Herve Billiet (00:00)
Hey everyone, welcome to another podcast of What Solar Installers Need To Know where I welcome Ismael Benallal. Hi Ismael, how are doing?

Ismaël (00:07)
Hi Hervé, great to see you.

Herve Billiet (00:09)
We know each other for several years, but tell me what have you done in the solar industry over that many years and how has it been evolving from working on a solar car project to now running a Utopi, like a larger conglomerate of companies. So tell us a little bit the history and what your role is today in the solar industry.

Ismaël (00:27)
First of all, yeah, great to see you Herve and indeed it all started a little bit with a student project, the solar car race in Australia where we raced from Darwin to Adelaide 2007. And at those days we were already driving 100% on renewable energy, 3000 kilometers with an average speed of more than 90 kilometers an hour. So afterwards we founded an installer company in Belgium, which is called Futech,

because we thought if you can already race with a solar panel in normal traffic with a speed of more than 90 kilometers an hour, there's a lot more we can do with that kind of energy source. And a few things, actually mainly installer, installing solar panels. Then the market here in Belgium really changed a lot. So we had a lot of fluctuations in the market

high market demand, low market demand. And that's why we afterwards founded the technology company, iLumen, which is really focusing on technology to increase yield lifetime of solar panels. Afterwards, what we saw is that solar assets, solar panels is only one of the assets needed to lower your electrical consumption or your

bill because that's actually what most of the people want. They want to lower their bill and then you need access to several assets. So today we are a group which is called an ecosystem, which is called Utopi where we focus on solar panels, heat pumps, battery systems and electrical vehicle charging stations. So we got slow chargers and fast chargers. And why an ecosystem? Because we noticed that

the demand in the market is becoming really a lot more complex. So you really need clever energy management systems, you need more assets. And that's why we chose for building and not doing it. We strongly believe that if you go alone, you go faster. But if you want to reach as far as possible, you have to go together.

That's why we're building an ecosystem where we try to not sell products but deliver solutions to our customers. And today the group in total is several companies, but the main focus are the energy assets. So we have several installation companies in the group and some technology companies.

Herve Billiet (02:56)
That's quite an achievement.

Ismaël (02:58)
My role is actually the CEO of the Utopi company where I try to let grow the ecosystem, work together with several companies. Today our main market is the Belgian market, but we are also looking into the Netherlands. With iLumen we are active in 42 countries, but there we only deliver some specific products that we make here in Belgium.

Herve Billiet (03:21)
Okay, I have a lot of questions about all those different companies. Why don't we start with maybe the one of them, your initial Futech company and then we will speak about a technology company and later on. But as like a installer mainly in Belgium, how were you able to grow it from, and I remember being in your office where you ordered containers full of solar panels. And I remember you guys were laughing at a time like, yeah, we forgot how much we ordered. Did we order?

How much the number was and you kind of were like joking like yeah we order so much we forgot how many we ordered. That's a good position to be in once you order that much and you forget. So how did were you able to grow? Any lessons learned? And then you mentioned the market changed. Was it like all policy driven? Like what changed in the market to or you had to pivot? And how did you do that?

Ismaël (04:10)
Yeah, so I think we really focused on a product based on a good combination of economics and ecological. So it's a product with a payback time with a lower levelized cost of energy as the standard in the market. So if you look at it on 20 year base, it's really a no brainer to have it. And we quickly realized that there are two

types of customers. There are customers that really want to invest and say, okay, I want to buy this product because I'm sure that then every year my electricity bill will drop and I will have a payback time of eight years or 10 years. And it's better to give that money to a loan to the bank, for example, than to give it to a supplier of electricity because then it's gone. So really people that want to invest, I compare it with buying a house.

But there are also people that say, but actually I just want cheap electricity. And I look at the cheapest electricity supplier on the market and I choose that one. So maybe if a few take and supply me with cheap electricity, I'm interested, but I don't want a capex. I don't want to do an investment. And that's why we had actually the Ecofix solution, which we now already do like 16 years where we actually put for free solar, we invest in the solar installation.

