Labrador's Jane Lucy is on a mission to transform your energy bills

Jane Lucy is transforming the energy sector one dog-inspired product at a time.

As the founder of Labrador, a smart energy switching start-up, which officially launched its services earlier this year, Australian-born Lucy, is ready to take on the UK’s energy giants.

With investors including the Daily Mail General Trust and venture capital firm Hambro Perks, Labrador is one of the UK’s most exciting start-ups.

Labrador’s aim is to take all the pain points out of your energy bills management. On average, people spend around two and a half hours sorting out their energy bills, finding the right tariffs and signing up for a new service.

Sure, you could save “up to £491” on your energy bills as some switching services say but less than 20 per cent of us have the time or inclination to sort it out.

“I’m a single parent so if I get an hour to myself on weekends, which is lucky, what am I going to do: watch Netflix or spend an hour on USwitch?,” Lucy tells the Standard. “Netflix is going to win every time but that shouldn’t be the price I pay for my energy.”

This is why Labrador is so useful. If you have a smart meter installed in your home or want one, the company’s Retriever device analyses the household’s energy usage. Once Labrador has an idea of how you use energy, it can determine if there are better, alternative tariffs out there.

Thanks to the company’s automatic switching service, Labrador can switch you automatically, and you receive a notification to cancel the switch, or you can get an alert in which case you authorise the change.

This means that instead of spending those two and half hours on an energy comparison site, inputting all your energy data, Labrador already has the information to hand to find the best possible price for you. And, it's all free to use.

But don’t worry, the platform won’t be switching your energy supplier every single day. For one thing, the industry couldn’t handle it and for another some providers come with exit fees, which Labrador takes into account. “We’re looking for a saving of at least £80 excluding exit fees, but at some stage, we intend to let the customer choose what level they set that saving at,” explains Lucy.

Energy switching is a hot topic right now with new players like Flipper coming on to the scene alongside Labrador. Whilst this is a response to energy efficiency, Lucy also believes it’s about fixing a broken market.

“Energy is pretty much in the press every week with stories about people getting ripped off. It’s confusing and it lacks transparency,” she says. “And now there’s this idea of using technology to empower customers to change the market.”

Labrador is taking advantage of other parts of the tech revolution to make it easy for consumers to use. It’s planning to launch a chatbot on Facebook Messenger rather than building its own app, as well as integration with Amazon Alexa, in order to make Labrador as accessible as possible.

“I don’t expect to draw somebody out of the technology environment they’re already in to download my bespoke piece of tech and log in behind a Labrador-only login and password. You should be able to interact in Messenger, SMS, WhatsApp, whatever makes sense for the customer,” she says.

“We have to recognise what people’s lifestyles look like and try and fit with that, rather than the other around.”

Despite plans for Alexa integration, Lucy isn’t using the smart speaker herself. “I do have an Alexa but I haven’t got round to connecting her yet,” she says.

Running a start-up isn’t easy though. Labrador has been in the works for a few years, after Lucy left a career in TV to start the company. It can be difficult to remain patient during the launch process.

“As a start-up founder you definitely have highs and lows. I’ve always been so relieved to actually think that I had a good idea because I don’t think you can get through the ups and downs unless you do.”

Yet, she sees the benefits of working in tech because of the growing opportunities available.

“The job I do today didn’t exist when I was at school, the world has changed so much. I’ve got a seven-year-old son whose mind is just blown that I grew up without the internet,” she says.

Instead of focusing on a particular career path, she thinks it’s important for people to learn how to be adaptive, agile and open to new experiences. “So that when these technologies open up, people are skilled enough to be able to know what to do with the opportunities.”

And, where did the name Labrador come from? “Labrador is about this idea of loyalty, being a best friend, and looking after the customer.

“As well, our device is called Retriever. There are plenty of pun opportunities with Labrador,” she adds.