Beyond Product: How ChargerHelp! Built Industry Infrastructure Before Product-Market Fit
Sometimes solving a market problem requires building more than just a product. In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, ChargerHelp! founder Kameale Terry revealed how creating industry infrastructure became crucial to their success in the EV charging maintenance space.
Starting with Education
The journey began with a personal crisis and an unlikely side project. After leaving her position at an EV charging software company to help her mother through a cancer diagnosis, Kameale started “creating a curriculum on how to fix charging stations, like in my spare time, because that’s what people should do in their spare time.”
This curriculum, initially developed through volunteer work with the LA Clean Tech Incubator, revealed a crucial gap in the market. When trying to help trainees find employment, Kameale discovered that “no one wanted to directly hire field service talent.” This insight led to their first pivot: “One of the companies was like, what if you hired the field service folks and we hired you?”
Creating a New Job Category
Rather than simply training workers for existing roles, ChargerHelp! took the bold step of creating an entirely new job category. “Prior to our company starting, there was no job title called EVSE technician. We actually created that job title with the Department of Labor,” Kameale explains.
The complexity of the work justified this approach. “Charging stations are computers,” Kameale notes. “For fast chargers, there are many different, what we call handshakes, which essentially interoperability of software that has to properly work in order for one charging event to happen.” This technical sophistication required specialized training beyond traditional electrical or mechanical maintenance.
Building Industry Standards
The partnership with SAE International marked a crucial evolution from company-specific training to industry-wide standards. “We had created a curriculum on our own, but then SAE took our curriculum and then worked with some of the other industry folks to add on to it to now create this body of knowledge,” Kameale explains.
This collaboration, recently highlighted in a White House press release, establishes the first industry-wide certification program for EVSE technicians. Starting in Q1 2024, technicians can “go and sit for a test to become a certified EVSE technician.”
Early Regulatory Engagement
Understanding that infrastructure extends beyond workforce development, ChargerHelp! made government relations their first hire. “In climate, you will get squashed by laws in climate tech. So you have to be prepared for that,” Kameale notes. This early investment in regulatory engagement led to successful co-sponsorship of California’s EV Charging Reliability Act and advocacy for uptime requirements in federal funding.
The Path to Product-Market Fit
This comprehensive approach to infrastructure building has shaped their journey to product-market fit. “I think we’re just at the cusp of it right now. Like, strong product market fit,” Kameale observes. “In the beginning, the customers that were experiencing the most pain understood our product… But a lot of folks wasn’t experiencing tremendous pain yet.”
Lessons for Deep Tech Founders
ChargerHelp!’s approach offers valuable insights for founders building in emerging categories:
- Sometimes workforce development must precede product development
- Industry standards can create competitive advantages while benefiting the ecosystem
- Early regulatory engagement can shape market conditions
- Infrastructure building can create natural barriers to entry
The key lesson? In emerging industries, success often requires building more than just your product – you may need to create the infrastructure that enables your product to thrive. By taking this comprehensive approach to market creation, ChargerHelp! isn’t just solving a problem – they’re building an industry.