The problem The founders were fighting against time, as the European energy sector is highly competitive. They had the business plan and the initial capital to start the project but they didn’t have the technical team to start building it. To beat the clock, they had to work with a ready-made tech team. And Obecto and Zingasoft provided just that. 4hundred is Germany’s first digital-first energy provider and supplies renewable power to around 11 000 customers. Its business model is digital-first and based on honesty and transparency. Customers pay a monthly fee of 8 EUR that’s added to a community account that can be accessed anytime via their app. The account balance decreases with energy consumption. The customer receives bonus credit for each day in which there is a surplus of money in the account – meaning that 4hundred actually tries to motivate people to spend less energy to the benefit of all. The focus of the team was to build a service that’s easy to understand by domestic consumers – a stark difference from any electricity or gas bill we’ve seen before! And they wanted to match that with an effortless digital experience. That’s where our part comes in. The solution We were hired to develop the full MVP of 4hundred. The process took 9 months and helped the company push a product out quickly and efficiently without sacrificing quality. The solution we developed had to cover a few key requirements. First, as a utility service, it had to be accessible and understandable by a large and diverse group of customers. Additionally, the solution had to be integrated with a long list of third party systems, based on different technologies. These included payment providers, price comparison systems, contract transfer registries, and community energy systems. The results With the support of Obecto and Zingasoft, 4hundred launched its MVP in line with the goal they had set – it took just 9 months. Now, more than 11 000 end users are 4hundred customers, showing that honesty and transparency are key in the utilities sector. We mentioned earlier that 4hundred were not just looking for an external provider – they needed a full tech team that they could rely on. In a sense, this means that the results for the client went well beyond the standard “usage and efficiency” metrics for a software solution. Our technical team provided guidance and served as a full-scale partner, even attending business conferences in Germany with the 4hundred founders to answer technical questions from investors and accelerators. In this sense, the founders really did manage to hire a team, an extension to their core crew.