the example of one of our first clients starting that conversation seven or eight months before they I'd been hiring before I think I was ready to hire. Like I'd been thinking about hiring before I actually wanted to hire. And when do you want to hire is when you feel really confident that what you next need is more resources to grow something you feel really strongly about. And if you know you're gonna get there, but you're not there yet, and I was in this moment, and I knew we would get to that moment eventually, I started thinking about hiring in this moment, because I was like, I don't want to get to that moment and be desperate, and then have to make decisions based on time speed. So I'd been thinking about hiring long before, and that means reverse pitching at various events, putting posts out there on my LinkedIn, growing a big network there, and actually we've Both our early, all of our early hires have come through the Carbon13 network. All had directly reached out to us because of what they'd read, seen about us, the values we represent, what we're trying to do, the mission we're trying to solve, and they were keen to work on that mission. We did, I did even have, so talking about firing fast, I even had one person that we were going to recruit for a particular role. We'd gone through all the motions. This will be helpful for founders, I think. Offered the job, accepted, and then post being accepted, without sharing too many details, Some red flags appeared and making the really tough decision with my co-founder to withdraw the offer. because we were getting the sense in our gut that this wasn't the right person. So in the spirit of firing fast, we fired somebody before we even hired them. That's how rapidly, that is how tough it is before we even took them on. And I think it was an incredible decision because when we then finally took another two months after that moment, we were ready to start working with this person to hire who we actually ended up getting for this founder's associate role. That's Rachel who's absolutely incredible, comes through the Carbon13 network and has gone through the program with a skill set totally different to mine and my co-founder, with a background very different and a way of thinking that's cognitively diverse to both of us. Which is a really important part of building teams is how cognitively diverse they're very different to just diverse. I'm a kind of gender and racial point of view is how people bring very different thinking. To a table based on all the things that they've learned all the things based on the lived experiences come out the same problem a very different angles because you create the richest solutions. So yeah, we've got two incredible people that have come through the Carbon13 network, but we had loads more that I've interviewed, and we're finding weird, fun ways of shaping that in a world where cover letters, CVs, everything is AI generated and you're trying to understand the human behind those layers. And both of these people reached out to us directly. It came from conversations before paperwork, and the conversations told us they incredibly aligned. The paperwork was a tick box.
Katherine Keddie: So you've invested a lot of time and effort and energy into doing what we call kind of building out loud, so sharing thought leadership ideas, the process of building the company, insights from your expertise before starting GreenFlip through LinkedIn. And as you mentioned, that kind of presence on LinkedIn and also other ways in which you kind of get yourself out there and you network and you meet people has brought in the right hiring people, brought in the right people as customers, I'm sure has been helpful in the fundraising process. What made you start posting and how have you approached finding your voice on LinkedIn in a consistent way?
Building in public and founder-led LinkedIn as a growth channel
Amandeep Kalra: I didn't want to be another statistic. I have seen lots of people, founders, people I know in my network, that would disappear for a year because they're working on something. Nobody knows what they're doing. They're very quiet about it. Either they emerge triumphantly because they've succeeded in what they've done, or you never hear from that thing again and they've taken up another corporate job. And I was like, I'm not focused on where I end up, but what I am really conscious of, all of the incredible learnings that that person had for that period of time where they went dark, nobody knows about and in a sense they had no support because they felt like they were taking this big reputational risk and it can only be successful if it succeeded and I don't buy that argument that it's only valuable if it's successful so my whole mission was that The wins, the losses, the hard points, the pain points, I want to use LinkedIn and other social media platforms as pretty much my public diary of this is what I'm feeling, this is what I'm doing, this is what's going well, this is what's not going well. There is some structure around that, like I would probably not talk in depth about some subjects, and that's just because there's things I care about, climate, housing, and founder journey are generally the topics I care about and talk about. But it's been really important that regardless of the output and outcome, that the whole entire process is out there in the public. And LinkedIn is one format. We send out newsletters to our partners, investors, people that generally like us, really early on. Every month, what we're doing, what we did last month, what we did this month, what's going well, what's tough, how you might be able to help us. And we have this incredible network of, I have people on LinkedIn that are following my journey, and in newsletters, and in other social media channels like Instagram that are just following you, and following with I'm really interested in where this is going, but not with a, like, I wonder what's going to happen. They're just interested in the actual journey, which is what I'm really interested in, is in that present moment where I'm learning all of this incredible work and doing all these incredible things. So in a sense, I never set out to curate LinkedIn to be anything other than sharing that journey and my learnings. And I've been just vastly surprised by the fact that we've hired through there, you know, Rachel, the founder's associate, I asked her the other day because I was writing a job description for, we're also hiring still for a machine learning engineer, and I was like, what really got you into us? She was like, I've just been reading the things that you were talking about online on LinkedIn, the things you care about, the things that your business is, and I just, thought that's the person that I want to work with. And I was like, how do I put that on a job description? And the truth is that you're building character over time. Authentically, people see right through it if it's not authentic. through a long process. And for me, it's unlocked hiring, it's unlocked investors who've reached out to us saying, oh, we think you're doing some incredible work, can we have a chat? Clients who are like, oh, we think what you're doing could be really useful to us. Journalists, podcasts, talks, events, all of those have come through. And this has not been, again, I've not been pursuing the output of those things, I've just been talking about what we're building, what we're doing. And what happens is naturally people are really interested. And I think this is really important and it goes back to my other conversations as well about pursuing sustainability directly or indirectly.
