Our investment in Metris

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24 Jan 2024

By Hope Johnson

Why are we excited about Metris?

In a world where energy usage and cost are increasingly front and centre in people’s mind, Solar energy offers a compelling opportunity to reduce building emissions by up to 70%.
In fact, Solar represents a £22 billion revenue opportunity within the commercial property sector alone.
However, installation is complex, and evaluating a clear return on investment on panels remains a challenge.
These obstacles have stopped commercial property owners from realising their portfolio’s solar potential.
Metris’s end-to-end solution streamlines the commercial property owners’ solar energy transition, guiding them through their solar journeys from initial assessment to installation and ongoing management.
With panels installed, Metris helps property owners monetise their solar investments by selling solar energy back to tenants, through contract digitisation and automation.
With the cost of installation recouped in as little as three years, this unlocks a passive income stream for property owners, and helps them realise carbon emission reductions equivalent to removing 7 million petrol cars from the road.

Who are the pioneers?

Co-founder Natasha Jones is well known to us here at Octopus Ventures, as a former investor on our climate and fintech teams, she worked on investments deals into Kita, Cobee and SideKick. She has long specialised in the intersection between Climate and Fintech, before Octopus she was an algo trader at Credit Suisse and holds a Policy MSc from UCL specialising in Climate Finance for Solar Distribution.

Natasha has joined forces with William Whatley, an engineer and serial founder. William’s expertise in enterprise software and technical team management have made him a sought-after Fractional CTO across multiple sectors and growth stages. He is also an expert in remote monitoring and has built software products for clients including Lime, Airtable and the US Airforce. As CTO of Metris, he’ll be working alongside Natasha in furthering their mission – to align financial incentives and environmental benefits, unlocking revenue for property owners even as they make an outsize contribution to carbon emission reduction.

We’re at the forefront of the decentralised energy revolution, driving the adoption of solar within commercial real estate, and we’re excited to be joined by expert investors to supercharge our mission to turn every building into a power plant
Natasha Jones, Metris co-founder and CEO

Why us?

We co-led Metris’s $2.3 million pre-seed round because we believe the business will fundamentally transform the commercial solar value proposition across Europe. By helping property owners to generate revenue from the panels they install, Metris is creating fresh incentives sure to accelerate solar installation and adoption across the commercial sector.

Metris’s AI-powered platform makes it easy for commercial property owners to assess the return on investment of solar panel installation and supports them as they leverage unused roof space. While solar is rocketing across Europe, the market for commercial property owners is a comparatively ‘white space’. Significant challenges have gone unresolved, with innovation lacking thanks to a misalignment in financial incentives.

We backed Metris because we believe their solution breaks down those barriers, allowing property owners to support climate outcomes in a financially effective way. Together, Natasha and William bring years of combined expertise in climate tech – we’re delighted to lend our support to their future-shaping mission.