326. The Research Scientist Who Has Built One of UK’s Fastest Growing Tech Companies w/ Somayeh Taheri | UrbanChain

0:00My name is Somayeh and I'm the co-founder, CEO and Chief Architect at Urban Chain. Urban Chain is about creating an operating system for distributed commodities. We started with electricity, but we have now moved to heat, batteries and distributed grid. And we have a plan for other distributed commodities later.

0:22Amardeep Parmar:So you can tell us how it's going so far, like you've been going for a few years, right? We've been going from 2017. The idea came in 2015-16 when I was a research associate at the University of Manchester. And my projects were looking at climate change and fuel poverty. Because of my skills in data, I was very much focused on what data is saying. And as a result of that, I understood why the energy is not responding as a necessity to people. Why, for example, we are not worried about our phone or internet cost, but we are worried about our energy cost while energy is the one that powering even internet.

1:08And that made me kind of like understanding of like, okay, that's one subject. Then I designed a system which basically could manage every distributed commodity. And I could see to be replicated in various sectors. But I started with energy because that was the sector which needed it most. That was a sector which had a momentum. And we started it and then set up the business in 2017, May 2017. And then from that, now 10 years on, we reached our 1 billion life contract value. we have moved to real benefits that our system can provide. So initially we needed to become an operator of our system too, to show people how it works.

1:58But now people are asking to use our system, which is quite like a big leap in what we're doing and a big transition. We believe, and also moving from electricity to heat, distributed grid and battery, has made the case that our system is right and is responding to what we're saying.

2:18Amardeep Parmar:And as well, you said that when you started this out, then energy was a big problem for so many people. And then now it seems like it's an even bigger problem. It was always in the news. And how does that kind of affect you too, when the world is how it is right now and all of those different situations? To be honest, the only factor keeping me going was the impact I could create from the beginning, specifically for many people, for businesses, for housings, for all of those people. And for me, when I started it, you cannot change the world in one night, right? You start with small pieces. And I see those pieces, I record those pieces, and then I look back to those pieces, and I'm proud of those pieces.

3:00I mean, electrification is always a subject in the whole industry talking about moving away from gas, moving away from our gas. And it has its own problems, but the reality is not the electrification itself. The concept is right. The problem is the market structure, which people haven't addressed. And as a result of, and this is what we have focused, we are solving the market structure for that to work. And I think we have the technology, electricity has gone or energy as a whole has gone so far. We have technologies, but we haven't been able to make them work because of the market structure. Does that mean that we are quite happy about people's issue?

3:50No, we are not happy about people's issue. But we are here bit by bit and building things bit by bit to solve that issue. And I believe that our system will be something that solving the problems, people's concern in future, the way that Wi-Fi solved people's concern regarding access to Internet, access to communication, and creating even a very new era of opportunities like social media and so on and so forth. So our system, when it comes to become widespread, new jobs opportunities come in, new businesses will be developed, new kind of, all of that without being worried about your energy cost or whether I have 24-7, whether I can prove my carbon, whether it's done.

4:46It's the default of our system.

4:49Amardeep Parmar:And you designed this system like 10 years ago, you said at the beginning, right? And when you think about going from that research phase into building this into a business and building into a startup and scale up, how is that initial phase? How did you go about taking that research? Okay, now I want to build this into a business. How is that transition phase? It's a very good question. The transition from a research to real business is quite interesting. It's never a straight line. Never, never a straight line. You go back to the same idea, but go back. I mean, the thing is that you should always make a differentiation between what your vision is saying and what your vision is saying and what technology you have developed.

5:32Technology should be responsive to the mission and vision you have created. The vision and vision don't change because if you have done the customer discovery journey, if you have seen the pain and you want to change the world for better, that's the vision you have. So you keep going. You keep going. But you shouldn't be stuck to the technology you have developed because that's not responding if it's not responding or the way you designed it, right? And not design in terms of like, for example, you have designed a piece of like your system. We have created an operating system, right? So, for example, we have designed our dashboard, which gets data from our operations to show to the people.

6:13And that dashboard is not resonating with our customers. Then you say, right, my customer doesn't want this. For example, when we designed our first technology and came to commercialization, we understood the whole thing is too much, so much information for customers. It was too complicated for customers. And for them, it's like one of my colleagues was using this terminology. People want pencil sharpener, but you are giving them typewriter. And that's not the way forward. and they want pencil sharpener just for now, you have your typewriter, but give them pencil sharpener. So we were like, OK, so let's make it simpler.

