Adrian Tuck began working in 2006 as the CEO of Tendril, a Boulder-based home energy management company focused on consumer data analytics and education, and over the years helped it grow and evolve into Uplight after a recent successful merger with Simple Energy, another Boulder company. Uplight provides “solutions for delivery, management and optimization of the customer energy experience” for the utility industry, said Uplight CEO Tuck.
The company boasts of 350 employees and revenue north of $100 million. “We serve 85 utilities in North America. That’s about 110 million meters,” Tuck said.
“No longer are power plants, poles and wires a utility’s greatest asset. It’s the customer,” he said.
Understanding customers’ interaction with energy can help utilities provide more personalized products and services. That’s where Uplight comes in, Tuck said.
We recently met Tuck to learn more about Uplight.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
1. How does Uplight help the utility industry?
Tuck: Uplight is helping utilities build strong relationships with customers. It’s also enabling them to grow and diversify their revenue, managing energy at grid edge with a view to make utilities greener. We want to provide a seamless experience that involves educating customers and making it easier for them to make better choices to save energy and money. We also manage rebates for utilities to make it seamless.
Our goal is to help improve customer experience and satisfaction, reduce service costs, increase revenue, and reduce carbon emissions.
2. What’s with the name Uplight?
Tuck: When we merged with Simple Energy we didn’t want to have a “loser” or a “winner” by retaining one of the two names. The new company did so much more than the individual companies that became part of it. We looked at a lot of names and chose Uplight, because it reflects our mission. Our job is to shine a light on our customers, which are utilities, and help them move into the clean energy ecosystem.
3. Give us a sense of your journey leading Tendril that culminated in the formation of Uplight.
Tuck: After I came on board at Tendril, we worked hard on growing the company. We sold software as a service to utilities, which allowed them to engage with their customers, and monitor and manage their energy use. We also offered hardware or power-adjusting devices. Along the way, we raised a lot of capital, about $100 million from our inception in 2004 through 2018.
The company had a near-death experience in 2011-12 after federal stimulus — which brought in money for the energy sector, particular clean technology — dried up. It forced us to rethink our priorities. It was like having a heart attack, and being forced to change diet and lifestyle. We recognized we needed to get out of the boom and bust cycles.
We didn’t want to sell the company, because we thought we were helping solve a climate change problem. That realization was a pivotal moment. It helped us focus and take a more disciplined approach.
We have had steady growth since 2012, growing on average 20% a year in a disciplined, profitable way.
That seemed to have helped Tendril garner a lot of attention from equity firms. The infusion of fresh capital set up on our present course that led us to acquire a few companies prior to our merger with Simple Energy in July.
4. What would you say was the turning point?
Tuck: Our deal with Rubicon Technology Partners in December helped us buy out existing shareholders. Rubicon and AES Corp. (which had made an undisclosed investment in Simple Energy) are our majority shareholders. Company executives also own part of the pie. Our first acquisition, of EEme, a Pittsburgh startup, had been planned in advance. The two-person company had developed an algorithm that could desegregate household loads from a single electric meter’s data. What in the home is consuming the most energy? It makes us see energy consumption patterns much better.
5. Which other companies have you acquired and why?
Tuck: We acquired EnergySavvy earlier this year. Its AI-based platform helps identify the right action plan for consumer that includes multi-channel personalization, home energy management and behavioral engagement to reduce service costs and increase customer satisfaction.
A few months ago, we acquired FirstFuel, a company that successfully engaged with non-residential utility customers. Businesses make up 60% of most utilities’ load and revenue, and more than 60% of new programs and products, and FirstFuel had managed to go deeper than transactional conversations with businesses. We thought it was a natural fit for us.
Recently, we acquired Ecotagious, which has a platform that uses advanced smart meter disaggregation, machine learning and behavioral science to provide residential customers with uniquely personalized, appliance-level insights into their energy experience.
Our acquisitions and the merger with Simple Energy with its expertise in using behavioral science big data analytics, and digital marketing techniques to build software that makes saving energy fun, social and rewarding will help Uplight provide utilities with customer-centric innovations at scale, and help tackle the challenge of climate change.
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