Time flies. I first blogged about Thermondo in October 2014, pointing out how I believed it could shake up the German heating market. One and a half years later they are in the very early stages of doing precisely this, and recently raised €23.5M to drive their growth into, in their words, “an integrated energy company in a distributed world of energy”. I visited the company’s headquarters in Berlin last week and thought I’d share some of my latest thoughts in this blog.
I previously characterised Thermondo as disrupting the traditional route to market for heating systems, by offering a 21st century way for customers to buy a new heating system and have it installed. They have been executing on precisely this over the last couple of years. Customers complete a survey and upload photographs of their heating system, receiving a firm quote from Thermondo whose software optimises the best solution for the customer. The company’s in-house installation teams across the country then carry out the installation. Thermondo is now installing thousands of heating systems a year in this way. The numbers are small in relation to the overall heating market: their challenge now is to get to scale, and as you’ll see below, broaden their offering.