6:53Let's go for this approach or they want this at this time. They want and the customers give you feedback. This is a very interesting thing. And agility to respond to those feedbacks. Also, as a chief architect, designing your system in a way that can respond to those feedbacks in an agile way is very important. And it's not just your customers. Regulator comes, says something. Government comes, says something. Other stakeholders come, says something. All of them have their valid point and have their objective. Instead of looking at them as like, you don't understand, I understand. And also, you don't support me.

7:38I want your support. You should say what I'm saying. Understand what the middle ground is. Understand each other. For example, for regulators in electricity, it was about all customer protection. It was all about affordability. It was all about fairness in their concept. So we accommodated that in terms of what we are doing. Or for government was to make new funding or new technologies to become viable, financially viable. So we did it. So those are the things that we should consider when you are developing from where you are as a researcher to definitely commercialization.

8:19Amardeep Parmar:And you said there's a lot of customer research and understand the customer really well. For that very first client, like how did you win that first person? Right. First client always comes from networks and somebody who truly believes in what you do. And so the first client came through somebody, a consultant, who has been working with us for some long, long time and following us, moving on, moving on. And seeing the pain we've gone through and then showing him that, OK, this is working. So he introduced his first client to us. And usually you should always be honest with yourself. When you enter a market, you don't have the credit line to go to the big players and then say, okay, you want my technology or do you want my system?

9:07They would say no because they don't know you and your financials don't match with what they say. So you start with the size, a smaller scale, less credit conscious clients. So you start with them. And then they also, so that you understand their object. What is clicking with them, right? You understand the object, what is clicking with them. Your technology already has that what clicking with them inherited. But make it bold. Make it bold to that client. And then make it work. And then that small one, as soon as that small one comes in interesting and then another small one comes in, then you find the next one comes very quickly.

9:48Because if you have proved it, it comes very quickly. In the journey, also another thing I learned, when you want to start something, you hear millions of no's. But there is always one entity which their objective would be matched with what you're doing. And that mission alignment or objective alignment is also a turning point when it comes to winning customers, winning anything, to be honest.

10:19Amardeep Parmar:And since that first customer, you've won many more customers, right? Yeah, that's right. and like where you are today how does that machine work differently right because at the beginning how you get your first customers versus how you're getting your like customer out like the scale you're at today how does that change now like how does it because obviously now you have such much bigger reputation you've got a stronger brand how has that changed uh first of all early days i was the one sitting in all self meetings pitching this is future saying saying what what is going to happen. So I was very much involved.

10:54But over the time, I stepped back. So what happened is that as you grow, team grows, right? You create a team around you. And then smaller, required customers move to the growth team to manage that and stuff. You create media, mid-level tier customers. Again, you teach the growth team and then, or quite like the company, how to deal with it and then you pass it to the growth team or other quality groups. We have five, six teams in our company. So you pass it to either finance, pass it to manage. And then they learn it and it becomes inherent of the company's culture when you do that. And then you move back, you need to delegate because it can't be in every meeting.

11:41You need delegate. But having said that, because of the nature of technology we have, I still go to when it comes to major client and the new client partnership opportunity. For example, we were in a conference yesterday. It was five of us. My team were looking at the scale of current activities we're doing. I was looking at, for example, potential international partnership opportunities. So that becomes, you know, your role is changing from who you are to what you should do in future. When the brand is building, as the activities become day-to-day activities, definitely those small-scale players are going to have much more trust in what you do.

12:32And they have seen a track record, so they quite like respond to you quicker. Still for big brands, despite of having one billion life contract, those big brands have trillions of contracts, and so on and so forth. So you're still quite like, it's always proportion. So reputation is proportionate. Your reputation to the mid-market is fine, but is your reputation to the infrastructure player is there? That's the very important things that we are building and, yeah, because we believe also our operating system is an infrastructure for their infrastructure. So creating that reputation is so important.

13:12Amardeep Parmar:You said about the team growing there as well, right? And like, how did you start off? You have your co-founders, right? Yes. How did it, where did those relationships come from? Yeah. Well, my co-founder has another hat. He is my husband. So that's another thing. Having said that, we had another co-founder, Ayesha, who he, so what happened? I had, First of all, what happened when we set up a business? I had this system and I could see this system working in different sectors as I said energy transport many sectors mortgage supply chain ERP system could work in different systems Then I quite like when at the time My co-founder was had has his own trading company and which was commodity trading between different international relationship and so on and so forth.

14:02He was my first customer so I pitched what I'm doing and he was like oh it clicked with him very quickly and because of his entrepreneurship journey he could see the potential there so he then invited me to move away from academia and then make it and then he was the one part of Manchester Business School which then introduced me to the path that Manchester School can offer. That was the first step. Then I wanted a computer scientist to join me, quite like on the backhand side of the things. I'm a chief architect, but I'm not a computer scientist. So I quite like then at the university, I emailed, I was part of a group talking about distributed systems.

