Platform is a word that gets thrown around a lot in tech circles, so much so that it’s often misused. But here’s the basic business school definition: A platform is a business or business model that creates more value for participants than it captures for itself.
Consider that some of the most successful tech companies have helped other companies make more money overall than they make themselves. About 20 years ago, Microsoft made a lot of money facilitating the PC revolution. Most recently, Apple said developers using its App Store generated $1.1 trillion in sales in 2022, nearly triple what the company itself made that year.
Serial startup veteran Sanjiv Sanghavi, who has accumulated experience as co-founder of ClassPass and chief product officer at Arcadia, believes it is high time that the energy transition gave birth to its equivalent. In fact, he spent years as a venture partner at Day One Ventures, unsuccessfully seeking to invest in such a venture. “So I decided to build it,” he told TechCrunch.
Sanghavi’s new company, Texture, seeks to become a common data collection and sharing platform for renewable energy sources like wind, solar and batteries. “We have done some truly exceptional work distributing equipment across the energy grid over the past decade. Making solar affordable, making batteries affordable, commercializing electric vehicles,” he said. Each solar panel or battery installation alone does not have the power needed to provide clean, affordable energy to the grid. Overall, however, they have a much better chance of replacing fossil fuels.
But many of these systems come from different manufacturers, making basic communication between them difficult, let alone anything resembling interoperability. “If there is a lack of standards, many walled gardens are built,” Sanghavi said. “Our view is that Texture can provide the technology stack that should accelerate everyone. »
The company integrates data directly from the equipment itself. When manufacturers have APIs, they connect directly to them, similar to how Plaid connects to banks. For those who don’t, you will need to create the necessary software to make the connections possible. Battery manufacturers, for example, may not prefer to manage an API themselves, as it is not part of their core competencies.
In other cases, where a solution already exists, it works with a third party. “One of the principles of Texture is really not to rebuild everything. There are companies that track electricity consumption, network status, their meter data and tariff data,” Sanghavi said. “Why don’t we work together?”
On the other end of the equation, target customers for the Texture product include installers, who could sell monitoring and maintenance plans, and virtual power plant operators, who would benefit from the ability to include batteries from from various manufacturers. By having more data, each of them would be able to sell more of their product. Texture bills its customers based on the number of megawatts under management.
The company recently raised a $7.5 million seed round from Abstract Ventures, Day One Ventures, Equal Ventures, Lerer Hippeau and a handful of angel investors, including Kiran Bhatraju, CEO of Arcadia. He plans to use the money to further develop and test the product with the first group of customers.
Not all vendors have opened their products to Texture yet, but Sanghavi obviously hopes they will. Of course, they could now charge for access to the API, he said, but he thinks Texture’s pitch will speak to them: “If you’re part of the ecosystem, you expand the market exponentially . Even if your market share stays the same, your business becomes five times bigger. If Texture manages to keep this promise to its customers, it will truly become a platform for the energy transition.
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