Epic Charging has seen stratospheric growth in the US, with more Level 2 ports utilizing our charge point management system (CPMS) since the beginning of 2024 than Wevo, Autel, SWTCH, PowerFlex or Tesla. The combination of efficient execution and smart use of capital has been instrumental to this success, so we figured who better to sit down with for insights into these interdependent processes than company COO/CFO Ian Vishnevsky. He has held key finance and operational roles at companies ranging from pre-seed start-ups to Fortune 500 behemoths, and he previously co-founded the largest privately owned charge point operator on the West Coast.
From an operations standpoint, what do you see as the biggest challenges in scaling an EV charging software platform globally, and how is Epic Charging addressing them?
Well, scaling anything is always super hard. One of the challenges when you're scaling things is your available resources. Do you need to bring additional resources on board quickly to ensure that you can scale properly? And do you have a team in place that is able to take on the necessary workload? Epic has always been super lean. But the team that we have is also able to do a lot. With the advent of artificial intelligence, and specifically AI-based tools, exponentially increasing productivity with our existing team becomes very real. That's what’s happening right now. We do use AWS. So from that standpoint, we're well-positioned because part of the benefits of a SaaS platform like AWS is scaling quickly since the infrastructure is already there.
As both COO and CFO, you sit at the intersection of execution and financial performance. How do you balance rapid growth with operational efficiency and capital discipline?
Having firsthand visibility into both roles gives me an advantage because they are so interlaced. I'm always connecting the dots, like where the money is flowing and why. When you work for, say, large Fortune 500 organizations, sometimes getting dots connected is challenging because the roles are so separated. Finance is in its own little world and operations is in its own little world. But being both CFO and COO, I'm seeing exactly what I need to drive the company, the way I need to drive it and how that’s affecting the bottom line. And again, I have a lot of tools at my disposal that automate processes like – just on a purely transactional level – the CRM system that we use or our accounting and financial system. On the management level, I go back to having a nimble team and the way the left and right hands constantly know what each other are doing; the left being finance and the right being operations.
Epic Charging has grown rapidly across fleets, multifamily and large commercial accounts. What needs to be in place operationally to support deployments at that scale without compromising reliability?
Fail fast, fix it fast. Look at what you need to change to be better and then do it. We've gone through that. When we went from 1,000 chargers to over 4,000, we had to do a lot of optimization work on the system because not everything was functioning as expected. We were seeing what was working and what wasn’t. And so going through these iterations, we were sort of like, okay, there are always going to be issues, but we know we can handle them, and it just makes us better. Plus, we're at a point where a lot of the difficult work in deploying at scale is behind us. I also think we’re fortunate to have a small but very capable team with a lot of combined experience on both the software development and operational sides of things – between the CEO, CFO, CTO and others – and we don’t mind rolling up our sleeves.
From a financial strategy perspective, what business models or revenue streams do you believe will define the next phase of growth for EV charging software companies?
Well, I don’t know about other companies, but I can speak to Epic. What I like best is our recurring revenue model. We make our money by selling licenses and also by selling electrons, but most of that revenue is recurring. What's good about recurring revenue is that it’s like an annuity; it's scheduled, consistent, predictable and long-term. And typically, investors like the predictability and longevity of it. So I appreciate what we're doing and how we're doing it, and I think the recurring revenue model is going to be the model for the future.
As a co-founder, how has your vision for Epic Charging evolved since the early days, particularly in how you think about long-term value creation?
“Value creation” kind of hits the nail on the head. Just taking a step back, I think Epic is successful because we offer the best value.
You have to pair software with boots on the ground when you're doing a migration or troubleshooting. You have to have a really good customer support system that quickly responds to customer needs, too. So you have to build that value at the intersection of software, service and support. And if we continue to execute on these three pillars, we’ll remain a leader in the marketplace. I don't think you can succeed only by doing software really well, at least when it comes to the EV charging segment. There are some companies out there that do that, but I don't think it's enough. It's not a complete solution. You have to have the service and support pieces.
Any final thoughts you wanted to share?
In the past, I felt like we had a lot to prove. Actually, I still feel that way. But looking back and seeing what we've accomplished, I also feel like we're sort of this diamond in the rough. I'm very proud of the work we’ve done to get us to this point, and while all that we are really capable of might be hard to see from the outside looking in, the results are clearly speaking for themselves.
Click here to learn more about the Epic Charging team and the experience they bring to the world of sustainable transportation solutions.
Click here to learn more about the Epic Charging team and the experience they bring to the world of sustainable transportation solutions.