Matt Jaworski: I mean, it sounds like, as you say, right, you were not chasing the outcomes, you were more like enjoying the process, which is quite different than a lot of people who seem really trying hard to stand out on LinkedIn will, I know, make some like posts that are hard sell, that is not engaging to anyone. Maybe sometimes cringe, but like that they themselves probably wouldn't engage with if they seen it and be hard to imagine them actually thinking that this is like, you know, good content that someone will enjoy. There is nothing personal there. There's no values. So then an authentic presence is very refreshing, very much stands out, especially, we talked about even before this episode, right, how you just write things yourself based on inspiration, in your style, you're not using AI to hyper-publish it, inserting some em dashes that do an AI review. And that works. And you're enjoying the process, that makes it easy for you to keep doing this. And then you have this compounding interest, right? Over all those months it keeps adding up and then people are noticing it and more and more people are coming your way. It's amazing.
Amandeep Kalra: Yeah, thanks. I call it like observational content. Like most of my stuff is. And I really like comedians for that. The best comedians say something you're thinking, but you never say. And you're like, I'm glad you said that. I thought it was just me. And, you know, something I posted about last week, which was on the idea of Stoßlüften, which is a German word for rapid ventilation. And when I was staying in with my in-laws and sat by the fire, really cozy fireplace in the middle of winter, he comes in and slides the big doors open. And I'm like, what are you doing? I'm cozy. You're trying to freeze me. And she goes, Stoßlüften. Ventilating, obviously. And I'm like, yeah, we don't do this in the UK. Like, this is not a thing because our houses are too cold. We're too scared of losing heat. But it's so important for the quality, well-being, health of a home. And it just sparked a cross-global conversation about ventilation cultures, which the Germans are very passionate about. But people from over 30 countries got involved in this incredible conversation. And my thing was just an observation on how we do things and how the Germans do it and I found that really fascinating. There's no sale about it's just content and obviously it's an area that I care about, it's climate, it's housing, it's something I've spotted and that's not something you can generate on the spot I think.
Matt Jaworski: Oh yeah. And it wasn't something that was like, you know, ventilation, two lines later, what it taught me about B2B sales.
Amandeep Kalra: Yes. Click here to tell us more and sign up.
Matt Jaworski: Join my webinar about ventilation. I'm also trying to sell you an online course on the topic.
Amandeep Kalra: first 50 houses, like none of that, right? If you're building a reputation and people see you as the most credible person in your industry, you don't need to sell anything hard. They'll come to you because they're like, well, if I want to talk about decarbonizing homes and finding out about ROI, obviously I'm going to go to Amandeep because he knows his shit. You don't have to do a sale.
Matt Jaworski: I mean, it ties in very well with the concept of the marketing funnel, where you have top of the funnel, middle of the funnel. I'm getting into it now. Anyway, bottom of the funnel. And the content can sit in a couple of those categories, but part of it is to sort of get people's, let's say, attention, make the initial contact be an initial touchpoint. Middle of it is to keep people sort of engaged, get them on your orbit and keep them on it. Then bottom is when sort of the business happens. And what you're describing is exactly, it's not like a hard sell that like, buy my thing, work with GreenFlip, invest in us. It's more like, you know, something that's an interesting, relevant observation to people. If you spotted it, many others spotted it. And that catches their attention. And that also is refreshing. That makes them wanting to come back for more. And then when they get to a position where they might want to work on something in the space, you're their go-to, and they will come to you themselves, rather than you having to chase them. Or even if you approach them, and they haven't reached out to you, they will say, Oh, yes, I know you from LinkedIn. Like, of course, I will take the time to speak with you.
