Battere

Did you already run out of battery just when you had to make an important call? Battere would have been a solution for you. This small company from Zürich offers a power bank rental service in more than 1000 points of sale in Switzerland. Their power banks are charged with solar power and their rental cost is only 4CHF (+15CHF deposit).

Very few had envisioned that this business model would have a future. Andreas Braendle, co-founder and CEO of Battere, is one of them.

Andreas Braendle with a power bank from Battere

The Swiss Unicorn: Battere is now known as a power bank rental company. You started however with a different offering.

Andreas Braendle: It all started in 2012 when we decided to offer a service for large companies allowing them to replace their disposable batteries by reusable ones in a convenient way. We started with this business as we saw that there was a market for this service. There are 120 million disposable AA and AAA batteries sold every year in Switzerland. We launched a pilot in the company where I was working but we won our first customer completely by chance. I was having a drink in the center of Zurich on a Saturday night and I met someone from the sustainability department of SwissRe. We talked a bit and by the end of the night we had our first customer. We founded Battere short after in 2013 as we needed to be an established company to work with large corporations such as SwissRe.

Did you have funding from programs, startup competitions or was it self-funded?

We started as a self-funded GmbH. The early days were a bit difficult. At first, we all had our own old jobs. I was the first to quit after six months and the other followed shortly after. However, we did not pay ourselves any salary before 16 to 20 months. A little bit later, we won a prize money from the Klimastiftung.

You were four founders at the beginning. How many are you now?

There are in total 15 people involved. The ones in the core team are responsible for the software, the sourcing, the marketing and business development. We have 8 to 9 people who run the technical operations, i.e. testing the power banks, recharging them, handling the logistics.

What are you looking for during the recruitment of a new collaborator?

It is mainly about the Soft skills and the culture fit. I am convinced that if you are young and smart, you can learn everything. However, it is very important to share the same values. Usually, people here start as interns and then continue with a regular contract. It is a good way to see if we can work together.

Battere is the second company that you built. Did you always want to be an entrepreneur?

Well, it has never been one of my goals. I tried many things in my life. I was a researcher, a musician and even an employee in other startups. At some point, I realized that entrepreneurship was one of the last things that I had not tried yet. So, I decided to give it a shot. I must say that I do not regret it.

Who did the design of the product?

I did it myself although I am not a designer. However, I would like to highlight that we are not providing just a physical product. It is about designing the whole experience including the mobile App, the integration with the point of sale, the support, the website and everything that interacts with the customer.

We want to offer a superior service and not just a product.

Did you experiment different approaches regarding the price and the service?

We started a pilot project in several bars and we tested different pricing models. Sadly, it did not work well, and we could not learn a lot from these experiments. When we moved to convenient stores, we discussed the matter with our retail partners and came up with the current pricing. We implemented it and did not change since then as we think it is the correct one from a customer perspective as well as for us.

Who is your typical customer? A commuter?

It is everyone with a smartphone. There is no typical customer in terms of age. Young people as well as parents use our service. We even have elderly people that rent a power bank on their way home after their hike day. There are several use cases, but it is mainly an emergency solution for someone that runs out of battery in a moment that he did not anticipate.

You already have partnerships with Kiosk, Press & Books and Avec. Are you planning to establish other partnerships in Switzerland?

We are focusing our expansion efforts outside Switzerland.

You have now a thousand points of sale in Switzerland. Is the coverage enough?

Our strategy is to grow with partners that are very good matches for us. It takes a significant amount of time to identify the right partner and build trust. We have a good coverage in Switzerland. I am always open for new partnerships, but it is currently not the main goal.

Did you think of other distribution channels such as vending machines?

We have that in mind. However, we need to remain focused. We are now working on our expansion outside Switzerland. If we unlock a partnership in a large country, we will potentially have access to a bigger customer base. Of course, our neighbor countries are different, and we cannot be sure that we will be successful as well there. The buying decisions are not the same in those countries.

Do you have competitors that offer a similar service?

