An EIS investment opportunity to support net-zero by reducing domestic CO2 emissions.

Did you know that our homes contribute to 25-30% of CO2 emissions? Have you spent hours on the web searching how to make your home greener but ended up closing 15+ tabs after failing to find any useful information about solutions for your property and the associated costs? Well, founders Llewellyn Kinch and Thomas Rogers developed MakeMyHouseGreen to streamline your green home transition. After launching Switchd - the successful automated energy switching service - they wanted to provide an additional platform that helps accelerate uptake in green home solutions. MakeMyHouseGreen turns complex, data-led modelling of green technology suggestions for your home into simple, tailored solutions. The user is given price comparisons for the tech suggestions, and recommended pre-vetted, trustworthy installers to make your installation journey easy and reliable. As MakeMyHouseGreen is in the midst of its latest fundraising campaign, Llewellyn and Thomas tell us what it’s been like managing the company during the pandemic and the impact it has had to date.

Llewellyn Kinch (L) and Thomas Rogers (R)

Describe your startup in two sentences

We use data and complex modelling to make a frustrating and confusing energy market simple for households, so they can get the right energy choice for them. This started with automated energy switching and now includes making homes truly green with solar panels, heat pumps and other green solutions through our MakeMyHouseGreen platform.

What gave you the inspiration?

Tom had seen the Age UK scandal, where they were recommending an expensive energy deal because they got commission. Given our background in data and operations, we knew it should be possible to ensure anyone could always be on the best energy deal. So, we built Switchd auto-switching to solve that.

Through speaking to our members and getting deeper into the energy market, we’ve seen that people want to make their homes green but are struggling even more with that than switching. One quote was “If I want to find the right solution for me, I need to take a week off work and put 30+ hours into it!”. This more complicated energy market needs a new solution, so we’ve built the MakeMyHouseGreen platform to solve this need and help homeowners go truly green.

How did you meet?

We both started working at Newton Europe in the same induction. We completed the intense 6 weeks training together and immediately got on really well. Over the next few years, we worked together on multiple projects and became good friends as well as working well together.

What has been your greatest success to date? And your greatest challenge?

Our biggest challenge has been trying to grow the Switchd member base faster, we’ve worked hard and managed to get partnerships working well but it’s hard to scale it as rapidly as we’d like. Whereas, for MakeMyHouseGreen, we already have massive scale potential with Google Adwords, which we know works well. Our biggest success is either the partnership and investment from Nationwide or building the complex, holistic modelling behind the MakeMyHouseGreen platform and modelling a solar system to 96% accuracy!

What kind of impact is your business having and how do you measure it?

There are a couple of ways that we have a positive impact. The key thing with MakeMyHouseGreen is the huge impact we can have in reducing emissions by making homes greener. Our homes are one of the biggest areas of emissions for the UK, so a major reduction is key to hitting net neutral targets! The accuracy of our modelling, plus smart meter measurements, mean that we can pull the data to accurately track that impact.

We also save huge amounts of money for UK households - over £4m so far! Again, we can accurately track this as we know the exact savings of each member.

How has Covid affected your business?

We’ve been lucky to have limited impact and the key change has been moving to working from home. The culture we’d built meant the team adapted incredibly well, so it’s gone pretty smoothly. We’re now back in the office together on Fridays, which is great and everyone enjoys seeing each other and collaborating more easily.

When you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up?