How Podero De-Risked a Three-Sided Market to Sell Europe's Utilities

The pivot from heat pump experiment to utility infrastructure happened on a train.

Chris Bernkopf and his co-founder were testing whether they could remotely control his parents' heat pump through a Raspberry Pi connection. "I think I was actually in a train and we managed to get a connection running through the Raspberry PI to the heat pump and then basically turn it on off, like while we're on the train," Chris recalled. "And at that point we said like, well, it's probably something you should look at."

At a conference shortly after, someone from E.ON—one of Europe's largest utilities—made them an offer: "If you could control those devices, we'd love to work with you."

That validation launched Podero. It also revealed what Chris now calls "the three miracle problem."

In a recent episode of BUILDERS, Chris Bernkopf, Co-Founder and CEO of Podero, explained how his company built a go-to-market motion for software that only works when three distinct parties—utilities, device manufacturers, and end consumers—all say yes simultaneously.

Why Three-Sided Markets Kill Startups

Podero's software enables European utilities to trade device flexibility on energy markets. When EVs, heat pumps, and batteries consume power at optimal times, utilities generate trading revenues that fund 20-30% consumer bill reductions.

The business model works. The dependencies are brutal.

"The first miracle is we have to actually sell the utility, which can be various difficulties levels," Chris explained. "Then we have to convince all the OEMs. So these are the device manufacturers who build the EVs, who build the heat pumps, the batteries, the inverters to work with us and give us basically APIs that are functional enough for us to actually control devices in a way that lets us trade in the markets. And then three, the utility has to actually build a product out of our APIs, our front ends, et cetera, that works for the end consumer and is actually successful in themselves in attracting users."

No single party moves without the others. Utilities won't buy without device integrations. Manufacturers won't integrate without utility traction. Consumers won't adopt without utility marketing.

Sequential execution—secure utilities, then manufacturers, then consumers—would consume 18+ months before first revenue. Most startups can't survive that burn.

The Parallel De-Risking Framework

Podero's solution: engineer a technical workaround that breaks the dependency chain, then prove all three dimensions simultaneously.

"We said, well, we'll basically circumvent the OEM part by having the small gateway to connect locally via the Wi-Fi router to the devices, which basically said we don't need APIs right now," Chris said.

The local gateway was deliberately temporary infrastructure—not their long-term product strategy. But it served a critical function: decoupling their sales proof from manufacturer cooperation.

With that constraint removed, Podero executed three parallel workstreams: acquired 60 test households to prove consumer-side technical viability, used that proof to begin utility sales conversations, and demonstrated enough traction to eventually secure manufacturer API partnerships.

"We needed to know that sort of the initial MVP worked sort of across that three miracle chain," Chris explained.

The framework generalizes beyond energy software. When your product requires ecosystem coordination, identify which dependency you can temporarily bypass with creative infrastructure. Use that breathing room to prove the other dimensions, then leverage that proof to unlock the original constraint.

Why "Pilot Purgatory" Kills Enterprise Deals

Proving technical feasibility unlocked sales conversations. Navigating 6-12 month utility cycles revealed a subtler trap: stakeholder routing.

"There's sort of the pilot purgatory, as we call it, where sort of you get sort of moved from these sort of commercial teams. In our case, sort of it's the sales team who actually creates those electricity contract propositions and you get sort of kicked down the door to the innovations department," Chris said. "That can be very risky for you."

Innovation departments explore technologies. They celebrate successful pilots. They have no P&L ownership and no rollout authority.

A successful six-month pilot with an innovation team often produces a case study, press coverage, and zero revenue. The contract never converts because the people running the pilot don't control budget or implementation.

Podero learned to recognize and avoid this path entirely.

Competing Against Inertia, Not Competitors

The reframe came from understanding what actually blocks enterprise software adoption.

"We call it like a 10x business case where it's like your enemy is not a different competitor. Now sometimes maybe, but usually not. Your enemy is mostly just doing nothing," Chris explained. "You have to be 10x better in your product outcome than doing nothing. So that's like, how much margin do I additionally earn? How much retention, you know, value do I generate?"

This shifted everything about their sales approach. Instead of leading with technology innovation narratives that appeal to innovation teams, they quantified specific margin improvement and customer retention value that mattered to commercial stakeholders.

"If you build that case, you actually get into sort of the main happy path, you could say, where you actually sell to the people who will roll this out and not just show it as a nice innovation project," Chris said.

