Barrett Hansen - Building the System for Cash Flows in Water

One of the things that is most easily overlooked in water is just how big it is. And we mean Lake Michigan and the Nile and the Amazon basin and all the big things, but cash flow is just as big, if not bigger than actual flows. And all that cash needs to be managed. As you will hear, $500 billion a year flows through US utilities of all stripes alone, coming from customers, governments, NGOs and other sources into those utilities, then out to employees, service providers, utilities, chemical suppliers, consultants, all day, every day. And that half trillion dollars is handled through software that is problematic. Old, expensive, inflexible, poorly designed, especially in under-resourced utilities.

Nobody has successfully built the software to help them manage these flows as efficiently as possible. Nobody until Barrett Hansen and the team at Current arrived to build a platform to solve one of the more obvious and vital workflows in utility management, aiming squarely at those under resourced utilities. Now live with 60 customers, Current is up there with the fastest growing companies we have backed and Barrett is a very smart, very humble guy. I have a soft spot for people who went to graduate school in Cambridge - Allston actually.

Please enjoy my conversation with Barrett Hansen.

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For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-fundamental-molecule/id1714287205

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Barrett Hansen is the Co-Founder and CEO of Current, a cloud-native utility billing and payments platform purpose-built for small to mid-sized water utilities. An innovative problem solver with a decade of experience in tech and analytics, he combines technical strengths in data analysis, predictive modeling, and visualization with operational expertise and a strategic mindset. Previously, Barrett delivered data-driven solutions in Silicon Valley across fintech, B2B SaaS, and sales operations. He holds an MBA from Harvard Business School.

00:00 - Introduction

02:20 - Utility SaaS Opportunity in Water Industry

03:48 - Why Utility Billing Is Still Manual

06:43 - Finding Startup Ideas in Boring Industries

09:52 - How to Start a Vertical SaaS Business

13:31 - How to Get Your First Customers

17:09 - Pain vs Buying Triggers in B2B Sales

18:52 - Cold Calling Strategy That Actually Works

21:01 - How to Build a Winning SaaS MVP

25:31 - Founder Led Sales for Early Startups

27:37 - SaaS Pricing Strategy for Utilities

29:51 - Customer Onboarding and Retention Strategy

34:29 - How to Build Trust in B2B SaaS

37:04 - Expanding Into Fintech and Payments

40:34 - Using Data Analytics for Utility Insights

44:07 - Why Boring Startups Can Win Big

Links:

Burnt Island Ventures: https://www.burntislandventures.com/

Barrett Hansen: https://www.linkedin.com/in/barrett-hansen/

Current Software: https://www.currentsoftware.app/

SM Material

Key Takeaways:

"$500 billion a year goes through the US utility market, whether it's electric, gas or water. I think global will probably be about 10 times that."

"Utilities, unlike other industries, they're not competitive. If anything, they're extremely collaborative. They share information."

"We're data rich, insight poor. And so that's the role that we think we can play is to kind of help connect the dots there."