The silent majority and compounding returns from authentic content
Amandeep Kalra: This happens so much. I think when sometimes founders might post and they see 30, 40, 50 likes, and they're like, oh, my God, this has such terrible traction. Don't forget the impressions mean people see stuff, they might not engage with it. And I have so many people come up to me, they're like, I know you, I've seen loads of stuff. And you say incredible. And I'm like, I don't know, I haven't seen you ever engage with any of my content. But they not everybody engages by actually silent majority concept. It's a silent majority. And I think It's hard for you to quantify cuz you don't invisible but actually it's actually people just know you and you wanna be. So loud so undeniably loud in people's faces that you're just everywhere even if if if people don't want to end to the point about the bottom of the funnel something i did immediately after that other post because we weren't we need some research was post about. some questionnaires I needed filling to get people's information on how much energy they use, what energy upgrades they've already done, blah blah blah, like stuff that some research organizations have costed me 20, 30 grand to get, and in about 24 hours we had well over 50 people fill it out. And spend a good 10-15 minutes doing it. And some that were brand new people that engaged with the previous post that I'd never known before that, then had gone shared.
Matt Jaworski: Oh yeah, because you know, they already sort of, well, I guess we could say had sort of a form of a parasocial relationship with you from observing you, even if they were not engaging from sort of following you and being connected with you. And then they were like, well, this guy who's great, doing amazing things is now, you know, looking for some inputs. Of course, I will reshare it and I'm happy to be involved with that. It's just what you're describing. It sounds Like something that should be in marketing textbooks unfortunately it's very rarely is because it's very difficult to do and counterintuitive to many people who think like okay. Shut up about your business and try to you know sell things don't be accepted whatever but no just doing things with a heart of a soul and it's in spain golf.
Katherine Keddie: It's a great LinkedIn ROI, that story. Save 20 grand on research.
Matt Jaworski: What I was also going to say is that it's something we sometimes get asked about. It's kind of like, okay, what's the ROI of LinkedIn, brand building, social media, personal channels? we're going to, oh, well, or like, oh, why would we spend this much money on like some activity on social media? If for that we could have a person doing cold calling, you know, for eight hours a day, every day for a month or something like that. And that would give us like some leads. Well, you are presenting a very good answer that like, it's, it might seem like intangible. You can't really calculate ROI of your, you know, few, right, uh, several months, a year or over a year of posting. But then, you know, you have those conversations and they go much smoother because people say, yes, I know you. So what's the value of that, right? It's hard to put a price tag on it, but there is a very clear value that you are getting. Many people are unfortunately missing out on this. And then you have those moments like with the survey where you say like, okay, this, you know, me doing posts fairly regularly over the last year, let's say, saved you 20, 30 grand. And that's like a very clear ROI. But that's ROI that's not necessarily like a fully attributable sales revenue, because like, if you're in a B2B setting as you are, right, and decision making can take like months and months before someone decides to work with you. You're not going to say, oh yes, we want to put money into Greenflip, be your customer, because we've seen your LinkedIn posts. No, this will just keep the conversation going or help start it. But it's not like, you know, oh, I've seen the post on Instagram and the shoes look cool, buy now, buy Greenflip. No, that's not how it works.
Amandeep Kalra: It's not instant gratification. I would never, people ask us well how are you going to scale sales and I'm like it's going to be founder led and it's going to be very low, it's going to be high quality through us and I would never have somebody sat on a call doing cold stuff because I want to get us to a point where we're just getting outdone by inbound, but not because we're just putting some marketing campaigns out there.
Matt Jaworski: Top 5 tips for retrofitting your house, written by ChatGPT.
Amandeep Kalra: Yeah, exactly. We already get like one to two, one to three inbound hiring inquiries a week. We get, I get at least five investors reaching out a week directly to me because they've seen some content and they're qualified they're in the right space. So for me it's having a presence is working right like it's it's and that saves me time as well because I obviously we do outbound but if inbound is just helpful because they pre-qualified you and you've gotten through some layer already so.
Matt Jaworski: Oh yeah and you know the inbound leads have much higher chance of converting than outbound leads so you know Compared to like cold calling all those people, you will get much better results, much easier, much quicker. And it might be even the decision makers themselves, right? Getting in touch directly and then you don't have to go through five people in between them after you reach out the phone call of the phone number of the assistant or a receptionist. Exactly.
Katherine Keddie: I think it also builds into everything that you said today. It has a theme through it that I can observe, which is trust and relationship building. I think that touches the way that you've approached building advisors, the way that you've hired for your team, the way that you market what you do, the focus on inbound leads coming to you, relationship building touch points. I think the way that you are as a person also really lends itself to that. I mean, I think we had a chat once when we were in the Conduit in Covent Garden, which is a space for changemakers and impact-focused people in a professional setting. And you said every time you go, you meet three people because you just go, oh, hi, nice to meet you. This is what I'm working on. And that kind of approach, I think, is so valuable in the work that you're doing. We are coming to the end of our time together. Before we finish, I would love to hear from you if you have any shout outs that you'd like to bring to the attention of the audience, any asks, any things that you need help with right now.