The implementation detail that matters: they deliberately structure initial conversations around business case economics, not technology capabilities. This self-selects for engagement with commercial teams who own those metrics, bypassing the innovation department route entirely.

The Discipline of Narrowing Under Pressure

When early sales struggled, Podero faced every founder's temptation: broaden the addressable market.

For one to two months, they tested three expansion vectors: selling directly to device manufacturers, targeting smaller utilities with different needs, and exploring direct-to-consumer models.

"We quickly realized that this will kill us. It will be spread too thin," Chris said. "So either sort of we find a very good reason to switch ICP completely or we delete all of them again."

They deleted everything. But the decision wasn't just reversion—it catalyzed deeper ICP understanding.

Podero mapped five distinct personas within utilities and identified how technical sophistication varies by company size. Then they built separate motions: high-touch direct sales for sophisticated buyers, low-touch distribution through ERP, app, and trading software partners for companies lacking internal technical resources.

"Start actually targeting them differently, knowing that we are anticipating that we'll have those stakeholders in the chain of events to close the deal. And specifically sending one of our guys who knows trading to that and sending like, you know, a woman who knows marketing expertise, did a marketing call," Chris explained.

The sophistication isn't persona mapping—every enterprise seller does that. It's the deliberate matching of internal domain expertise to external stakeholder conversations at specific deal stages. Their trading expert talks to utility traders. Their marketing specialist handles discussions with utility marketing teams.

Marketing Infrastructure for Finite Markets

Podero's total addressable market: exactly 2,000 European utilities with sufficient size and technical capability.

This constraint fundamentally restructured their go-to-market approach.

"Find one channel that works and develop that for series A. And for us, to be honest, it was a combination of cold LinkedIn outreach and cold calling. That really works," Chris said about initial traction.

But finite markets require different infrastructure than demand generation playbooks assume. The goal isn't pipeline volume—it's persistent mindshare with a completely known universe.

"We can get a sort of first call with all of them. But sort of can we get our name top of mind? Can we sort of re engage them on LinkedIn? Can we re engage them with sort of an interview in a podcast that's specifically utilities. Can we then sort of make a scene at a conference?" Chris explained.

Podero focuses on their "Hot 120 or Hot 1,000 leads" through engineered re-engagement: utility-specific PR, pre-booked conference meetings, LinkedIn content, and channel partnerships that provide credibility with the long tail.

Chris personally flew to four different cities every week for six months to meet prospects face-to-face.

The strategic insight: when you can theoretically reach every prospect, competitive advantage comes from frequency and quality of re-engagement, not top-of-funnel optimization. This requires entirely different marketing infrastructure—less about lead capture, more about maintaining continuous presence within a specific professional community.

Simplification Through Aggressive Deletion

After advising utilities on rolling out consumer-facing products built on Podero's platform, Chris recognized they were committing the same mistakes they warned clients against: over-complicating the value proposition with excessive capabilities.

Their 2026 strategy: radical simplification.

"A lot of things are about like simplifying the value proposition, you know, explaining a very simple, you know, napkin or back at the envelope calculation," Chris said. "What the business case should be focusing on sort of one part of the product where you can really hit this 10x instead of going too wide. So it means mostly deleting products, deleting sort of messaging and sort of stripping it down to the essential."

The discipline is counterintuitive for technical founders. The instinct is demonstrating full platform breadth to justify price and prove sophistication. But additional capabilities don't compound value in enterprise sales—they fracture attention and dilute business case clarity.

"Back of the envelope calculation" isn't rhetorical flourish. It's literal product strategy. If the business case requires complex modeling to understand, you're selling to the wrong stakeholders or explaining the wrong value.

The Math to Unicorn Scale

Podero needs approximately 120 customers to reach unicorn valuation range, assuming successful software rollout at each account.

With 2,000 addressable prospects in Europe, the market supports that trajectory. But execution requires mastering every dimension of their complex motion: escaping pilot purgatory through stakeholder routing, orchestrating multi-persona sales with matched expertise, maintaining persistent re-engagement in a finite market, and simplifying the value proposition to make the 10x business case immediately obvious.

The ultimate competition isn't other vendors. "Your enemy is mostly just doing nothing," Chris explained.

Enterprise software adoption isn't blocked by better alternatives. It's blocked by organizational inertia—the friction of change, the risk of new vendors, the cost of implementation.

Companies that win complex enterprise sales make the cost of inaction 10x more expensive than the cost of adoption. That clarity of positioning, combined with systematic de-risking of multi-party dependencies, defines how Podero is building energy trading infrastructure for Europe's grid transformation.