Building a world-class product, no matter the industry, requires not only a talented and committed team but also successful and long-lasting partnerships. It surely takes a village to build a successful product. We at instagrid understood the importance of successful partnerships from early on and paid great attention and resources to them. Without our hardworking team, competent investors, and mutually beneficial partnerships, we wouldn’t be on the verge of being ready to release our first portable battery system. It’s not only people in the company who make it happen – but it’s also the people around the company.
Although different partnerships are vital for a company, unsuccessful ones can do more harm than good. During the past couple of years, we have understood three vital points that need to be met in order to build great partnerships.
Required: a match in quality standards
At instagrid, we really care about making extremely robust solutions. We are not ready to cut back on performance and quality – and therefore, neither should our partners.
This is one of the most important reasons why we decided to work with Nexperia in building our product. There are about 100 MOSFETs in each of our battery systems, which makes them a crucial component for a high-performing product. Nexperia LFPAK MOSFETs have superior reliability in harsh environments, which is exactly what we needed for the instagrid portable battery system, which needs to be entirely waterproof and work perfectly in temperatures from -20 to 60.
Equivalent working practices help in finding common ground
As a startup, our style of working and technology development is rapid and agile. When we build partnerships with companies, who complete our company culture and working styles, we don’t need to transform our processes or approach to be able to work seamlessly together.
We started working with Nexperia when instagrid was only a two-person startup, but from the very beginning, we noticed, that we were able to work with them on eye-level and we were treated as equal partners. Our working styles and processes matched, which made it easy to discuss all problems and ideas with the Nexperia team.
“Nexperia is continually looking for rising star companies in emerging applications to see how we can help, especially in applications around battery power and motor control. Software defined batteries and swarm optimization are clearly novel technologies that have wide application. So, instagrid was a good fit technologically, but also culturally. Sebastian and Andreas had a clear idea of what they needed and of the market potential – so it was easy for Nexperia to get on board.” – Chris Boyce, Marketing & Product Group Director for Nexperia MOSFETs
Focus on evolving and growing together
The beauty and power that relies on partnerships, comes greatly from the longevity, which benefits, of course, both entities. Building long-lasting partnerships have helped us at instagrid to build long-term visions and action plans around them.
The beneficial partnership we had with Nexperia in the beginning, hasn’t disappeared as we have grown as a company. Today, we are preparing for our mass production – whereas when we started working with Nexperia we didn’t even have a working product ready yet. And whereas in the beginning, we were only a two-person startup, today we’re nearly at 35 employees. Nexperia has truly been able to evolve with us and match our changing needs from a small startup to a growing business.
Nexperia x instagrid
In July 2020 Nexperia organized an online seminar showcasing the latest innovations in power components. We took part in a live session as one of the experts and showcased how the instagrid product utilizes Nexperia technology. Watch the demonstration of our product in the seminar from the video above.
We will continue working with Nexperia, not only regarding our product parts but also in other matters. This year we’ll also be attending two different trade fairs together with Nexperia: Electronica in Munich 10th-13th November and The China International Import Expo in Shanghai 5th-10th of November. Come meet us there if you’re attending!