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Anson Zhang and Jeff Yu
Co-founders and co-CEOs, Discover Energy and One Stop Warehouse
Eastern Region National Finalist
When Anson and Jeff founded One Stop Warehouse (OSW) in 2013, their driving ambition was to accelerate Australia’s renewable energy transition, starting with making it easier for customers to access all their solar needs. Starting out with $100,000 and Jeff driving the warehouse forklift while Anson knocked on doors to get sales, the company and its offshoot Green Deal grew fast.
Five years later, OSW was shooting up the AFR Fast 100 list. It was then, in 2018, that the pair doubled down on the vision, taking on goliath energy retailers with Discover Energy (DE).
DE opens a pathway to wholesale energy markets for homeowners, giving them hitherto unimaginable control over trading the energy generated by their own solar and battery systems. DE’s proprietary predictive algorithms maximise returns when customers sell their solar energy to the grid. Solar citizens become energy traders.
Anson and Jeff have focused on software development to create DE’s Virtual Power Plant (VPP) system, which is now compatible with 75% of Australia’s leading solar inverter and battery systems. The tech will soon expand to include EV charging technologies. The software and AI-driven technologies versus the hardware bias of competitors mean that DE is inherently more flexible, enabling consumers across a wide range of existing solar systems to opt in to the trading network.
Starting in Australia, the DE model is designed to scale up to other countries with deregulated energy markets. They see this happening via JV partnerships, software licensing, direct investments and white labelling of their technologies.
DE’s technology is constantly evolving to tackle the myriad challenges of advancing into an era of decarbonised, decentralised and digitalised energy.
Co-founders Anson and Jeff are sharing the fruits of their success with their team via benefits including an employee share scheme and CSR activities are strong across their three companies. They recently engaged Australian cricket captain Pat Cummins to help them inspire a movement to transform it into a carbon-neutral sport.
From software to social causes, Anson and Jeff are creating a culture where people know they are working on something special that is truly going to make the world a better place.