Driving Change: Electro Dad's EV Mission for a Greener Europe

Keith Zakheim 0:03

Welcome to the Age of Adoption podcast. I am your host, Keith Zakheim. Today, as we do with every podcast, we're going to ask our guest one question and one question only. What is your age of climate adoption story? A little bit about the age of adoption. We live in an era where all corporations and enterprises must rapidly adopt climate and sustainability solutions, regardless of industry. Companies must must transform their businesses to become more climate

Keith Zakheim 0:33

sensitive and sustainable. My day job is CEO of the marketing and public relations firm Antenna Group. And from that vantage point, I've experienced this transition from an age of innovation, an era in which technologists, entrepreneurs and investors focus on innovating climate and sustainable solutions, to this age of adoption which characterizes the world today. So if you accept the age of Adoption hypothesis, then there's really only

Keith Zakheim 1:02

one salient question to be asked. What is your Age of Adoption story? My guest on today's episode of the Age of Adoption podcast is a YouTube influencer. We don't get many of those on this podcast. And venture capitalist who is on a mission to convert 1 million people in the Czech Republic and Slovakia into electric vehicle owners and drivers. Jan Stennick is managing

Keith Zakheim 1:32

General Partner at Purple Ventures, a fund that works with and develops pre seed and seed stage companies deploying software solutions aimed at doing good. Today on the Age of Adoption podcast, Jan makes history as the first Czech.

Keith Zakheim 1:46

To answer the question, what is your.

Keith Zakheim 1:48

Age of adoption story? Back with Jan in the time it took me to discover that the blank stares I received in Prague were due to my thanking everyone using the word merci.

Keith Zakheim 2:00

Jan, welcome to the Age of Adoption podcast.

Jan Stanek 2:03

Nice to be here.

Keith Zakheim 2:04

Jan, you're joining us from Prague, correct?

Jan Stanek 2:06

Correct.

Keith Zakheim 2:07

Well, that is a first for the Age of Adoption podcast. We've had global guests in the past, but nobody from probably the most beautiful city in Europe. I wish we had a background behind you of Prague, but I. I urge our listeners to visit Prague or at least go online and see what a beautiful city it is. Jan, you and I met probably a month or so ago in Prague at a dinner that Antenna Group hosted and it was great to meet you then. And I was struck at the dinner by a number of things that both you said and were said about you specifically.

Keith Zakheim 2:37

I know that you're on a mission to get a million people from the Czech Republic and Slovakia to begin to drive and own electric vehicles. So I'd love to hear about that. And you are an influencer as well when it comes to climate and sustainability in Czech Republic and in Slovakia. So we feel really Honored to have you on the podcast and look forward to getting into it. We'd like to start first of all with you sharing your professional journey, your career background. So if you don't mind sharing that with us and then we'll get into the question

Keith Zakheim 3:07

of the day.

Jan Stanek 3:08

So I, I turned from a big four into technology world and a fintech world. And then at a certain point in my career, after I spent two and a half years in China with tech company, I built my own company, I co founded a company in e commerce sector and then I was CFO in the company which actually bought the startup I built. And then for the past, this is my year eight when I'm within a smaller fintech group growing global from

Jan Stanek 3:38

Czech Republic and we started five years ago a venture fund. So we are actually reinvesting our own profit into investing mostly within Europe into technology startups in very early stage who we call that they are purpose driven, that the founders go and do something meaningful in the world and at the same time making it profitable and making it meaningful for the, for the investors as well. So after first 15 million euros of our own money

Jan Stanek 4:08

investing into 34 startups and also VC funds, other VC funds, we started a second fund, Luxembourg structure, where we have the ambition to invest into 50 to 60 tech startups in Europe, across Europe over the next four years. And my other role is that because I lived in China for two and a half years with my family, I have three kids, I thought when I saw the pollution and being a guy who works on a notebook and drives a car and flies from time to time,

Jan Stanek 4:38

what is it that I can do differently? That I can look at my kids into the eye before I die, right. So it struck me when we got photovoltaics on our roof, on our house. And then that was six and a half years ago. And then we bought our first ev. At the time it was Nissan Leaf. And I loved the idea. I just felt in love with the idea. There's so much energy which can actually drive you around and enough energy for the house. So I started six years ago a YouTube channel

Jan Stanek 5:08

called Electrodad. I'm the dad of the three kids, right? And so I want to inspire a million people, Czechs and Slovaks, to go clean energy and electric. And so I have like 6 million views on that video content this year.

Keith Zakheim 5:22

Fantastic. And what's your academic background? So I guess what I hear from you is you were initially inspired by your experience in China. Was your academic background more on finance?

Jan Stanek 5:33

It's combination of electric Engineering, mechanical engineering and economics.

Keith Zakheim 5:39

Okay, fantastic. Well, Jan, we're ready to ask the question. I think that sometimes puts fear in the hearts of guests, but always elicits a great conversation. What is your age of adoption story?

