Bulb: Starting The UK’s Fastest Growing Private Company

Do you want to cut your carbon emissions to zero and save money on your energy bills? 

Introducing Bulb, a green energy company founded in 2015 by Hayden Wood and co-founder, Amit Gudka. Together they wanted to change the energy industry, to make it better, by making energy simpler, cheaper and greener. 

“We saw all the new technology from solar panels and batteries and smart meters changing the relationship that homes have with the grid. The home of the future [has] solar panels on the roof, there's an electric vehicle in the driveway, and that home needs an energy supplier that it could trust, because its energy needs need to be managed.”

Today Bulb has grown their members to 1.7 million, adding more to their ranks each day. And with a team of over 700 people spread across London, France, Spain and the US, running a company that aims to use technology to reduce costs, improve efficiency and provide outstanding customer service hasn’t been an easy journey. 

“A lot of the feedback we got in the early days was: ‘sounds too good to be true’, ‘where's the catch?’ ‘It doesn't make sense, you know? Why are you doing this?’ ‘Why hasn't somebody else done it before?’”

So what does it take to build and lead Britain's fastest growing company? 

“This is where I think I have really struggled to be honest, I found this job very difficult. And I feel like I'm really just at the early stages of my learning on how to do it. I think I do have tendencies to be a perfectionist. And I think it's helpful sometimes, but generally unhelpful. You have to not let perfectionism get in the way of excellence.”

We chat about:

• The genesis of the idea for Bulb
• Angel investors and EIS
• Struggling to get customer sign ups
• Developing as a leader and giving employees autonomy
• Handling the pandemic and pivoting on a sixpence
• The importance of company mission in recruiting

--

Sponsors

Vorboss - get better internet: https://vorboss.com/secretleaders

Vanta - get 20% off security certifications like ISO27001 and SOC2: https://vanta.com/secretleaders

Vertice - save on your SaaS or cloud spend ($5k off or a free benchmark) using the code secretleaders: https://www.vertice.one/l/secretleaders

--

Newsletter

Sign up here: https://secretleaders.email/

You can find our historic newsletters here: https://www.secretleaders.com/episodes