28-year-old fintech millionaire: “I had a duty to go into energy”

If anyone is associated with Revolut, apart from founder Nik Storonsky, it is Alan Chang, the Imperial College physics graduate who was one of the bank’s first employees. Chang joined Revolut in 2015, aged just 21, and rose to become chief revenue officer. He embodied Revolut’s hard-driving culture and was sometimes the subject of complaints about aggressive interviews on online forums. It seemed inconceivable that he would ever leave, especially before an IPO. Until he did.

Chang left Revolut in March amid reports that he was preparing to launch a crypto platform. However, his LinkedIn profile indicates that his notice period at Revolut only ended this month, and now that he has been released from his former employer, it has become clear that Chang has not entered crypto after all. Nor has he launched another fintech. Together with Charles Orr, another Revolut employee, he has founded an energy company, Tesseract, which plans to build renewable energy resources and sell the energy they generate back to consumers. In turn, consumers will be able to invest in virtual solar panels and wind turbines via an app. Chang and Orr have already raised $78 million in an initial round of funding.

Chang says his career change was not motivated by money and that he thinks “beyond” that. “I think I had a duty to do this,” he says of the transition to the energy industry. “There’s a lack of talent in energy. The average age is maybe in the 50s and there’s not a lot of young talent. It’s a very problematic industry and it has a very big impact on the world.”

As a physics student, Chang said earlier this year that he learned “first principles thinking” and that this thinking underpinned the development of Revolut. “Essentially, you solve a problem [from first principles] instead of reasoning from analogy,” Chang said. By doing that, you can come up with new solutions to problems that the incumbents haven’t thought of. At Revolut, those solutions applied to payments. At Tesseract, they applied to energy.

Chang points out that he knew nothing about fintech before joining Revolut as its fifth employee eight years ago, and that entering energy now is no different. Since leaving Revolut, he has immersed himself in learning about his new sector. “My passion is solving problems,” says Chang. “There are systemic problems in the energy market that were catalyzed by the war in Ukraine. I don’t think the fintech sector will miss me; the energy industry can benefit much more from me.”

Chang says he’s not the only young problem solver who feels this way. “I know there are a lot of investment banking and private equity people moving into energy. They can see that there is a lot of money to be made in the sector.”

Still, he says too many people approach energy with a traditional mindset. The sector relies on long-term power purchase agreements between energy buyers and sellers, who agree to buy or sell energy generated by a renewable asset over a period of 10 or 20 years. Tesseract disrupts this by owning its own generation assets and selling directly to customers. The fledgling company’s website suggests it relishes the potential to disrupt energy companies in the process: “Big energy companies are powerful. They owe us nothing. They watch us. They punish us for our mistakes. They ignore our values. They have more money, more people, more connections. Technology is our weapon. Big energy can be beaten. We are underdogs. We keep learning…,” the website says, in a diatribe reminiscent of Revolut.

Tesseract is hiring. It already has 25 people, and in addition to Chang and Orr, there are a handful of others who have come from Revolut. Mostly, though, Chang says he needs energy rather than fintech experience. Three of the six positions now advertised are for engineers who understand the energy grid; you can’t usually find these people in finance.

At Revolut, Chang and the other early employees were known for their commitment to working as long as it took to get the job done. A similar culture exists on the Tesseract. “I probably work 70-80 hours a week, and if I’m not working, I’m thinking about working,” says Chang. “The whole team is very focused on execution and works very hard. We’re making it very clear before anyone considers joining that we’re trying to build a generational company that will change the industry forever – you can’t do that without hard work.”

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