The following interview is a conversation we had with Kenneth Herschel, CEO and Co-Founder of Viggo, on our podcast Category Visionaries. You can view the full episode here: Nearly $6 Million Raised to Build the Future of EV Charging Infrastructure
Kenneth Herschel
Nice to be with you.
Brett
Yeah, super excited. So tell us, where are you calling from today?
Kenneth Herschel
I’m calling in from Copenhagen, Denmark, and it’s late here due to the time zone. But anyway, good to speak to you, Brett.
Brett
Yeah, really excited. What’s going on in Denmark? What’s the tech scene like? There’s all, the tech scene is great.
Kenneth Herschel
I mean, general. Over the last ten years, the tech scene in Denmark has grown a lot. There’s been a lot of public incentives coming into play. There’s been a lot of private organizations, and there is a big tech startup scene in the works. We are seeing more and more small expos coming up, and we have a local expo called tech barbecue where there are people from all over the world flying in. So the tech scene in Copenhagen is really good.
Brett
And did you grow up in Copenhagen or where did you grow up?
Kenneth Herschel
Yeah, I was born and raised here. I’ve been living in Copenhagen most of my life. I did have a dip abroad. I spent a few years in London. I also spent eight years in Dubai and now returned to Copenhagen. Maybe not for good, but at least for a good period of time.
Brett
What inspired you to start a tech company? Where does that inspiration come from?
Kenneth Herschel
I’ve all my life been sort of an entrepreneur, even when entrepreneur really wasn’t a thing in Denmark. I did my first business when I was 16. I met a guy from New York in Copenhagen who had a small record store in Queens in New York, and I started importing vinyls and CDs back then, and that was my first step into starting a business. I went on to having a business when I was 19, which was a mountain bike store. So it’s been sort of my whole career starting up businesses. And what really got me into the tech industry was back in the early two thousands and let’s say the wave of the.com crisis that were there, and since then have just been motivated and inspired by all of the tech coming out.
Kenneth Herschel
And prior to founding the company that I’m in now, together with my Co-Founder, Patrick, were running an app development agency out of Dubai. So tech is running in my blood. And, yeah, I really love this.
Brett
See who’s inspired you along the way. When you think about entrepreneurs and take a look at entrepreneurs and tech builders and tech founders, who do you think is, like, the most inspirational Founder for you?
Kenneth Herschel
That’s a good question. I mean, there are some pretty not so famous founders out of Denmark, not known that much over the world. I think in general, the founders that really inspires me are the ones that doesn’t do it for the fame, but that does it because they just can’t stop founding and they can’t stop doing their companies. I don’t want to single out anyone in particular, to be honest.
Brett
Fair enough. What about books that have had a major impact on you? What’s the most impactful book?
Kenneth Herschel
I like to read and get inspiration from books, but I think the one that inspired me the most is actually seven habits of highly effective people by Stephen Cowey. I read it many million years ago. I’ve reread it three or four times, and there’s especially one chapter, which is the think win that I really like. That really made a big difference in my career. Generally speaking, whenever I enter a relationship in business, whether it’s a partner for the company or Hoi or anybody that you want to do business with, I always go in with the sort of win state of mind, and I find that to be a. A way more powerful way to do collaborations with others having kind of the win mentality in mind. So definitely seven habits of highly effective people.
Brett
That’s one of those classic books I probably read that I don’t even know, like, ten or 15 years ago. I haven’t read it since. But that was the first time that I was ever introduced to a lot of these ideas that now seem like they’re pretty obvious and, like, everyone seems to try to follow these ideas. But I remember reading that ten or 15 years ago and just, like, my mind being blown about the information that was being shared. So I need to go back and reread it again. I think that’d be fun.
Kenneth Herschel
I can recommend it. And, I mean, you’re absolutely right. I think I read the first time about 15 years ago as well. And back then, it wasn’t common logic in the business world, I mean, it wasn’t at all, and it has inspired me, and it still continues to do that. So definitely for you and all your listeners, I would recommend to go out and reread it, for sure. Nice.
