Munich Startup: What motivated you to start a company?
Lena Voß: Energy is the greatest challenge of our generation: We talk a lot about AI and compute, but the actual bottleneck will be having enough energy. We won’t be able to expand infrastructure fast enough. Flexibility, and therefore battery storage, will become the key. Industrial companies in particular are already suffering from high electricity prices and are relocating as a result. Energy is thus turning into a crucial locational factor for entire societies and economies. We are talking about a huge market with tens of thousands of affected companies in Germany alone.
Munich Startup: What would you like to have known before founding your first startup?
Lena Voß: That you don’t need to be afraid of it. You always hear that you grow with your challenges, but it’s actually true. Two years ago, I still imagined how hard it must be to found a company, win the first customers, or close the first funding round. Today, I know: no matter what else comes, you find a way to make it happen, especially with the right team by your side.
Munich Startup: How has your company been financed so far?
Lena Voß: We started with the Exist Business Start-up Grant before receiving our first investment from the American accelerator Neo and subsequently closing our first funding round with VCs and business angels.
Munich Startup: When and where do you get your best ideas?
Lena Voß: In the mountains, while hiking or trail running – there is nothing better than spending several hours alone in nature without distractions.
AI-Powered and Data-Driven Workflows
Munich Startup: What are your 3 favorite work tools?
Lena Voß:
- Notion for productivity: If it doesn’t end up in Notion, it basically doesn’t exist – and what doesn’t exist can later neither be used nor automated by the team.
- Claude: I like working data-driven and use it to bring together our data from Supabase, Hubspot, and user statistics into analyses that we use to derive decisions for business development. That remains my guilty pleasure.
- LinkedIn: Many people still underestimate how important LinkedIn and regular posting can be for customer acquisition and hiring.
Munich Startup: Your top tip when it comes to “pitching”?
Lena Voß: Know your audience. Sounds obvious, but when we were traveling in the US and Europe at the same time, our pitches and how we introduced the problem looked fundamentally different. In the US, we first had to explain the significance of volatile energy prices, whereas in Europe everyone already understood that. There, it was immediately all about market differentiation.
Munich Startup: Does now seem like a good time to start a company to you? Why?
Lena Voß: Yes, especially in an ecosystem like Munich, you get an enormous amount of support through TUM, the CDTM, or numerous other initiatives. There is hardly any other career path where you can learn so much in such a short amount of time.
“Once in energy, always in energy”
Munich Startup: Which technology or industry would you bet on for your next venture?
Lena Voß: Once in energy, always in energy: Energy remains the greatest challenge of our time for me. However, for a next startup, I would probably lean more towards deep tech again, which is actually where I come from.
Munich Startup: In your view, what could still be improved in Munich as a startup hub?
Lena Voß: I have the impression that there are plenty of offerings for students and very early-stage startups. But as soon as it comes to scaling, real networks for operators are lacking. From cities like Berlin or San Francisco, I’m familiar with far more exchange and roundtable formats between GTM, commercial, and biz-dev teams. In Munich, we still often rely on our personal networks and our own contacts for that.
Munich Startup: Which founder would you like to meet in person? And what would you ask them?
Lena Voß: Strictly speaking, I already met Luana Lopes Lara, co-founder of Kalshi, briefly last year through a mutual investor. She is the world’s youngest female billionaire and built a company with Kalshi in a heavily regulated market. Energy, much like prediction markets, is heavily regulated, and commercial as well as industrial storage are roughly where Kalshi was right at the beginning. If I met Luana again, I would ask her what her key takeaways were from betting on a product whose market didn’t even exist in that form yet and still had to be approved—the situation is quite similar with commercial storage.