And we rent them to the owner. And I think the combination of the two products gives a lot of trust to the customers. We were enabled to be people that, for example, didn't believe that the technology will be alive for 20 years and it will not work. And I have trees or windmill giving shadow. There we really choose for the service model. So we install it for free.

And afterwards people can still buy it. we really made product propositions that everyone who actually could calculate, could make the bill a little bit, it was a no-brainer to do. And I think that was a quite good market approach to go with. And I think that's the reason why it really had a lot of success, the combination of the two.

Herve Billiet (06:17)
That way people will have the choice. It's either A or B, but that's the option. other option is stick with your utility bill and pay rent for whoever, is that something that you fund yourself or is that a partnership with a financier or bank or is that self-funded?

Ismaël (06:33)
Yeah, so in the back end, of course, there are some financial partners, mainly banks, actually only banks, that refinance the product. But we first build them and then once we build enough, because we do it on two scales, so we do it on industrial scales. There it's typically on a project level, it's financed because the projects are large enough, or used to be large enough. Remember, solar panel used to cost around 1000 euros

15, 16 years ago only for the Solife panels. So if you installed a rooftop with a thousand panels, it already had a huge cost today. It's a totally different market. But there it's more like project financing. But we also do it on a residential scale, a lot of small... And then we try to combine all the small projects. And once we have like 100 projects, then we refinance them,

be able to get some scale and not too much administration for each project because also administration has a cost.

Herve Billiet (07:34)
So you self-fund about 100 projects, both hardware and the labor to go deliver and the sales commissions and you self-fund 100 projects and then you package them and resell to somebody that wants to own them long-term.

Ismaël (07:50)
Yeah, refinance them actually. We refinance them because we have the Capex, but we also have yearly income and with the income we can refinance the project. But it's because projects are becoming quite cheap. So it's actually the administration costs to make a structure to finance it also has a cost. So it doesn't make sense to do that on a project level, makes much more sense to build vehicles that are large enough,

and then refinance it to keep it cost efficient.

Herve Billiet (08:22)
Let's briefly speak about prices because most people cannot wrap their mind around price difference. Now, US compared to dollars for several years, I thought it like, it's about the same that now it's not valid anymore. Let's assume roughly to make the calculation simple is the same. So in the US residential solar system, you're like $2.70, sometimes up to $3 these days, especially with batteries even higher.

And then commercially, you need to be closer to $2 for large projects. The solar panel itself, you can go non-American. You're like around $0.20, $0.23. And then otherwise, the premium panels and American panels, you're like $0.50, $0.60. So where are you on the European market?

Ismaël (09:09)
I think the prices you mentioned, turnkey installations, we are really at half of the price. So if I look at the residential prices here that we use for solar system, think it's 1.3 euros kilowatt peak. The difference is, yeah, you remember we always used to calculate in euros a kilowatt peak.

That made a lot of sense because 80% of the cost was the solar panels itself and the balance of system was like 20%. So of course that's the main driver. But today we don't calculate anymore actually in euros a kilowatt peak because if you look at the real cost of a project, only 20% is the solar panel and the labor and the inverters, all the rest. So it's not really the driver. But if we look at the Belgian market, I think the average

Solar installation is around 6 kilowatt peak, which is 14 panels, 12 to 14 panels, depends on the modules you use. And you will be at around 1.3 euros kilowatt peak. And if you go to utility scale, it will be around one euros. Those are the prices we have for rooftop installations turnkey, but we see competitors here because the market is really under pressure.

Herve Billiet (09:59)
Mm-hmm.

Ismaël (10:23)
We see even lower prices also in the market. One thing I learned from the solar car race is you have to race your own pace, make your own choices and stick to your strategy because elsewise you will not make it to the finish. we don't try to focus too much on competitors doing sometimes strange things. But yeah, we're at around 50% of the prices you mentioned.

