Startup Success: What does our event mean to ChargeLab’s Zak Lefevre?

As part of our Startup Success series, we spoke with ChargeLab’s Zak Lefevre about his experiences at our event.

ChargeLab, founded in 2016, is one of the many exciting startups to have attended. Web Summit event. Ahead of this year’s event, we spoke with co-founder and CEO Zak Lefevre about this year’s event, and about previous experiences at Collision (our former North American event, succeeded by Web Summit Vancouver).

ChargeLab builds software for managing EV charging stations, offering ‘affordable turnkey’ solutions including hardware, software and installation for businesses and governments. The ChargeLab SaaS solution is now available in 30 US states and Canadian provinces.

Here Zak explains more about ChargeLab, explores what Web Summit events mean to founders, and discusses how attendees can get the most out of the event.

Can you tell us a bit about your background, and about ChargeLab?

I studied computer science. I ran a non-tech business for a number of years before founding ChargeLab back in 2016. I was really getting interested in electric vehicles. It sounds obvious today because everybody is driving electric vehicles – everybody knows Tesla – but in 2016 and 2015, when I started looking at this, it was not really obvious that this was going to be a home run.

A lot of people thought Teslas were just luxury products with a very limited market. Charging infrastructure as a business was almost non-existent. But I was convinced early on that electric vehicles were going to dominate gas vehicles one day in terms of the user experience, the efficiency, the cost… And indeed that is starting to happen.

So I took a bet very early on. We were really bootstrapping – heads down, working, no venture funding for three or four years. But we started to raise funding in 2020. We landed a sizeable seed round in 2021 and, since then, have raised US$31 million in equity financing.

In three years we’ve gone from 10 people in a bootstrapped company to a headcount of just about 60.

What was your first experience of Collision?

I moved to Toronto in 2018 from Montreal, right around the time that this conference was happening. We had chosen to set Toronto as the headquarters of ChargeLab before that.

So Collision was just a no-brainer. A big global tech conference happening in our backyard? We had to go check it out. So we applied and attended as an ALPHA startup in 2019, and I pitched there.

What stage of development was ChargeLab at when you first attended one of our events?

Very early-stage. We had maybe raised US$300,000 in angel financing.

I think it’s always good to see who your peers are, but more importantly to see the later-stage companies – the BETA and GROWTH companies – and say, “Hey, that’s where I need to get to. What are those founders doing? How do they present themselves? How do they talk about their product?”.

Then the pandemic came, but we didn’t slow down. We raised our seed round and then our Series A round in that time. So by the time Collision came back as an in-person event in 2022, we had skipped over BETA, and gone straight to GROWTH stage.

It was just great to come back and be in that bigger cohort.

But at the same time, we looked at the next development stages, because a lot of companies die before they reach our stage. And a lot of companies will never raise a Series A; never raise more than US$20 million. In the big picture, we’re still just at the very beginning and we have so much road left to go. Nothing is promised by any means.

Was attending a Web Summit event a useful experience in that early stage of development? Did you make any important connections?

It’s been actually helpful from a recruiting perspective. One of the folks we have manning our booth this year found out about ChargeLab at Collision last year, so we’ve actually done hiring as a direct result of Collision.

From a networking perspective, I would say we have good VC already. They’re connecting us with later-stage partners. So I don’t have a story of coming to Collision and meeting our next stage investor. But what’s great about this conference is that, at any given time, I have an ongoing relationship with 10, 20, 30 VCs and corporate partners – either people who are already on our cap table, or prospective people.

Collision is a great experience, where I can be in Toronto where we are based, and meet up with over half of the people we’re actively working with. That’s been really valuable – not because I never would have met this or that VC, but the fact that I can connect in person with so many people within a 48- to 72-hour period.

I remember in 2019, I had some one-on-one meetings with investors. They didn’t end up investing, but there was very helpful advice that they gave me when we were at a very early stage, and they helped to put things in perspective and that was really helpful.

Are you returning to Collision this year? What are your plans for the event?

Yeah, we’re coming back. It’s our second year as a GROWTH startup. It’s the same routine for me, with a couple of investors and potential partners and peers, but also just trying to showcase ChargeLab as a growing company in Toronto.

All the local people know that we’re here and that we’re an active part of this community, and we’re looking for the best developers, product managers and others.

I think there’s really an expectation from startup-oriented people in Toronto that if you’re a growing company here, you’re going to have a booth at Collision.

Do you have any advice to other founders for how to make the most of a Web Summit event? What’s your hack?

Get there early and leave late. Go to all those social events. Go to Collision After Hours. It’s just one week, you know? You can put off other things. I think in anything startup related, the way to stand out is to hustle more than your peers.

Talk to the people you think you’re not allowed to talk to. But also be thoughtful; have a point of view – a unique perspective – and bring value to the other person. I think the people I’m most likely to engage with now as a later-stage, growth-oriented founder are the people who bring me immediate value and needs.

Web Summit is coming to Vancouver in 2025. Don’t miss out.

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