Five questions for: George Chalmers, CEO of Migrate

What does your company do?

Migrate saves households money on energy bills without homeowners havingto lift a finger.Our technology automatically switches energy providers for our users every year for free ensuring they are always on the cheapest deals. The average household could save over £300 by switching energy providers every year, but too few people get around to doing it and the process can be a bit of a hassle. That's where we come in.

What's been your greatest achievement?

Our greatest achievement so farhas been getting our business up and running and signing up our first genuine (non-friends and family) customers. The business suddenly started feeling real and getting great feedback from those early customers felt like sucha big deal for us. That's when Migrate stopped feeling like a project and started feeling like areal business.

What has been your biggest challenge?

Moving into a whole new industry, in this case energy, was a big challenge. We started off by being focused on what we were doing,our technology, our process and our product.We were then suddenly confronted with having to learn all the nuances of the energy industry, from tariffs to suppliers' practices and how a simple product on paper becomes much more complicated in reality. We're continuingto learn.

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What are your plans for hitting your targets?

We've been diligently testing various channels for acquiring customers in our first few months, and we're having some really promising results. Specifically, we're keen to look at ways to educate a wider demographic about Migrate. The aim is to move beyond those who are already engaged and searching for energy-switching. We're looking at some partnerships to help us grow into areas that are harder to reach. In addition, We are launching our refer-a-friend programme, which will allow our users to earn cash rewards for getting friends and family signed up and saving money with us.

What's the one piece of advice you'd give fellow entrepreneurs?

Get yourself some good advisers and mentors. Starting and then growing a business is far more complicated thanI would have imagined, and having people around you who have been there and done itis invaluable.