Herve Billiet (10:47)
We try to do the same, not look too much at competitors, but you still need to know what's going on in the market. In the US you have like local solo installers, some the raze or the commercial, but then you have some larger developers. They just find projects with larger brands usually and then they ask people to install it. But then you also like the really what we call like the big box store, like the really big that the Sunrun, the Teslas and so on.

Those are very large corporations that do usually all over the US So you compete with them? I would say a lot of times in a different class, but so what is the market then in that you see since you mainly working in Belgium? What do you see as as competitors? Do you have like people from Germany in the Netherlands coming on the Belgian market? Do you have just Belgium competitors at local ones?

Ismaël (11:34)
Yeah, so we analyzed the market, I think, five years ago and we noticed that everything what has to Belgium is really not do it yourself market. and everyone looks at technical installations for heat pumps, solar system battery, everyone searches an installer, which is around 20 kilometers from his house.

Because they think it's very important that when there is a technical issue in the winter, you have to call someone local. So people really buy local. And that means that it's really, the market is really spread. It's really, you don't have a lot of big players, but that's actually, I think what's happening the last three, four years, the market is starting to get consolidated. So you see that there are now,

Herve Billiet (12:21)
Mm-hmm.

Ismaël (12:24)
some companies but still not that much that are really starting to have national coverage, to buy other companies and to consolidate. That's also our strategy because we notice if we look at the market, we always say get big, get niche or get out. We really

like the niche market and do something what maybe it's also what the Illumin does. Illumin is for example market leader in a niche market, very small market but with a market leader in that. And that's very nice because yeah there you can really make a technical difference. And that's always when we start a new business it's always niche. But after 15 years, we noticed that sometimes niche markets become

don't stay niche markets but become commodity markets, mainstream markets. That's what we see happening for example with solar. That means that we need to grow actually. We don't have a choice, we need to grow. Then we analyzed three, four years ago what are we going to do. We also had some private companies, private equity companies contacting us. They wanted to build a group.

We also considered that at that stage. But then we said, no, we really want to stay a family owned business because it's in our DNA today. But then if we want to stay alive, yeah, we have to get big. And that's the reason we started the buy and build. So actually what we see happening in the market is that that's also what we do. So we include in our ecosystem, we buy local companies.

And you see that the local companies really have big difficulties from moving from a solar company to a solar battery heat pump charge solution company. Because they're really used to have a product approach, they go to their suppliers, everyone has an EMS system, but it's an EMS system for your solar system, it's an EMS system for your battery system, a different one for your charging solution

different one for your heat pump. It doesn't communicate with each other. It's very complex. You need other skills. It's very difficult for your blue colors also to keep them up to level with the communications. it's really difficult to make the transition from solar installer to the total solution, asset solution. And that's where we have iLumen, which is our own technology company,

which has that, so it's one user interface. So we really try to make a difference with the user interface. That's what the customer sees. And we don't want to use an interface to change the next 10 years. All the customers buying products for us have to be able to look on the same user interface. And in the backend, even if we change products or add complexity, it cannot change on the user interface. And that's actually a

totally different way of selling solutions because you start from one application which is connected directly with the electricity cost on the market and we try to charge your car, charge your heat pump, your electrical boiler, sometimes also curtail your solar panels, charge your batteries when it's very cheap and when the price is very high, we try to reduce the power of all these assets. And for us,

it's quite easy when we include all those companies in the ecosystem to make from a solar installer a total solution because we add the technology layer on it. So that's what we call Think Global Act Local. We really strongly believe that with one technology, you can really reach beyond several markets, one technology, but to translate commercially to each market, you need a local partner.

And that's how we try to consolidate. So same products, same approach, but the commercial approach we have to be local with. So that's what we see happening. It's still a market with a lot of small players, but there is some consolidation going on for sure.