It depends how you define the market. There is no company around the world that does exactly what we do. However, the idea of renting power banks has become a trend in China as well as in the United States. So, there is a growing number of companies that do it with a different business model and also many companies that tried in the past without being successful. It is a difficult business as it does not scale as fast as other software products for example. But we have a long-term vision. We want to simplify the access to clean energy. Currently, our way to enable this is through power bank rental but that may change in the future.

You are not defining yourselves as a power bank rental company.

We define ourselves as the most convenient brand for renewable energy.

What about the brand and company culture? Your communication contains often funny elements such as in your job posts for example. Was it a conscious decision to develop your image in this direction or did it take shape from itself?

I guess it is a bit of both. All the founders worked in companies before and one thing we wanted when we started this journey is to have fun at work. We were all friends and we still are. Consequently, we try to have fun in what we do and this is also something that you can use in marketing. We obviously want to work with people that share our values and our way of thinking. So, we designed job descriptions that we would apply for as well.

Generating the highest possible revenue or having the biggest investment round are not measures of success for us. We would like to have a positive impact, distribute solar power, implement a sharing economy system, have fun at work, and only then, be economically successful.

What would happen if a large corporation would be interested in buying your company?

We would have to check whether this makes sense. What we usually say to our investors is that we are not working towards an exit. We work towards building a great company.

Is that something that they like to hear? Venture capitalists are quite exit-oriented.

Of course, most of them do not like this approach. But we found investors that share our vision. I am not actively pursuing investments from VCs. The deals that are made with them are not always founder-friendly. It is important to find the right investors as you are tied to them afterwards. They must understand your vision.

What are the biggest challenges that you had to overcome?

Getting into retail was one of our biggest challenge. At the beginning, we were a small startup with no references. Our plan was to do a proof of concept first and then go to larger partner companies after. It was a long process. It took us more than one year to get there.

“The more committed you are, the easier it gets to solve challenges because you do not accept that something is not going to work.”

How do you keep the motivation high when it takes so much time to close a deal?

We always had some revenue. So, we could still pay salaries during that time. In the startup world, you often experience ups and downs. If you are just motivated by being a successful entrepreneur and getting rich, you will stop the first time it goes down. These cannot be your main drivers. In our case, friendship, having fun at work, doing something in which we believed, kept us going forward even in difficult situations.

Startup experts often tell you that it is okay to fail. This is maybe true at the beginning but then you must leave that mindset. After some time, failure is not an option. In our case, all the founders were very committed. We invested all our money in the project and failing would have had serious consequences. This is also something that kept us motivated.

What would be your advice for someone who wants to start a company?

Know why you are doing it. We wanted to build a company around the use of solar power and develop a business model based on circular economy. We wanted to prove that this could be a sustainable business. This was always driving us.

Sustainable development is a topic that is close to you?

Yes, all the founders were interested in the topic. It helped us in situations in which we were losing money, when the business was going down. These are the moments in which you must know why you are doing this.

It helps to have a mission.

Exactly. It can be anything, but it is very important that you have it. This is going to make the difference between quitting or continuing when things go down.

What was the key element in your success?

Persistence. We were deeply committed to make this business work.

Before closing the interview, I asked Andreas to pick a quote among many quotes from famous entrepreneurs. His choice:

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
Mark Twain

I think this is true for a lot of startup ideas. I pitched our idea to more than 200 investors. Most of them had fixed ideas about why this would not work. Battery technology is getting better, people have their own power bank, chargers will soon be integrated in all desks… All these answers are probably right. You can potentially charge your phone everywhere and not use our service. There is however a hidden truth here. There are many situations when it still makes sense. First, technology is not there yet. Second, the fact that smartphones have an autonomy of one to two days is by design. Smartphones producers want you to plug your phone every day so that it becomes an automatism. Most important, you will never be able to avoid running out of battery simply because you cannot foresee all possible situations.

The majority is not always right. You should find by yourself the hidden truth.