14:48And I quite like emailed one of my colleagues who was a lecture, senior lecturer there, saying, oh, I need a computer scientist. I have a project and I'm potentially happy to fund it. And I need somebody to join me and so on and so forth. So he introduced me again to another lecturer, another senior lecturer. And that senior lecturer said, I have PhD students which are interested in this work. That PhD student was Aisha. So then we came Then I met Ayesha and then Ayesha was there finishing her PhD. I was quite like, then we started and more. So we became three co-founders. Then how Kuala moved on was we went for, for example, when we were creating six people.

15:37I was very much into many acceleration programs and many growth programs, many startup programs. and that gave the connections to many people. And in those groups, there were people who were expressing their interest to move away from the job that they had. So we could kind of like see the kind of opportunities. Then we put, I mean, our job opportunity on Indeed, on LinkedIn, on top things. And they also joined Manchester, for example, graduate program, that type thing. So we put the offer there. And then people started one two people started contacting us and then we had them and then we call I started six people Then that six people when for example they left they introduced another person to us And then another person to us so became a kind of like that version or and became a chain Yes, and then and then but yeah quite like that's the that's that's it

16:37Amardeep Parmar:And like how big the team now 80 80 plus yeah And like obviously managing a group at the beginning versus managing an 80-person company is two very different things. How has that journey been for you and how have you obviously personally developed through that as well? Well, initially you are responsible for everybody. You are responsible to payroll, you're responsible for HR, you're responsible. But it's very quiet, you know, very closed community model. So you can see it. I mean, I didn't have an entrepreneurship journey before. So quite like, for example, letting somebody go initially was so difficult.

17:17But then over time, I understood it's not about you. It's not personal. It's about people's circumstances not working at that time. Or our mission is not aligned at that time, which then people move away. People have joined at the wrong stage. That's what I would say. That's true. So that's on that side which I learned as part of the journey. But what has happened is that I'm not doing, for example, payroll anymore. So there is a kind of like groups that they do or people and culture does anything around that. But my role still is that keeping the culture, company's culture is so important. So what is happening with our model, what I believe is the environment, the work environment, everything has been designed for certain type of people with certain background and way of working, right?

18:09And to be honest, it's a long-term issue. And it's reflective of how the world developed. Like the time that we were farmers, women tried not to be in the farm, they tried to stay quiet, and keep the babies. But that then caused the men after industrialization to go to the prior jobs, but still women there and stuff. So the gap has gone too high. Also, what type of men that type thing turn to them? And that, again, become gaps, gaps, gaps. But I believe normal people do normal jobs. I personally, I think different people change the world. And for that reason, I quite like for me, it's about urban change.

18:57It's about having people, when they join, they valued for who they are, not to be adjusted for what company tells them. Company provide the environment for them to flourish, not the other way around. And that's very important. So for this reason, when it comes to company culture or reports of company culture or company state, I mean, peoples and culture in the company, my reaction is usually treat that as similar to financial documents because it's so important. in that space.

19:33Amardeep Parmar:Hello, hello. I hope you're enjoying the show so far. I'm Amarit Palma, co-founder of BayHQ and the host of this show. For those of you who don't know, BayHQ is the community for high growth Asian heritage founders and investors in the UK. Over 7 ,500 people have attended our events. 200 people have been for our impact programs. And obviously there's been over 250 episodes of this podcast. if you want to join us and take part in the programs and come to the events go to bahiehq.com forward slash join we also just released our first ever book called startups for outsiders which you can get on amazon now and the link is in the bio hope to see you soon at our event hope you enjoy the rest of the episode and also if you're going to team out as you said right at the beginning you were payroll you were doing everything with your role today like what do you enjoy the most?

20:26Amardeep Parmar:What's the bit that you really love doing? As company grows, complexity grows. The challenge of complexities are quite interesting. I enjoy that. It's higher risk, higher reward. You don't sleep. That's the reality. There is no life-work-life balance. These things, for me, never worked. There isn't any. But I would say again the challenge you know that's that's important things which then those challenges gives you personal development and I like them what what I like the most is personal development as part of the challenge rather than challenge to be the challenge that's one thing and then still that impact you know kind of like when when I when you wake up and then you see okay I did this no I did this and kind of like saying or my my client happened to be this and then stuff like that.