Herve Billiet (16:32)
I know I see several groups buying local installers. I don't know if they all have the same nice strategy as you presented. Maybe what I didn't know, like Sunvo, we do the same principle, is that stay in contact with your homeowner for 20 years, use one brand, the sole installer brand or something, and own that relationship. And then all the products that come afterwards.

Obviously PV first, but then batteries and like everything else comes afterwards. That is the same front for homeowners. So you build that trust.

Ismaël (17:07)
really strongly believe in that and what we see here, I totally agree what you say. Actually, yesterday I had to give a presentation somewhere and because of the presentation I had to give, before the presentation I was reflecting a little bit why do people work together with a group like us because there are a lot of private equity players. And I think that if you look at our DNA, we are technical boys.

Our background we are still techies that's that's we're no non-financial guys, financial of course is very important but in the DNA we are we have an engineering background and we are we so we really have an engineering DNA, and that's what we see that as when we have competitors in a buy and build process. People that really want as much as possible money for their company they probably

will go with private equity owners. They don't have, but I really still want to be on board for the next 5 to 10 years. So it's not really sell and I really want to be part of the 2.0 version of the company and the new version of the company. And I believe in it. And I want to have fun in that tragic. They really come to us because the technology we provide them.

It's really state of the art and is really 100% developed in-house. We can really choose who our suppliers are. We are really supplier independent. We also choose our suppliers not from the sales guy who can pitch it as good as possible, but really from a technical point of view, testing and integrating the products into our system.

And I think that's something that's really appreciated by the companies and gives also our salespeople the opportunity to tell the same story for years and years and years without always changing the product and the story. And we choose for a customer-centric model. That means that also if you make a customer-centric model over 20 years and the difference between a normal customer-centric model and a customer-centric model

over 20 years is that you keep in mind that if the customer calls you in seven years and has a problem with your battery, that you're sure that you can still provide him a solution. And you cannot do that if you change every six months your products or your EMS system. You can only do that if you choose what we call Pareto app, but 20% of the products

for 80% of the customers. We know that 20% of the customers will not choose us because we will not do what they ask at that's a choice. But that's why we can, with a very simple product range really cover quite broad market and be sure that in 7, 8, 11 years we can still supply service and solutions to, and that's very difficult. That's much more difficult.

with battery solutions because today actually we are a battery company if you look at our turnover I think 60% of the turnover is batteries now where it used to be batteries used to be 10% 3 years ago.

Herve Billiet (20:18)
Let's speak about M&A. We briefly start speaking about it, but so you have U2P with different companies and a technology company, Illumin. So when you look at acquiring companies, what are you looking for? And I'll put a little bit of context. So it like we've grown solo companies together at somewhat the same time. And then I decided to exit my business completely, so I'll private equity.

And to me, the fun was also like doing the next piece, just purely software. You keep it all together. Good luck. And then when you see another solo company and a lot of different options out there, what are some important pieces to partner with them and come to an agreement?

Ismaël (20:59)
Yeah, so we have a strategy plan which includes two very important things. It's a geographical expansion. So we look at places where we don't have yet enough market share. There we search for partners that have the type of customers, the relationship.

Herve Billiet (21:09)
Mm-hmm.

Ismaël (21:22)
And we really look, we do M&A, we look at who are the customers and does the company have the relation with their customer, the same DNA as us. So it's customer-centric companies, but typically they, because you want to add value if you acquire companies and the way we add value is by adding technology cross-selling. So typically companies that used to sell

only solar panels and want to make the shift to batteries, chargers, and are in a location where we don't have yet enough market share, that's very important for us because we can help them for the cross-selling, we can add technology, and we can help them to contact their existing customers and new customers to sell new products. So that's one thing we look at. So geographical expansion.

And the second we look at, but at this moment it's a little bit less, but it used to be more important in the past, is technology. Increase of technology, added technology in the group. So I want to give an example, example, so two years ago, we already used to do heat pump, but only air and air to water, but we were very interested in geothermal.

Herve Billiet (22:39)
Hmm?