Jan Stanek 5:52

We find it super meaningful to investing into the European technology innovation. I come from a city called brno, close to Prague, which after the revolution where the regime changed the all the heavy industries or the traditional industries went bankrupt. And by the time when I was actually finishing my university, that was really sleepy city which didn't know what to do with itself. And now by now we have

Jan Stanek 6:21

tens of thousands of people who are super well paid because they work in innovation and they manufacture software on a global level. And it tremendously brought wealth into the region. And so we believe that by investing that Europe desperately needs innovation and investment into the innovation and that private money are the best allocator of the money into the technology innovation. So that's on the purple venture side

Jan Stanek 6:51

and on that electrodet side is that I'm convinced that number one, we will have cleaner air and therefore we will be healthier if we drive electric vehicles around. Because in this part of the world, transportation is the biggest polluter and the most energy households are actually consuming is for transportation. It's more than what we have for gas heating our houses.

Keith Zakheim 7:16

So in this March to a million EVs, what do you think are the biggest inhibitors of growth? So what's stopping the growth in the way that you'd like to see it? And related to that, are there government subsidies in Czech Republic or Slovakia? Tax breaks, things that will get people to buy EVs and use EVs?

Jan Stanek 7:37

The biggest inhibitors. But the biggest roadblocks is two of them. There is a number of prejudices that people believe that, you know, they can set fire and it takes ages to charge and that the batteries end up in the landfill. Right. But that's okay, we can work with that. The biggest obstacles are people don't have their personal experience with an electric vehicle. And second, we need price parity that those vehicles need to cost same money

Jan Stanek 8:07

or less than IC cars. And the magic will happen itself. And in this country we don't really provide subsidies. There was never been subsidies for normal people. There were some subsidies for companies. And Slovakia and Czech Republic are among the world's most per capita car producing countries. So there's a lot of positive sentiment towards the IC cars because it was bringing wealth into the country

Jan Stanek 8:37

and therefore a lot of pushback against the EVs because they say, okay, it's going to kill our industry. Right. Because those Chinese or whoever are going to make that. And it's true that Europe is. We were making world class IC cars like the, you know, Skoda.

Keith Zakheim 8:53

Right, Skoda.

Jan Stanek 8:54

Skoda, Skoda. But also, you know, massive supply chain for BMW, Mercedes, you know, Audi, and.

Keith Zakheim 9:01

Also manufacturing the supply chain in Czech Republic.

Jan Stanek 9:03

Yeah, or Slovakia. Or Slovakia. Right. So, and these guys, the European automotive is losing in the speed, they're losing the speed of innovation towards Chinese when it comes to adoption of electric vehicles. We used to make photovoltaic panels in Europe. Right. Ten years ago. Right. There's no way we can do that when it comes to renewables in Europe anymore. And we're also afraid that it's going to similar things will happen. On the electric vehicle revolution, we had.

Keith Zakheim 9:32

The same phenomenon over the years. Right. So what we call the big three, the big three automotive companies in Detroit, they had no incentives to really innovate when it came to electric vehicles because they'd be cannibalizing their own business, similar to what you're doing talking about in Europe. And what it took, of course, was Tesla to come in. And the challenge, of course, with a new car company is the only way to make the economics work is the first vehicle is always going to be very expensive because you can't get to scale until you start getting some cash flow and start getting customers.

Keith Zakheim 10:02

Now in the US we have gotten to price parity, certainly with the Tesla. There's a $30,000 model of Tesla. And in fact, I was reading recently that the average car price for internal combustion engine cars has gone up significantly. That's also creating now less of a Delta between EVs and ICE cars. And when you, I guess, layer in government subsidies as well, that's made it incredibly competitive. As somebody who drives, we have two different electric vehicles.

Keith Zakheim 10:32

I think that anybody. And you're right, if you don't have the experience, you don't get it. When you drive an electric vehicle, it is a qualitatively different experience, not to mention the impact on environment, which I know we all think is important. Anyway, Jan, appreciate the time. We really appreciate your insights and of course, your leadership in hopefully transforming the automotive industry in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. I look forward to seeing you again on my next trip to Prague. And if you come into New York, please let us know. We'd love to host you.

Jan Stanek 10:59

Thank you for having me.

Keith Zakheim 11:02

The Age of Adoption podcast is where CEOs, investors, entrepreneurs and policymakers share their climate and sustainability business transformation stories. You can find Age of Adoption Podcast episodes on your favorite podcast apps, including itunes and Spotify. The Age of Adoption Podcast is brought to you by Antenna Group. If you have a great Age of Adoption story and want to share it with the world, then Antenna Group is the integrated marketing and public relations

Keith Zakheim 11:31

agency for you. We partner with with companies big and small, from Growth Stage to Fortune 100, to tell their climate and sustainability stories to key audiences and stakeholders, helping companies build brands and sales funnels. Antenna group is the OG of climate and sustainability PR, having worked in the space since 2005. If you're interested in learning more about Antenna Group, please visit our website at www.antennagroup.com. shoot us an email at antenngroup.com or ping us on LinkedIn.