Amandeep Kalra: I have a call to action for the audience. In terms of shout outs, there's loads of people I'd always shout out, you guys I shout out, Carbon13 I always shout out. I have this mycelium network of people that are like, you know, Kat, I will randomly message you, I'm thinking about this as a new tagline, what do you think? Similarly, I do this with Abi from Harpswood on, oh, this post went really viral, can I, do you think there's a way I can get into the press? And I have this network of really helpful people that would also reach out to me going, can you make some interest? And I think there is a way of helping each other that's not always transactional from a monetary point of view. And I've always been like, you give and you trust in giving and the universe finds a way to return. So yeah, all of these people I'm always, and Climate Connections is brilliant as well, an event that I've met loads of people at. and I continue to meet loads of people at. And I guess another theme I think I've been observing today with all the things I've been saying are a lot to do with trust in the process. It's really hard to do to trust in the process because you as a founder are constantly being asked about goals, results, KPIs, output. And sometimes those outputs that investors might want are so far out in the future that it can take your eye off the process because you're trying to create something that's really valuable later. But I would really say, if I was also talking about this in the context of climate tech and sustainability again, is don't directly aim for sustainability. In the same ways you wouldn't pursue happiness directly. You would pursue meaningful activity and happiness appears. Like maybe another example is chasing a cat around a house to get it to sit with you versus doing something meaningful and it would just come and sit on your lap. And I really trust the process, whether it's sustainability, whether it's content, whether it's anything you'll hear, I've been hearing that. Trust the process, pursue meaningful activity and sustainability, clients, customers, hiring, those things will come, but you really have to trust the process.
Katherine Keddie: So that's your call to action.
Amandeep Kalra: Yeah, that is my call to action.
Katherine Keddie: Say it right down the camera, trust the process.
Amandeep Kalra: Trust the process. Don't pursue sustainability. Pursue meaningful activity. Sustainability will come and sit on your lap.
Matt Jaworski: Like Uncle Sam, I want you to trust the process. Yeah.
Katherine Keddie: Nice. Okay. Perfect. Where can people find you?
Amandeep Kalra: You can find me on LinkedIn. Famously. Famously active on LinkedIn. I don't have a fun code you can find, but I'm sure you'll have it somewhere at the bottom of the podcast.
Matt Jaworski: We'll add it into the episode notes.
Amandeep Kalra: Yes. I am also on Instagram. You see a very different side of me on Instagram. It's deep12 if you want to find me on Instagram.
Matt Jaworski: I'll allow you after the episode is done. I'm curious now.
Amandeep Kalra: It's even more raw, I would say, than LinkedIn in terms of what I'm feeling and what I'm thinking. And yeah, come and check us out at greenflip.homes, particularly if you're interested in where the best ROI for Retrofit is. And I'm pretty much always out and about at events, so if you want to come find me, I'm usually at Climate Connections, I'm at the Conduit a couple of days a week. So yeah, reach out to me in person, that's my favorite way of connecting with people. And yeah, let's figure out how we can tackle some serious, serious problems in a meaningful way by trusting in the process.
Katherine Keddie: Beautiful. Okay. Well, thank you very much. So that's goodbye from me and goodbye from Matt.
Matt Jaworski: So before we say goodbye, I think it's worth mentioning that the few people that you gave such nice shoutouts to, like Abi from Harpswood, Juliette from Climate Connection, they were already on our podcast. So Abi and her co-founder James, they were, I believe, in episode 4, where they talked about PR tips and suggestions for climate tech companies. And Juliette was on a recent episode where she talked with Kat about forming strong connections in the space and co-founder relationships. You also emphasized quite a bit the value of customer interviews. And we do happen to have a resource on this topic on our website, together with a very useful script that can help anyone really get started with customer interviews and doing them in a much more meaningful way, avoiding leading questions or biasing your audience so that you can, like Dave did in his research, get the information that will be useful, even if it might disprove your initial business idea. Yeah. But like, you better learn this early on, right? Done after a couple of years work and thousands of hours and pounds sunk into it.
Katherine Keddie: Yeah. Okay, so I think that's everything from us. Thank you very much, Amandeep, for joining us. My pleasure. Thank you very much. And you can catch us on the next episode of Scaling Green-Tech.
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