Ismaël (22:43)
heat and we learned in the past that if you want to do everything by yourself it takes a lot of time and you make a lot of errors which also costs a lot of money. Then at that moment we choose to add, we believe in geothermal, for some cases we strongly believe in geothermal that used to be a competence we didn't have in the group. So then we search for companies

Herve Billiet (22:51)
There it is.

Ismaël (23:06)
Also, we hope that it's a geographical expansion, but that's not a must. But then if it's a geographical expansion and a technology expansion, so a company that is really a strong leader in geothermal installations, then we can add that technology to the group and also scale the competence over the group. And that's also the reason why we shifted Futech in 2022,

only did solar panels, that's it. And today we do solar panel, batteries, heat pumps, electrical solution. And all the competence are actually by companies that we inquired. And that's why we got the competences in the group, but without making the beginner's add-on. so it's, we really got people in the group that have experience in that. So we don't want our customers to be...

our experimental environment. It has to be mature technology. And so those are actually the two main criteria. So for example, we bought an Ecosol+, which is really a leader in Belgium in geothermal energy. And we also integrated that into the group. Those are actually the two main domains we look at.

Herve Billiet (24:22)
Yeah, this is also happening now in the US, maybe a few years later, where solar companies diversify. Most do PV and most already do batteries. I know a few that still stay away of it, but people are looking into woofing, HVAC and so on. Now, a question is about how you sell it. Is one person that the sale for you sell the batteries, the PV, the heat pumps, everything and needs to be knowledgeable? It's technical sale. I need to be knowledgeable about all those different products.

And then the installation happens by very different crews or is like, well, I sell battery and PV. You need to talk to another guy for the heat pump and who goes install it. I suppose it's very different crews. So how do you operate providing an entire package and yet how you do that.

Ismaël (25:03)
Yeah,

that's actually quite a simple question, but I noticed with the buy and builds we did and with the companies we acquired that the model we actually had already like now 16 years or 18 years we are using that model is not that companies are all the other companies I know are doing it different. So our model is based on an

actual facts. And the actual facts are that we are in a roller coaster. So that our market is solar is really sometimes you have a lot of demand, sometimes you have low demand. So it means that if you have salespeople only selling solar, that sometimes they will have no work and sometimes you will not have enough people to be able to go to the customer. So not sustainable.

Herve Billiet (25:47)
Hmm?

Ismaël (25:57)
So the only way to build a sustainable sales team is to be able to have, and also from a customer centric point of view, I want, so your time is precious. You call Futech or Verisolar one of our companies. You schedule in an appointment of one hour. Yeah, your time is also quite precious. So we don't want

our sales guy to come to you and say, I'm the solar guy. And you say, yeah, but I'm also interested in the heat pump and battery. okay, then we have to reschedule. That's not efficient, that's actually our model. That's what we call fast moving sales. So our model is really very easy, very straightforward. We only sell products, that we can sell by asking you and giving you a quotation,

by asking you five questions. Five questions and you have your price. That's what we call fast moving sales. And so it means that a sales guy from us can come to your place. He will look at some things. He will ask you five questions. You have your price for your solar system. If you want a battery, five questions max. Heat pump, five questions.

Herve Billiet (26:48)
Hmm?

Ismaël (27:08)
So we choose for the model because you know, if you do 10 visits, it's not that you sell 10 systems, so it doesn't work like that. You have a conversion race. And we choose for the model, no, you have the sales where we tell you exactly what your price will be. And we guarantee you that's the price, so we'll not add. And once you choose to work with us, then we have someone from the back office coming by,

Herve Billiet (27:26)
Mm-hmm.

Ismaël (27:34)
to do all the technical requirements and the measurements. So we don't let sales do that because yeah, let's say that you sell one on four, then you're doing three measurements for nothing. And so no, say sales is a discipline separate and the prices, we know the prices and five questions we can give you a correct price. And sometimes maybe it's 100 euros too low and sometimes it's 100 if you want to do it exactly, but it doesn't matter

the efficiency we're gaining with that is much more important. And once it's sold, then we have our operational team that looks into how are we going to install it and the technical things. But Salesforce is one guy gives you a quotation for solar heat pump, battery and charging solution within one hour.

