From Education to Industry Standard: How ChargerHelp! Created a New Job Category
Most startup founders focus on building products. But in a recent episode of Category Visionaries, ChargerHelp! founder Kameale Terry revealed how creating an entirely new job category became crucial to their success in the EV charging infrastructure space.
The Accidental Curriculum Developer
The story begins with a personal crisis. “My mom got diagnosed with cancer for like, the second or third time,” Kameale explains. After leaving her position at an EV charging software company, she began “creating a curriculum on how to fix charging stations, like in my spare time, because that’s what people should do in their spare time.”
This seemingly random decision led to volunteer training work with the LA Clean Tech Incubator. But when trying to help trainees find jobs, Kameale hit an unexpected wall: “No one wanted to directly hire field service talent.” The solution emerged when a company suggested, “What if you hired the field service folks and we hired you?”
Building More Than Just Training
Instead of simply creating a training program, ChargerHelp! took a more comprehensive approach. “Prior to our company starting, there was no job title called EVSE technician. We actually created that job title with the Department of Labor,” Kameale notes. This move from training provider to job category creator marked a crucial strategic pivot.
The technical complexity of the work justified this approach. “Charging stations are computers,” Kameale explains. “For fast chargers, there are many different, what we call handshakes, which essentially interoperability of software that has to properly work in order for one charging event to happen.”
From Company Standard to Industry Standard
The partnership with SAE International marked another strategic evolution. Instead of keeping their training proprietary, ChargerHelp! worked to create an industry-wide certification program. “We had created a curriculum on our own, but then SAE took our curriculum and then worked with some of the other industry folks to add on to it to now create this body of knowledge,” Kameale explains.
This collaboration, recently highlighted in a White House press release, positions ChargerHelp! at the center of workforce development in the EV charging space. The certification program launches in Q1 2024, allowing technicians to “go and sit for a test to become a certified EVSE technician.”
The Strategic Value of Workforce Development
While many viewed this focus on workforce development as a distraction, ChargerHelp! saw it differently. “We’re a technology company, we’re not a service company,” Kameale emphasizes. “We had to hire field service technicians and train them on their own because that labor force did not exist.”
This distinction is crucial. By creating and standardizing the workforce, ChargerHelp! could focus on their core technology mission. “That way we can further move into being a full technology company and not having so much service, physical service that we’re responsible for,” Kameale explains.
Lessons for Founders
ChargerHelp!’s journey offers valuable insights for founders building in emerging categories:
- Sometimes the biggest market opportunities require building infrastructure beyond your product
- Industry standards can create competitive advantages while benefiting the entire ecosystem
- Workforce development can be a strategic tool for market creation
- External validation (like White House recognition) can accelerate industry adoption
With 18,000 field service interactions across 17 states, ChargerHelp! has demonstrated how workforce development can enable product scaling. Their experience suggests that in emerging industries, success often requires building more than just your product – sometimes you need to create the infrastructure that enables your product to thrive.