Brett
I love that. All right, well, let’s switch gears and let’s dive a bit deeper into the company and everything that you’re building there. So how we like to start this part of the interview is really focusing on the problem. So what problem are you solving?
Kenneth Herschel
So we initially launched as a electric ripading service. So back in Copenhagen in 2017, Uber decided to leave the market for regulation issues. And back then, the whole tax industry actually fell back to business as usual, which meant that, you know, service was questionable, the tech was questionable, and so on. And we set out to solve the problem that a lot of, you know, especially the corporate users or the ones who wanted to get from a to b, they wanted to have electric cars and they wanted better tech to be available. So that’s how we started as a fully electric ride hailing service. But what we realized along the way is that when were deploying a lot of electric cars, of course they needed to get charged.
Kenneth Herschel
I mean, they needed access to public charges, which back then, in 2019 and early 2020, there wasn’t too much of that available. So we kind of decided that we wanted to invest into our own charges so our drivers would have access to fast charging. And along that way, me and my team, we realized that electric charging is actually in high demand. And when we started to dig into the numbers and the growth rates of the EV penetration coming into Denmark, we could see that this is actually going to explode. So the problem we’re really solving now is that a lot of commercial EV users, such as taxis, ride heating, last mile delivery, and so forth, they need access to public fast charging in urban areas. And that’s the problem we are solving for them now. So we have two sort of business units running.
Kenneth Herschel
It’s the ultra fast EV charging that we’re putting up in urban areas, and it’s the electric ride hailing that we are servicing mostly corporate users.
Brett
And what’s that revenue split or that business model split? Is it 50 or what is that?
Kenneth Herschel
Well, this year, we sort of see the recognized revenue in the companies probably split 50, but we grew 70% this year in the mobility side of the business, and we grew 250% in the EV charging, and we expect the EV charging to take off. So while the mobility still plays a very big role in our understanding and our focus and so forth. We definitely see that the biggest growth opportunity that we have is actually in the EV charging.
Brett
Is that hard, essentially running two completely different businesses?
Kenneth Herschel
I actually don’t think so. I mean, we have, obviously, teams that are split, and most of the team members, they are working on either one business or the other. But I think we have some inner synergies between the two. One is we get a lot of access to locations for our charges to actually having the right heading service. We also get a lot of brand recognition because we have the cars roaming around in the streets of Copenhagen. And the interesting part is that a lot of our own cars are actually consuming electricity on our own charges. So we are sort of our own customer as well. So the synergies between the two business units are actually way outweighed the complexity of having two somewhat different business units.
Brett
Talk to us about that decision to have two different business units. It sounds like it started off where it was just one, and then you uncovered a new opportunity. How did you know it made sense? And what was the decision logic like when you made that big decision to split that off?
Kenneth Herschel
So the big decision was, as I mentioned in the beginning, that we sort of set up the EV charges because we had to. There was not enough public charging available for our cars along the way. When we did the math, and that was our then CFO, we actually did a lot of calculations on how the business could actually work with EV’s, and we kind of saw that the opportunity was huge for us. The CFO was actually the managing director of the energy unit today. So I think that he really believed in the idea enough to. For him to switch routes. And especially when you look at how the world is transforming now. I mean, when we started in 2019, you had company like Tesla, which was growing a lot. You had the Tesla model three that more or less just came out back then.
Kenneth Herschel
But especially now, four or five years later, the number of EV models that are coming into the market is exploding. And when you look at a country like Norway, which is probably the country in the world that has the biggest ev penetration in the world, there are cities where more than 50% of the cars are actually electric. And when you then calculate how much charging there should be available in each city or in each area of a city or whatever, it’s mind blowing. And we are way behind on actually deploying this infrastructure for it. And that’s why we sincerely believe that we’re not, let’s say, coming with a better alternative to what there is on the market today. As with our mobility. We actually building out infrastructure for demand, which is not even being covered well enough as it is today.
