Vision
Enabling anybody to sell or buy energy products as easily as selling or buying your next pair of shoes online.
In summer of 2017, Michel Nicolai, Szilard Toth, Rolf Benken and Johannes Alte-Teigeler founded epilot together with the Swiss IT company AXON IVY. We epilots are experts in the fields of energy management, cloud business, sales and eCommerce. Taking a closer look at the energy market it became clear: the time is right for a new generation of software solution for utilities. Our goal is to manage all products and services in processes in a simple, digital and customer-centered way.
Enabling anybody to sell or buy energy products as easily as selling or buying your next pair of shoes online.
epilot is on a mission to bring together every player in the energy market – from energy providers over fulfillment partners and manufacturers to end customers. Toady, epilot helps to market, sell, fulfill and operate energy products with the ultimate goal to become the underlying ecosystem of the energy world bringing transparency and efficiency to a nebulous market.
CEO & Founder
CEO & Founder
Michel Nicolai is founder and CEO of epilot. He developed the e-mobility business at LichtBlick in cooperation with Volkswagen. His mission: "To make our customers the most successful and efficient players in a digital energy world" He is no stranger to the industry: Before he founded the startup epilot, he developed the digital platform Energy Services "T -PED "(today: VLink) as his vision for the communal economy and was responsible for this business until the sale to Vattenfall. What is special about epilot for Michel? "With the foundation, we have given epilot an incredibly strong and ambitious vision on the way: We will become the leading ecosystem in the energy market! Seeing as a CEO the determination and dynamism of each employee and shareholder in the implementation is impressive. epilot is bursting with disruptive potential!"
CTO & Founder
CTO & Founder
Szilard Toth is founder and CTO of epilot. His clear goal: to develop the most efficient ecosystem for the energy market. Prior to founding epilot, he worked in Sydney for the world's leading enterprise cloud provider Atlassian. There, he was responsible for leading cloud products for millions of B2B users. What is special about epilot for Szilard? "In just a short time, we could not only develop a highly scalable, secure and state-of-the-art platform, but also solve the biggest pain points in the energy market. Achieving such a good product market fit in such a short time shows that we are on the right path to become the leading ecosystem of the energy market."
CFO & Founder
CFO & Founder
Rolf Benken has been a convinced entrepreneur for over 25 years with experience from more than a dozen company foundations. As an energy market and financial expert, he led u.a. EVB Energie AG has over a decade and possesses high creative and strategic competence, especially in the development of business models. What is special about epilot for Rolf? "The dynamic and professionalism with which both product management, development and sales, make and realize decisions."
Head of Business Development & Founder
Head of Business Development & Founder
Johannes Alte-Teigeler founded the first private energy provider after market liberalization and expanded the then founded EVB Energie AG to become the leading energy service provider in the deregulated energy market. Altogether, Johannes Alte-Teigeler has been active in the energy market for 30 years. What is special about epilot for Johannes? "The representation of the complete process structure in the distribution of energy services - from the frontend to billing ..... without taking into account complex IT structures with a speed that is superior for energy providers. Simply great!"
Head of Agile Project Management
Head of Agile Project Management
As a longstanding expert in the field of project management and agile work, Bodo leads our team for the epilot project business and customer success management. Most recently, he headed the operations department for energy services at Mainova AG and previously gained extensive experience at Lufthansa, Johnson Controls and Volkswagen AG. “Traditional industries face major challenges: not only energy suppliers are facing profound changes. This also includes the change away from rigid IT structures, long release cycles and cost-intensive on-premise solutions. With epilot we offer a cloud-based ecosystem for all topics related to energy: customer-centered, integrated, innovative and designed for collaboration. I am looking forward to many exciting projects and also to bringing in my experience from the energy and energy services world in the sense of an optimized customer experience.”
Chief Product Officer
Chief Product Officer
In his role as Chief Product Officer, Oliver Welsch leads our product management. Before Olli was able to gain important experience as a product owner, he successfully founded a startup himself. Afterwards he was responsible for the appearance of the markets as project manager and shop manager at OBI Group Holding. He then pursued his absolute passion as a senior product owner at Deutsche Telekom and as a senior product manager at RTL Interactive GmbH. There he was responsible for all products (Web & Apps) of the Verticals wetter.de and sport.de as well as for digital touchpoints and is therefore an absolute expert for the further development of our cloud product. What Olli likes about epilot? "A young company in the heart of Cologne, with a higher international than in some large corporations. Technical expertise at the highest level, coupled with extreme motivation and enthusiasm to develop a platform that is a real problem solver and potential game changer. ."
Head of Sales
Head of Sales
Philipp is a sales expert with a decade of experience in international sales with sales responsibility of up to € 50M. At epilot, Philipp is responsible for new customer business and key account management. What drew Philipp to epilot? ”I was particularly excited about participating in the scale process at epilot. With my more than 10 years of experience in B2B sales, I want to help take epilot to the next level.”
Head of Operations
Head of Operations
André started out as an account manager at MediaCom and set up search engine marketing (SEA) there. André then worked for 12 years at QUISMA GmbH, one of the leading digital agencies for performance marketing, in various management positions. In recent years, he has focused on operations. André took care of the optimal structures and processes for the teams and the company and was responsible for improvement of service quality and expansion of service areas. On the one hand, André is exactly the right person for scaling our internal processes, but on the other hand he is also an expert for digital trends and marketing. What excites him about epilot? “In my opinion, epilot is an ideal employer because flexible processes also require flexible action. The agile structures offer a unique software solution in the energy sector that is second to none. I look forward to further expanding structures and processes in this future-oriented scale-up and to ensuring continued strong growth of the company through suitable PR and marketing measures."
Our customers are our lifeblood. We listen to our customers' needs and solve their problems!
We're an open company and value feedback. Constructive criticism is what makes epilot and everyone of us learn and improve every day!
We don't waste time to build the perfect solution but build fast to test our hypothesis, learn, measure and iterate to make our solution continuously better!
If we fail, we fail fast and learn from our mistake so it won't happen again. It's okay to loose a match as long as we win the championship!
We win and fail together.
The enercity group, based in Hanover, is a provider of sustainable and intelligent energy solutions. With sales of around 2.4 billion euros, the group is one of the largest municipal energy service providers in Germany. The company supplies around one million people with electricity, heat, natural gas and drinking water. In addition, enercity offers energy-related services related to electromobility, energy efficiency, decentralized customer solutions, telecommunications and smart infrastructure.
AXON IVY is a company of the AXON ACTIVE Group with more than 700 employees worldwide. In addition to its headquarters in Lucerne, AXON IVY has subsidiaries in Munich, Vienna, Singapore and Silicon Valley and development laboratories in Switzerland and Vietnam. More than 1000 large corporations and SMEs from all industries use the Axon.ivy BPM Suite worldwide.
At the ECOSUMMIT 2018 in Berlin, Szilard Toth presented epilot to a large audience and explained the special features that e-pilot had in advance of the previous white label solutions. Discover the many advantages epilot offers you.
Take a look at the interview of our CEO Michel Nicolai with energate TV and get insights into our end-to-end process and the e-pilot partnering.