Herve Billiet (28:23)
And no change orders afterwards. Like, well, we didn't know that actually you're apparently somewhere else. You eat the cost if there's a change.

Ismaël (28:27)
Never.

Never.

Yeah, so for new products, we sometimes see after one month and the after calculations that were too cheap or we made an error, failing forward, we call that. And then we adjust in the system the prices. So that's learning money. But if you calculate it by launching, in working this way, we have a much lower sales cost because we have, and our time to market is much faster, much faster time to market.

And the time we win with launching a product, even if you have some errors in the beginning or some projects with loss, as long as you know it, can still... So in an innovation culture, we always say you have to do, you have to measure and then analyze. But as long as the decisions you're making are reversible, you have two types of decisions in a company. You have reversible decisions,

those you must take very fast because even if they're wrong, you just turn it back and, okay, it's maybe you learned something and it's failing forward. And then you have some decisions that you cannot just turn back. Those you need a different kind of governance to take those decisions of course. But if you're an innovative, also to launch something to get the feeling, does it work with the customer or not? What's the conversing ratio?

What does it matter if a heat pump, if you're discussing is it now 20,000 euros or 20,600 euros? The efficiency is that the customer only needs to take one hour to get immediately when we leave at your place, you have your quotation. That's very important for us.

Herve Billiet (30:12)
You spoke about the solar coaster. We use the same term in the US. The solar coaster ups and downs. Do you see the same with heat pumps? And what are the causes of the solar coaster? Is it all policy related or is it something else?

Ismaël (30:24)
Yeah, I think it's policy, yeah. we are in an, if I look in the Belgian and also the Netherlands, if you look at solar panels, for example, it used to be subsidized. I don't think it's good to be in a subsidized business because it's not that sustainable. And yeah, because it's subsidized, sometimes you have very high demand and then when the subsidies stop, the demand also stops. So I think that causes.

And that makes it also not a real, it's quite an emotional product, if you look at it, because of the policies and the discussions there were in the past. But we see that much less now with batteries, because for batteries, for example, there are no subsidies, but people want to be more independent. That's the reason they choose the battery.

And heat pump, now you see the tech shift. So, the transport of gas used to be very cheap in the past and the transport of electricity in Belgium used to be quite high if you compare it. And now you have a part of the distribution cost of electricity that shift to gas. And that's the reason why heat pumps now become actually much more interesting for customers. And that has a big impact.

What we see is that if you combine the four products, yeah, the roller coaster becomes much more narrow and it's growing. But if you only do one of the four products, yeah, I think you really have a problem. You really have a problem as a company, I think.

Herve Billiet (31:56)
I have a question about management. You have grown, you're starting business, Futech, you added Illumine, now you're doing Utopi. So like, do you have some advice for other solar CEOs and managers how to deal with different teams? How to rise above and make time to look for other opportunities out there? How do you do that?

Ismaël (32:22)
Yeah, think the first lesson I learned is maybe buy a mirror and learn about yourself. So I think if you know what you're strong at and your weaknesses, then you know what kind of people you need around you. be able to really, if you're really an entrepreneur, don't try to be a manager. think that's one of the main...

difficulties I see at some companies that you really have entrepreneurs and yeah because the company grows 20-30 people they put themselves in a manager role but I think that's a totally different competence. I think so an entrepreneur wants to do new things new businesses and a manager want to manage people which is some,

so I think it's very important that you have two, three people around you that you can trust and really deliver the things you can deliver. Your negative sides, if you know that. That's what I learned. I think the second thing that I learned

Be yourself, I think, at a company. We sometimes try to be someone because we read it in books. But I think in these times, being a natural leader, being yourself, being authentic is really very important. Only say things you really believe and that match with your personal life, but also in your work life. So don't try to be someone else there. I don't think it works. And sometimes you lose people also.