Brett
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Kenneth Herschel
I think there are obviously other companies doing it. We are nowhere near alone. Even Tesla is a good example. I think Tesla is the biggest provider of EV charging in the world. They have these supercharges all around the world. I don’t know how many they have, but it’s a lot. And there are many competitors that are danish, that are very competitors, that are european, that are american, and so forth. Definitely someone else has seen a lot.
Brett
But when you look at the european.
Kenneth Herschel
Numbers, it’s expected that by 2030, at least 3 million public charge points should be available. Out of those, around 9% should be fast charging. That’s about more than a quarter of a million ultra fast charging points that should be shut up. And it’s expected right now that we are 15% of that deployment. So we have six and a half years to actually get all that done, and it’s not going to be possible to do it. So I think that in general, many people are surprised about how fast this can go. And, I mean, if you look at the southern Europe, if you look at many parts of the states, the evil penetration is not that big yet, but it’s coming. And what we can see in Scandinavia that once the sort of hitch a bottle effect hits, it is fast.
Brett
That makes perfect sense. Talk to us about expanding in Europe, country to country. Obviously there’s the EU, but is that hard going from one country to another when the language is different? I’m sure the laws are a little bit different. What’s that look like?
Kenneth Herschel
I mean, obviously it is. You know, Europe is, as a collected market, quite big. But as you say, there are many countries, there are many rules, laws and regulations and also many languages. We are on the path now to expanding into new countries. We have Sweden, we have Germany, and we have potentially the UK on our mind. And Sweden is relatively close to Denmark in not only proximity, but also in the way businesses is done and so forth. So that should be relatively straightforward for us. But of course, there is the language barrier. But bear in mind, being Danish being brought up here, we are a country of less than 6 million people. We sort of used to having to actually go into other markets and be ready to do anything because our whole market is so small.
Kenneth Herschel
So if you make it big in the US, you become a gazillionaire. If you make it big in Denmark, you’re almost close to nothing, if that makes sense.
Brett
Yeah, that makes perfect sense. That would becoming the biggest company in Nevada or something like that.
Kenneth Herschel
Exactly.
Brett
Yeah. Makes perfect sense. When it comes to your market category, how do you think about your market category? Is it commercial ev charging networks or ev charging infrastructure? How do you think about the category? Yeah.
Kenneth Herschel
So we are calling ourselves urban charging for commercial use, and we found that sort of, there is a gap in the market where many of the other chargepoint operators and energy companies are focusing a lot on deploying fast charging along the highway and then slow charges in the cities. We’ve sort of turned that around and focused mainly on deploying fast charges in urban areas. And that could be anything from a central part of Copenhagen to a business park to Copenhagen Airport and so forth. But we’ve done that because we kind of feel that market is overlooked. And the second thing is that the commercial uses of cars, taxis, last mile delivery contractors and so on, they can only rely on overnight charging at their home. They need access to fast charging while being at work and so forth.
Kenneth Herschel
And we see our opportunity in the market there.
Brett
Makes a lot of sense. As you prepare for 2024, whats on your mind and whats keeping you up at night from a business perspective?
Kenneth Herschel
Oh, lots of things are keeping me up at night. Thats actually not true. Im a very good sleeper. So even when theres a few fires burning, I still manage to get a good nights sleep. But as soon as I wake up, what I actually think about is mostly how to raise money and how to scale without making too many mistakes. In any startup and as a Founder, you run into a lot of problems. Thats sort of your everyday mo. You solve problems and the better you are at solving them and learning from your mistakes, the faster and the more you grow. For me, what im worrying about right now is very much the access to capital.
