As a startup founder, Jonas Helmikstøl has experienced a lot. His Norwegian EV charging company Ease, went from zero to 500 employees in just a few years, achieving €180m in revenue in 2022. It was then the fastest-growing startup in Norway and was seen as a huge success — until a Swedish agency banned its best-selling EV charger, bringing the company to the brink of insolvency.
Helmikstøl took the hit, and while dealing with growing mental health struggles, he left the company in the autumn of 2023.
A year later, he sits down with Sifted to discuss his shortcomings — and those of his investors, advisors, and employees — when things went wrong. He’s determined not to repeat the same mistakes in his next venture, energy storage and generation startup Starflow.
“At times I felt unstoppable. I really want to show people, especially now, that I can do it again. And I will do it again and again and again,” Helmikstøl says.
From rocket growth to ban
Founded in 2018, by the end of 2022 Easee had grown to 500 employees and, by February 2023, had sold over half a million EV chargers to customers across Europe.
According to industry sources, Easee was particularly skilled at marketing its products and securing contracts with manufacturers who could produce the EV chargers quickly and affordably. The company wasn’t just popular in Norway but also in Sweden, where it held about 60-70% market share in early 2023, according to Helmikstøl.
But perhaps Easee grew too quickly. In March 2023, the Swedish National Electrical Safety Board (ESV) banned Easee’s best-selling EV charger because the device didn’t meet the safety standards which were listed in the documentation.
“We repeatedly experienced competitors trying to find faults with our products and things that could harm us. And when you grow as fast as we did, there are so many rules and regulations to follow — I was non-stop trying to put out fires,” Helmikstøl says.
“It was nearly impossible, and then it was the documentation part that was just a silly mistake we made a few years back when we added a couple of standards,” he continues.
Helmikstøl recalls signing numerous documents without thorough checks, the same documents that later ended up with the ESV. Having publicly defended the company, he had to backtrack when he understood there were issues with the documentation.
“I was like, ‘Shit’. I’d been told by others in the organisation that the documentation was fine — that we had things under control. That was painful because I’d been quite blunt in the media, and now I just had to turn around and say, ‘Sorry, we don’t have the documentation in place,’” he says.
Running into the wall
The ban in Sweden caused a ripple effect. In 2023, Easee cut 350 jobs, around 70% of its workforce, and lost 97% of its 10bn NOK (€840m) valuation when it raised 60m NOK (€5m) in August of that year, to save the company from insolvency.
In October 2023, Helmikstøl stepped down as CEO and left the company. In November he went on sick leave for mental health issues.
“I was so exhausted after all the years of growing the company, and when the crisis began, I was already burnt out,” he tells Sifted.
“I also had a son in February of that year and with all the pressure, fear, and doubt — it just ruined me completely. I could barely breathe and at times I was in so much pain that I thought I would die.”
In a white t-shirt, sitting in front of a heavily scrawled whiteboard in a Norwegian-styled glass and wood meeting room, Helmikstøl shows no bitterness or sadness as he discusses this painful period. Instead, he cracks up laughing throughout the interview.
New e-venture
Although still recovering from his burnout, he’s back at it — this time with his energy startup Starflow, which he founded earlier this year with two of his colleagues from Easee. Last month, it secured a €1.7m pre-seed round led by Norwegian VC Skyfall Ventures.
The new company is developing an energy hub platform to give homeowners greater control over their energy consumption by integrating solar power, EV charging, and home battery storage.
“We are starting with the energy hub of charging batteries and then expanding the system to include solar panels, EV chargers, and eventually other in-home applications,” he says. The main goal is to create “a scalable energy system that helps people achieve energy independence.”
“You can install huge solar parks, huge battery parks, and wind parks, but at the end of the day, at least in my opinion, it needs to be more decentralised.”
That Helmikstøl managed to raise capital from one of Norway’s leading VCs a year after his departure from Easee is not unexpected — VCs tend to favour serial entrepreneurs, with or without ‘failures’ in their past.
“I think they know what I’m capable of, and I’ve learned a lot,” Helmikstøl says.
“If I were in denial or blaming everyone else, I don’t think it would have the same effect. But they have seen us take ownership [of what happened at Easee] and accept almost all of the blame publicly — I don’t think they would have invested in us otherwise.”
Lack of support from stakeholders
At times, Helmikstøl feels he took too much of the blame for what went wrong at Easee, without broad support from investors, board members, and employees around him.
“I think some people thought I didn’t take it seriously enough, but someone had to stay positive to see us through. But with all the grownups around me, I wish some would have seen that I was struggling and needed help and support — not more pressure,” he says.
“I get it, they [investors] have people behind them that they are investing money for. And Easee was such an adventurous thing — then things turned overnight.
“Having people that can deal with that pressure and not add more pressure to you because they are looking bad, this is what we are looking for now at Starflow.”
In some ways, Helmikstøl has won the fight at Easee following his departure. Although the documentation wasn’t initially in place, Helmikstøl says the charger was never unsafe to use and is now certified.
“At times, I’ve felt it’s quite unfair and frustrating when people say your product is unsafe just because you lack documentation — when you have 700,000 units proving they are safe,” he tells Sifted.“Easee is now harmonised with the standard as well.”
So, now that his old company is operating on firmer ground, did he think it would succeed in getting there?
“Not the harmonising part. But there was never a single cell in my body that doubted we would prove them safe.”
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/easeee-founder-jonas-helmikstol-interview/