What I also learned is, so in the beginning I always thought that when people used to work with you for very long time, that's a good thing, retention. But I don't think that's always a good thing.

Yeah, because you have two types of people. You have people with a fixed mindset and you have people with a growth mindset and you can make people with a fixed mindset sometimes that go to the growth mindset. So you can try to change people. Sometimes it works, but if it doesn't work, you also have to give up because we are in a market that's continuously changing.

The ability to change is one of the main competences. If you don't change in our market, you will go bankrupt. We saw it in the past. So you also need people in your company that are comfortable with change. Because if they're not comfortable with change and you try to keep them with you, you're really making them very unhappy. You're not happy and they're not happy. And I think it's important to

also have a very good off-boarding process to detect when you start doing change management, how to really try to keep people on board if possible. But if not, how can I off-board them but still keep them an ambassador? Because that's very important. That's very important. That's something I really learned.

So open communication, if you don't have a double schedule, actually you can be very transparent, I think about everything within your company. Open culture, searching with people. So we have four values in our company and people is one of them. Planet is the second only products and we only sell products with the knowledge we have today. We think we will be glad to tell our grandchildren.

that we worked on them, that's the definition of planet for us. Profit, to see if we're innovative, because yeah, if people don't want to pay for added value, what's the innovation then? Then we don't have any added value. But the fourth one is persist. We are in a market where we always try to change what is the normal. So we heat pump, solar panels.

And change is always resistance. So you also need people in your organization that really persist and that don't give up when it's getting tough. So those are a couple of things I really learned during the journey. And actually within our group, it was a no-brainer because the companies we founded has that kind of DNA. But I really notice it now more and more after I became CEO of Utopi.

When we acquire companies, there we now really see that some companies have been doing 20 years the same thing. And then you say, okay, now we will do this. And then they ask the question, yeah, why? We have always been doing it the other way. And if you try to change people with really a fixed mindset, oh, it takes a lot of energy and it will not work. And you're also making those people not happy.

Herve Billiet (37:01)
So part of the M&A strategy that we spoke about before we spoke about geographic, I guess, culture is also an important piece. ⁓

Ismaël (37:10)
Yeah,

I think sometimes culture is overrated. I strongly believe in structure beats culture. So I really strongly believe that. We talked for example with about the sales process. A strong structure builds a very good culture. But if you don't have a good structure, and we used to measure everything on output.

But sometimes it's actually, yeah, if you have a good process, sometimes it's better to measure on input because it's much more clear for people what they have to do to get the results. so I think culture, I don't know if that's a goal, but automatically if you have clear KPIs and a quite good ambition, good clear milestones, KPIs,

you get a strong culture because yeah, we call it playing in the champions league. You automatically get that kind of culture of people that are willing to go for it. But it's not that culture is a goal on itself for our type of company. It's because we strongly believe that structure beats culture.

Herve Billiet (38:16)
About people and since we are working dynamic companies and change happens sometimes we need to let go of people In the US if you're polite you give them a two weeks notice. You I mean I had some cases like extreme situations where you let go of a person that's the same day for something like that was really outrageous.

What is the situation in Europe or most specifically in Belgium? Do you have to give reasons? Because I don't always have to give reasons too. So can you let the person go easily? Like I give them a two weeks notice. That also has a flip side that people, if they don't like you or your management style, they can find a job somewhere else.

They can give you a notice like, sorry boss, I don't like your face. And the same day, the next hour they're off if they choose. So most people give notices. I have some people who give me like six months notice, four months notice, which is a bit extreme in the US like kind of no, nobody does that. But what's the situation because you still have to run a company and adapt to change. So how flexible is the Belgium market?

