A FIKA WITH: TRISTAN MENZINGER, CO-FOUNDER OF REONIC

You founded Reonic with a bold vision for integrating renewable energy technologies. How have you shaped your approach to founding and scaling Reonic, and what key insights have driven your success so far?

We started with a really strong hypothesis grounded in a theoretical understanding of renewables – that the best way to use renewable technologies isn’t in isolation, but together. At the beginning, we didn’t have a lot of practical experience,and we quickly learned that reality is often far less academic than theory. Having an overarching thesis is great, but you also need the flexibility to adjust your approach to what the market really needs. 

We set out almost four years ago. And back then, our idea was not as widely accepted as it is now. We hadn’t yet, even understood who the customers we should be selling to were. It took time to find the right partners who shared our vision, which for us, have been the renewable energy installers. It also took time and determination to figure out how to scale that vision and bring it into the market.That learning process, combined with our rapid European expansion, has led us to focus on supporting renewable energy installers at scale – because they’re the key to turning this integrated, practical vision into reality.

We pivoted to installers quite late, somewhere around August 2023, and we had about 15 of them as customers. Today, that number is 700, across Germany, France and Italy and a quarter of our customers use Reonic 7 days a week. I think that’s a true testament to the value of our software, and it makes us proud.

Amazing. And as you continue to expand across Europe and support renewable energy installers, what have been the biggest challenges in maintaining operational efficiency, and how have you overcome them?

One advantage we have is the uniformity of the products our customers install – whether it’s solar panels, heat pumps, AC units, EVs, or charging systems, they’re essentially the same across markets. That consistency helps us avoid the complexities you might see in other industries where regulations can vary significantly between countries. Of course, managing software complexity is always a balancing act – understanding what’s relevant for each market, without overcomplicating software, has been crucial. 

And beyond that, scaling a sales team internationally is no small feat. It’s a big undertaking, but it’s essential as we continue to grow and expand. Focusing on selling to customers with a clear and direct benefit from using our product has been key in streamlining our sales process.

Launching your company straight out of university, what guided your strategic approach to product development? How did you identify and prioritise key stakeholders and use cases, and in hindsight, is there anything you would have done differently? 

It’s always tricky to say. Sometimes, six months later, you think you should’ve prioritised differently, but a year later, it feels right again. What we’ve consistently done well is listening to customers – not necessarily doing exactly what they ask but addressing their core needs. Installers might say they want one thing, but it’s often up to us to dig deeper, understand the root cause of their issues, and create solutions they hadn’t considered.

For example, instead of addressing surface-level problems, we step back and ask why those problems exist. It’s like the cliché Henry Ford analogy – customers might ask for faster horses, but our job is to figure out they actually need cars. That’s obviously a bit of a hyperbole, but at its core, it is often how we feel.

When prioritising stakeholders, as mentioned above, one critical lesson was to sell to people with a clear, direct benefit from using your product. For us, renewable energy installers fit perfectly – they see immediate ROI, whether it’s growing their sales team or scaling their installation force from 10 to 50 employees.

Great. And so, in the broader context of the energy transition and the shift towards clean energy and a climate-neutral future, what role do you see installers playing? How are you equipping them to navigate and excel in this?

Installers are absolutely essential to the energy transition. They’re incredibly motivated – not just to succeed as businesses but also to deliver value for their customers. They have a clear incentive to push forward the adoption of clean energy products and make the transition work.

In Europe, we see an interesting distribution where 90% of installers are very small businesses, and only 10% are larger companies. Our goal is to equip that long tail of smaller installers to handle the increasing complexities they face. For example, the product landscape is evolving rapidly: solar installers are now working on heat pumps, heat pump specialists are moving into solar, and we’re seeing all of these roles merging into a sort of unified ‘renewable energy installer’.

That shift brings challenges, but also huge opportunities – like introducing new products, improving processes, and streamlining both sales and installations. What we’ve realised is that success isn’t just about selling software; it’s also about providing proven processes alongside it. We’re quite deliberate in our approach: we’re slightly opinionated about how things should be done, and we’re clear that our solution has flexibility but isn’t designed to support every possible workflow. If an installer wants to do things completely differently, we might not be the right fit for them – and that’s okay.

Ultimately, our focus is on helping installers navigate these changes efficiently so they can seize the opportunities ahead and continue driving the energy transition forward.

Lastly, what are your aspirations for Reonic as it continues to evolve – can you share any exciting developments or plans that signal where the company is headed in the coming years?

Our ambition is to become a truly global company, because the challenge we’re addressing is a global one. The transition to clean energy is the biggest shift we’ve seen in hundreds of years – essentially since the invention of the steam engine. Back then, we began burning fossil fuels, and now we’re reversing that, moving from coal, oil, and gas to a future that’s clean and sustainable. It’s an enormous undertaking, and we want to play a massive role in making it happen.

For us, that means expansion will remain a central focus in the years ahead. Being global isn’t just about selling in more countries – it’s about building a product that works seamlessly across dozens of markets. But even as we scale, one of our biggest priorities is to stay close to the people who matter most: the installers.

Right now, we’re working with 700 customers, and we’re still incredibly hands-on with them. Our goal is to maintain that same level of human touch and care, even when we reach 7,000 customers. It’s not just about growth; it’s about growing in the right way. That’s who we want to be as a company: a partner to the installers, no matter how big we get.

What an inspiring and exciting journey it’s been so far, with so much to look forward to in the rapidly evolving energy landscape. Thank you for taking the time to share your story and insights with us today!

Find out more about Reonic here.