Heather Hochrein
Founder and CEO of EVmatch
“I see this opportunity to reduce our energy consumption, transition to clean energy and the urgency of that for environmental reasons, particularly around climate change.”
Heather’s interest in clean energy and climate change, matched with an innate fascination at starting new things, led her to launch her first company.
As a graduate student at UCSB, Heather and a small team spent over a year researching the efficiency of EVs, the barriers to adoption, and interviewed current and prospective EV drivers. After understanding the obstacles to purchase an EV, Heather founded EVMatch, a peer to peer network for electric vehicle charging. Through their web and mobile applications, people can rent out their privately owned charging stations to other drivers. Heather and her team are making EV’s a viable option to a large population that previously wouldn’t have been able to seriously consider purchasing an EV, expanding access to clean energy.
Aside from being an incredible entrepreneur, she has a passion for outdoor adventure and pushing herself to the extremes. Heather’s love for nature was sparked at a young age as she grew up surrounded by the Sierra Nevada’s where her father worked as a forester. Keep reading as Heather shares what she’s learned from starting a business and what keeps her going outside of work.
Q: What inspired EVmatch?
A: “Right now a lot of people don’t buy an electric vehicle because they don’t have adequate charging resources, especially people who live in apartments or park on the street. What we saw in the research is that people who own a home are way more likely to buy an electric vehicle. They actually have control over their space and they could install a charging station. It’s a lot harder for renters to do that. If we are going to leave out this population from this clean technology, that’s a big missed opportunity and we’re not going to meet our climate goals.
EV drivers are installing charging stations at their homes, paying quite a bit, about 1,000 per install, and then those chargers sit unused most of the time. I’ve heard from a lot of our hosts that they only charge once or twice a week, so there are so many hours of the day that that charger is not being used. So the idea is to bring all of this existing privately owned charging infrastructure into public use to make it more accessible for the average person to own an electric vehicle.”
Q: Have you always had aspirations to be an entrepreneur?
A: “I get this question a lot and I always say no, I did not intend to start a business. But when I look back at my experiences and my work experience, I really like starting new things. Whether it’s starting a new program or project or building something really small into something that’s bigger, that’s exciting to me.
I’ve never been drawn to these really big existing corporations. I always want to work on something that’s kind of new and hasn’t been proven yet, and work to develop that further.”
“It’s more exciting to take the risks of building something that might not work. It might fail. That comes with uncertainty and anxiety but at the same time it comes with excitement, adventure, and constant learning.”
Q: What has been your biggest learning experience as an entrepreneur?
A: You have to learn new things. What I found is that when you have a really small team, you have no choice. As the founder and CEO of EV match, I’ve learned all sorts of things about fundraising, finance, marketing, legal, and all the things that go into starting an early stage business. Things I never thought I could do. And I also had to become an expert in the EV space.
Q: Where do you see the electric car industry heading in the next 5-10 years?
A: “I think it’s going to become close to mainstream. The reason for that is the battery technology is improving and the cost of batteries is dramatically coming down. So you’re going to see these long-range electric vehicles that are affordable and cost competitive to internal combustion engine vehicles. And there’s no reason not to buy an electric vehicle. They have fewer moving parts, which means they have fewer maintenance issues, the fuel is cheaper, and the driving experience is actually better.”
“When I go to events, a lot of people say I would love to own an EV but I live in an apartment. I want to have our network to be big enough so I can say hey look this is an option and could be your primary source of charging.”
Q: What do you love about your job?
A: “I love that we’re building our team. I really enjoy bringing new people on who are really excited about our mission and what we’re building and learning from them and hearing new ideas. There’s so much more creativity when you have a group of people working to solve a problem so when we grow our team and really find excellent people who are mission-driven, that’s just really exciting to me.”
Q: What is the best advice you’ve received?
A: “Don’t underestimate yourself. I think a lot of time, people hold themselves back because they don’t think they can do something. I’ve had that imposter syndrome where you feel like you don’t belong or you shouldn’t be trying to do what you’re doing and I think really believing you can achieve much bigger things is really important to keep pushing yourself towards that goal.”
Q: What do you like to do once your work is finished?
A: “I like to ski. I used to be a competitive ski racer in high school and college. I like to travel and go skiing and in the winter I will typically go to Tahoe, Utah, Colorado, or New Mexico.”
Q: Tell me about something adventurous you’ve done.
A: “I rafted the Grand Canyon last summer. It was a week-long rafting trip on the Colorado River, then we hiked up from the canyon floor all the way up to the rim. I have also tried to summit a 19,000ft volcano in Ecuador which requires mountaineering and climbing on the glacier with crampons. I got really bad altitude sickness at 17,000ft and had to go back.”
Q: If you had 5 minutes to teach someone something new, what would you teach?
A: “I really enjoy backpacking so probably how to set up a tent and pack a backpack. Or would teach them how to tune a pair of skis.”
Q: What’s on your bucket list?
A: “Skiing in Japan and Alaska”