21:24Or I had this impact. Not as a company, we had this impact. Or feeling that 80 families have jobs and have life to live with and they are enjoying their work and they are happy with their work. It's a sense of accomplishment there.

21:46Amardeep Parmar:And we were talking earlier as well, before we started recording, about how to... because you're living in Manchester and we know the stats about like regional funding is like terrible right but you're one of the people who has been able to thrive in Manchester how's that part of the journey been as well by starting the company in Manchester and you get to grow up there and obviously the balance of London and like the hub have you been able to get the support out there as well Manchester is a great place because it's quieter very quieter and so as a result of that you don't get to the hype a lot.

22:16So you focus. That's what I would say. That happens. You focus specifically at the early stage. You focus on what you're developing and what you are creating. And that's very helpful because you are not thinking about, oh, what the other body did or kind of thing. You just focus on that and then you don't get dragged to others' missions because they have their own missions and you focus on your own mission. That's very good. And there are accelerator programs. We used accelerator programs to bring our costs down to zero, cost of like accountancy, office and so to zero. but then we had Innovate UK programs which was quite like funded throughout the UK for people right so that was the strategy when we started and then but when it comes to private capital the private capital is less available also the types of investors when you're creating what do you want to create right the things that I was I have been creating is that something that for example an angel investor potentially would be comfortable to invest in because it's so complicated it's so complicated it's even if you think about like okay talk about AI it's so complicated AI I can't get it I can't I can't follow so it wasn't

23:38Amardeep Parmar:necessarily suitable for the Manchester landscape to invest and I was getting invited to London and And then this train coming down of two hours to going on four hours was quite difficult. But I was coming in. But the frequency was less. Over time, then we got international investors to be able to go forward. And still, we are looking for international investors because we are thinking of the model not necessarily is a domestic model, it's an international model. And that means that lots of meetings have in London. And I don't know how Manchester can kind of attract saying, okay, the international investors to that environment, which then this is something that Manchester should think about, how they can attract international investors to Manchester, how they can create a hub for future industry in Manchester rather than just a local hub for quiet startups.

24:45The business growing, the request for me coming down to London is growing. And then because things happen, government is London, that's another one. Regulators in London, that's another one. And so carry on like that. Up to now has been working. I have been more frequently coming to London, but again, I was hoping HS2 would happen, but again that connectivity is not there. It's a bit, it has its own things, but still that point of like it's a quiet place. In terms of people, also people are much more appreciating the work environment you have created. People not hopping from their work to another work.

25:30So that complexity that London in the workforce offers, that's not available in Manchester. Manchester has a much more friendly workplace environment.

25:40Amardeep Parmar:And as you said, obviously, you've been raising and you've been able to scale, and you're looking at going international. And as you mentioned, you're going to go into other sectors too. So it's amazing for me to see as well, because you've done so much already, but then I can still see you've got so much more that you want to do as well. Yeah. And can you talk a bit more about that dream of, let's say, in 10 years time, 20 years time, where do you hope this will go to? The 10 years time you see energy as if it's working, it's like Wi-Fi working for you. You're just not thinking about your energy.

26:12You just download energy. Our system tends to become intelligent chip as part of smart meters or any device in any property or in any asset. And then people just download or upload energy to it. That's how you see it. And that's not far away, by the way. It's possible. A little bit kind of like funding towards the technologies we are targeting in terms of assets and so on and so forth is important. And the only factor, I mean, we are ready to do that. The only factor quite like slowing things down is the assets that needs to be onboarded and those assets kind of like to be onboarded. So that's on the energy side.

27:05The same story with the other distributed kind of systems and they will just have the infrastructure to sort themselves out and then it's up to them how they want to sort themselves out. So we see ourselves as that infrastructure. And that's going to be widely used. You don't have any border on that. You can even, for example, have our operating system manage your heat, water, energy together in our operating system. Up to you what you want to achieve in that site.

27:40Amardeep Parmar:Awesome. So we're going to get to wrap up questions now. So first one is who are free Asians in Britain you think are doing amazing work and you want to shout them out? Well, to be honest, my co-founders, because if they weren't here, we wouldn't here. So Mo, my co-founder, when I started with him, and also Ayesha, definitely. We became three, what we say, musketeers. But what I was saying, I was a hipster, Mo was a hustler, and Ayesha was a hacker. We came together as three H together to make it work. and that was very kind of like very very I appreciate their commitment their belief in what we're developing and up to here the journey hasn't been at all everything happened in their life what happens in our journey still kept going and I hope they're enjoying their job and if people want to hear more about you more about Urban Chain where they go to definitely our websites definitely our LinkedIn is getting updated frequently frequently, please come and speak with us.