Rampersand Investment Notes: Orkestra

By Hunter Watkin

The best climate solutions don’t just solve a climate problem. They first and foremost solve a pressing commercial problem for their customers.

Right now, the economic case for many behind-the-meter energy projects in the C+I sector is clear. This is only increasing with social and regulatory pressure on companies to reduce net emissions as well as pricing unpredictability coming from geopolitical disruptions to energy supply.

Yet, it takes deep industry expertise and spreadsheet mastery to design and show the financial return on a renewable energy project. It’s meant that solar, battery, and e-mobility project feasibility analysis has therefore been the exclusive trade of either overpriced consultants or technically trained analysts working at large utility companies.

Until now.

The Overpriced Consultants

James, Chris, and Michael have a rare mix of electrical and mechanical engineering pedigree as well as startup experience, most recently building an energy consulting business together.

Before starting Orkestra they were, by their own admission, ‘overpriced consultants’ who would plug the capability gap when it came to modelling and advising on the financial return of prospective renewable energy projects for their clients.

During COVID lockdowns in 2021, energised by the burgeoning customer and global emissions problem, the trio took the opportunity to convert a consulting business to self-serve software.

An Industry Necessity

In the last twelve months, Orkestra has increased subscription revenue fourfold. Its growth has come predominantly from word of mouth, and its customers have in many cases self-onboarded to Orkestra’s modelling tool (try it ).

As venture investors, we often obsess over a startup’s focus on a specific customer type. This is because customer needs vary depending on their size, incentives, and a myriad of other variables which have implications for how startups prioritise features and sell to customers.

In the energy industry, however, understanding the financial return of a renewable project is a primary imperative for financiers, consultants, solar and battery retailers, and their respective commercial clients.

It’s rare to have a solution be so universally valuable and easy to use for a swathe of different business types, but it’s part of why we see Orkestra becoming a tool of habit for the entire renewable energy industry.

Abnormal Potential

Already, the Orkestra team has shown its ability to dramatically improve the experience of renewable project feasibility analysis, democratising its capabilities to salespeople and entry-level staff, as well as having sufficient sophistication to cater to Australia’s leading energy retailers.

What makes us really excited, though, is the team’s stubbornness when it comes to doing what they say they’ll do. Since we met, they’ve shown a remarkable pattern of ambitious target-setting and execution.

To reach Net Zero by 2030, we need to be deploying 3–5 times as much wind and solar and 26 times as many batteries year-on-year, and Orkestra plans to play an almighty part in getting us there. Currently, companies reducing their net emissions rely on an undersupply of carbon offsets with questionable provenance in secondary markets, so we expect that carbon insetting through privately installed and managed energy assets will be a key driver of emission risk reduction in the near term.

With exciting new product functionality and overseas opportunities around the corner, the Orkestra team is just getting started.

We’re excited to be investing alongside lead investor Tidal, as well as early backers Luxem Capital, Phil Blythe, Danin Kahn, Oliver Hartley, and Andrew Rogers.

In the words of James Allston: ‘Charge on!’

Originally published at https://medium.com on October 22, 2023.