Ismaël (39:22)
It's not at all flexible, typically you have like 5, 6 months that you have to continue paying if you stop the collaboration. So typically one of the rules is for every year that someone has been working for you, you add one month when you stop the collaboration. Someone who's been working five years, five months.

It's a rule of thumb. Yeah, And then the question is also, if you let go of someone, typically it has a reason, it doesn't work anymore. So yeah, you don't always let them come to work anymore for those five months because yeah, I like a commercial person. So it means that you really have to pay them five months.

Herve Billiet (40:06)
That's a major difference in situation. On the flip side, like I had some people that, you know, they felt like a much better opportunity. They give me a call like, Hervé was really nice working with you for all those years, but this is an opportunity that's too good to pass. So I'll move on, but don't worry. You can still ask me any questions and so on. So even people that mean well, after a few days once, you know, the company is to move on, we need to find a replacement. Who's going to take the overdose tax.

After a few days, people even, the people tend to take over the roles. They're like, oh, I'm definitely gonna call you. And then after a few days and weeks, people move on and people adapt.

Ismaël (40:42)
Just translating it because I didn't know how to say it in English. We say accelerate the do you say it? Inevitable. Inevitable? Accelerate the inevitable. Sometimes you just know some things will come to an end. Because typically, a human point of view, we always tend to push things a little bit forward

Herve Billiet (40:51)
inevitable.

Mmm.

Ismaël (41:06)
mainly the bad news. And we always say, accelerate the inevitable. So in collaborations, but for us, human capital is really important. So we build companies around humans, people, we also have patents, buildings, but the most important are the people, they make the difference day by day.

Herve Billiet (41:18)
Mm-hmm.

Ismaël (41:26)
But in change management, you automatically get people that don't fit anymore in the new story. That's also logic. The company changes and sometimes the people cannot adjust to those changes. And then you have to react and sometimes it has a big financial price, but still if you wait five months, then also you have been paying also five months and it's not good for the software.

But it's true, here we have a long... It has a big cost if you want to...

iLumen actually was founded because in 2012 the market in Belgium really dropped and we had installed a lot of solar installations. Some of them we owned, some of them were customers and I don't know another product as a solar system which has 25 years of warranty. at that time no one was really sure if it would be able to perform.

And then we started looking into something which is called potential induced degradation. it means that as solar panels, they decrease power during years. And one of the reasons they decrease power is potential induced degradation and that's leakage to the ground. But there were some, then some companies, big manufacturers, Chinese manufacturers contacted us,

because they had some parks, solar parks, big parks, where they had to replace the modules because they were out of warranty and there's big costs, megawatt projects. But after six months, the new panels started giving the same problems, so they replaced them. And we looked into that and then we found actually a solution, which is patented.

And it's a box you put between the inverter and the solar system and by night it increases the solar output of uh it increases the yield of your system. We have been selling that since 2012. We also won the Innovation Award at the Antersolar in 2016 with the device and we sell that to 42 countries and for example the US we also sell it a lot. SunPower is an n-type module and people that used to work with SunPower

know that in the beginning 2008 till 2012, the old modules of SunPower, you had to ground them with the positive side. And today, if you replace the inverter with a new type of inverter because it breaks, you have to decouple the grounding, otherwise the inverter doesn't work. And if you do that, you will see that your power will drop 30, 40 % after three, four months. And that's what they call it polarization, but actually it's also potential induced degradation.

And we sell our product if you buy a new inverter and you add an iLumen PID box in between, then it will work, it will go back to 100% yield. And that's a niche market for us because all the installations with SunPowers 2008, 2012, where you have now installed an inverter without the transformer and you have to disconnect the grounding, you need the solution for us or you need to replace all the modules.

That's one of the products we have, for example.

Herve Billiet (44:35)
Ismaël, I want to thank you for your time. It's been a pleasure talking to you, seeing everything you've built over the years. Thank you for sharing your knowledge.

Ismaël (44:41)
You're welcome. Great to see you again and good luck. Bye.

Herve Billiet (44:45)
Thank you.