Kenneth Herschel
The funding markets, as you probably also hear from a lot of the other founders, has changed a lot in the last, lets say, year and a half, and there are a lot of macroeconomics things that are going on with wars in multiple parts of the world and so forth. So I worry a lot about whether we can actually get access to capital without paying too much forward, because everything is about having a proper balance. When you are a startup that are in funding mode, and we are sort of either at the state where we’re doing a late c or an a round, and if it had been a year and a half ago, I would go straight for the a round and so on.
Kenneth Herschel
But I tend to think that we should take it a little bit slower now and only take the amount of money in that we actually need at this point.
Brett
Makes a lot of sense. What have you learned about fundraising throughout the journey so far?
Kenneth Herschel
I’ve learned a lot. I’ve learned that what we did in the beginning was totally wrong. I got a really good advice from one of our investors who’s also on the board, and that is you’re always working on multiple rounds. When we started, we thought, okay, we’re going to do our work, then we’re going to switch into funding mode, then we’re going to go back to doing our work. And I realized that’s not how it works. You’re constantly fundraising, always in funding mode, and while you might be actively in your late seed round or your a round, you’re also working on the b route and the c round and the d round in terms of getting to know investors and so on. And it was a surprise to me how much time you actually spend as a Founder doing fundraising.
Kenneth Herschel
And I would say that probably 30% to 35% of my time is actually spent one way or the other on fundraising, whether it’s doing in, you know, investor calls, investor pitches, meet and greets, or follow up and so forth. But that actually came as a surprise to me, and that’s something I are wishing you back. When we have started, that would have taken a lot of headache away from us.
Brett
Outside of fundraising, let’s imagine that you were starting again today from scratch. What would be the number one piece of advice you’d give yourself?
Kenneth Herschel
That’s actually a good question. I think the advice that I would give to myself and I would get to anyone else is that persistence is key. As a Founder, you’re going to run into challenges. That’s everyday life. Stay consistent. Belief in your idea. And I’m saying this because we had our first paid trip back in October 2019, and for, I think, two and a half months in a row, were growing 11% week by week. So were thinking that this is going to be two years. Instead, it’s going to be pickaxed, and then everybody’s going to move to an island somewhere and only drink margaritas. Right? And then COVID hit in the beginning of March, and were not prepared for that at all. I mean, not at all at that time. We were driving our customers around.
Kenneth Herschel
We were taking them to the restaurants, to airports, to meeting and so forth, and that all disappeared. And were close to shutting down business a number of times because it just became too hard. We couldn’t raise money, we couldn’t make money, we couldn’t grow, we couldn’t do nothing. But we kept on going. The team all chipped in and so forth. And what I really learned is that persistency is key. Keep on going, and at some point, there is going to be a pot of gold by the end of the repo.
Brett
Love that advice. Final question for you. Let’s zoom out three to five years into the future. What’s the big picture vision that you’re building?
Kenneth Herschel
So we are definitely looking into becoming one of the main european providers of energy for commercial use. We will, at that point, probably be active in five to seven countries, obviously Scandinavia, Germany, the UK. And at that time, I would have loved to already have dipped my toes in North America, whether that’s Canada or the US.
Brett
Amazing. All right, well, we are up on time here, so before we wrap, if there’s any founders that are listening in that want to follow along with your journey as you build and execute, where should they go?
Kenneth Herschel
They should go to either viggo.com or look me up on LinkedIn. Kenneth Herschel, amazing.
Brett
Kenneth, thanks so much for taking the time. It’s been a lot of fun.
Kenneth Herschel
Brett, thanks a lot. I really appreciate it. Have a nice day. Yeah, you do.
Brett
Keep in touch. This episode of Category Visionaries is brought to you by Front Lines Media, Silicon Valley’s leading podcast production studio. If you’re a B2B Founder looking for help launching and growing your own podcast, visit frontlines.io podcast. And for the latest episode, search for Category Visionaries on your podcast platform of choice. Thanks for listening, and we’ll catch you on the next episode.
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