EnergyElephant Wants To Help Every Business Save Money On Their Energy Bill

Today at the TechCrunch Disrupt London Startup Battlefield, EnergyElephant presented its “energy analysis” service to a crowded hall of investors, developers and entrepreneurs.

The startup, bootstrapped to date, takes in a company’s energy use information — a bill, in other words — and then provides analysis that it expects the customer to leverage into savings. According to the company, if a business spends more than £10,000 annually on electricity, it’s a fit for the product.

For example, the company can help users find errors in their bills, find a new energy supplier, and make choices when it comes to sustainable energy.

EnergyElephant claims private beta users in several dozen countries.

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Of course, as with any information-driven analytical service, to scale its product requires data. In an email to TechCrunch before the event and its presentation, EnergyElephant said that the more data it can ingest, the smarter its platform will become. In practice that might sound like the definition of a chicken-and-egg problem. From a more positive perspective, that fact also means that the company’s service will get better with each customer it brings on.

The implication of that point is simply that after its initial moments, its data influx could provide a positive feedback loop: More customers, more data. More data, better product. Better product, more customers. And then more data, and so forth. Call it the opposite of a death spiral.

What will be interesting to see is how robust EnergyElephant’s technology is, and, precisely, how it works and if it can be properly defended against other players. The energy market is certainly large enough to support multiple players with technology like this, however.

All told, the company wants to help people save money and reduce waste. That’s nothing to scoff at.