Picture this: you’re driving an electric vehicle and your battery is running low. Where do you go?
If you’re like most people, you probably think of those rows of charging stations at shopping centers. Pull up, swipe your card, wait around for 30 minutes while your car charges. Sound familiar?
That’s exactly what Klement Kralj thought when he first encountered electric vehicles over a decade ago. Except he had a different reaction than most people.
“The driver was basically a slave of the technology.”
That single observation led him to question something the entire $50 billion EV charging industry had accepted as gospel: that electric vehicle charging should work exactly like petrol stations.
When New Markets Copy Old Thinking
During my conversation with Klement, founder and CEO of Remea, we explored one of the most common traps in business innovation. New markets that get built on the thinking of old markets.
“This is a classic case of a new market that has been built on the thinking of an old market,” I explained to Klement as we dug into his story.
The old principle was simple: you went to a petrol station to fill up your car with petrol. So when electric vehicles emerged, the industry naturally assumed you’d go to charging stations to fill up your battery.
But here’s what everyone missed: electric vehicles behave fundamentally differently than petrol cars. They charge slowly. People park them for hours at a time. The use case is completely different.
Klement saw this early: “People who were using EVs just wanted to charge at the final destination.”
Not at dedicated charging stations. At hotels. Restaurants. Gyms. Anywhere they were already going to be for extended periods.
Want to learn how I help leaders capture insights like this and turn them into systematic frameworks? Discover the Masterclass that shows you how to codify genius for extreme leverage.
The Speed Advantage That Changes Everything
When Klement started talking to potential customers about destination charging, the response was predictable:
“That’s a market reserved for big players. You’re not a big utility company.”
But here’s where the story gets interesting. Instead of trying to compete with big companies on their terms, Klement used their size against them.
“We were small, we were agile, we didn’t have resources. And then, but that was also our advantage.”
How big of an advantage? Consider this comparison:
When customers needed a new feature, big companies required complex approvals, multiple departments, and third-party software integrations. “In order to do that, it’ll take them, I don’t know, one year or even, and it will cost them 150K.”
Klement’s team? “We were able to do that for 2K in two weeks and really deliver that to the customer in one month.”
That’s not a small difference. That’s a 75x cost advantage and a 26x speed advantage.
The lesson here goes far beyond EV charging. In any established market, the incumbents develop organizational structures optimized for their current business model. Those same structures become liabilities when the market shifts.
The Business Model Innovation That Rewrites Industries
But Klement didn’t just build faster software. He fundamentally changed how EV charging gets monetized.
Instead of the “slot machine” model (swipe your card, pay per charge), Remea embeds charging costs into services customers are already purchasing.
Stay at a hotel? Charging is included in your room rate. Eat at a restaurant? Charging comes with your meal. Work out at a gym? It’s part of your membership.
The brilliance is in the simplicity. Hotels can now advertise “charging included” as a competitive advantage. Customers get ultimate convenience. And Klement builds what he calls “a utility business disguised as software.”
This approach eliminates friction at every level:
No apps to download
No credit cards to swipe
No standing around waiting
No price anxiety about charging costs
“We enable the business who has the charger to, in an easy way, offer that someone can use it.”
The Framework for Protecting Innovation While Scaling
As Remea grew, Klement faced a challenge every innovative company encounters: how do you share enough information to build partnerships and attract customers without giving away the competitive advantages that make you valuable?
His solution draws from Simon Sinek’s “Start with Why” framework, but adapts it for competitive protection:
Share the WHY freely – “You can say why we are doing it”
Explain the WHAT clearly – Customers need to understand the value proposition
Guard the HOW fiercely – “You don’t say exactly how”
“To the end customer, they don’t exactly need to know what is in place that performs those functions. But you can tell them all about it.”
The key insight: anyone with enough resources can copy software features. But they can’t easily replicate your processes, your customer relationships, your brand, or the specific algorithms that make your solution work.
This kind of strategic thinking is exactly what I help leaders systematize. Learn more about how to capture and codify your own competitive frameworks in my Masterclass.
When Competitors Fight Back With Regulation
Success attracts attention. And attention from established players doesn’t always come in the form of friendly competition.
“When we got a bit bigger in the region, then we had like inspection, you know, like the competitor kinda re uh, uh, applied us to the inspection.”
Translation: competitors used regulatory compliance as a weapon, hoping to slow Remea down with bureaucratic hurdles.
“European Union charging is highly regulated. You’re not allowed to sell energy.”
But Klement was ready. Because he’d built compliance into his model from the beginning, rather than trying to retrofit it later.
The broader lesson: when you’re disrupting established markets, regulatory capture is a common defensive strategy. The companies that survive are the ones that anticipate this and build defensible positions early.
The Visual Model: Mapping Innovation in Hostile Markets
During our conversation, I built a live visual model that captures Klement’s entire approach to innovation in hostile markets. The framework reveals how any entrepreneur can:
Identify fundamental assumptions that entire industries accept without question
Find the human behavior insight that creates new value propositions
Build speed advantages that neutralize resource disadvantages
Embed solutions into existing customer journeys rather than creating new ones
Protect competitive advantages while sharing enough information to build partnerships
Anticipate defensive moves from established players and prepare counter-strategies
The model shows why Klement’s approach works across industries, not just EV charging. Whether you’re in healthcare, finance, logistics, or any other established market, the same principles apply.
Watch me build the model in the video here: Klement’s Episode LIVE NOW.
The Intersection of Hardware, Software, and Human Psychology
What makes Klement’s story particularly compelling is how he navigated the intersection of multiple complex systems.
“We are doing that really intersection between, let’s say the hardware, software, the cloud, and the energy in the end.”
Physical charging hardware. Software interfaces. Cloud infrastructure. Energy management. Hospitality operations. Customer psychology.
Most entrepreneurs would pick one domain and optimize within it. Klement saw the opportunity at the intersection.
“This could be hotels, gymnasiums, anywhere people go where they wanna be able to charge the car in a seamless and easy way.”
The insight: the biggest opportunities often exist where multiple systems meet, not within individual systems themselves.
Lessons for Any Market Disruption
Klement’s approach reveals principles that work far beyond EV charging:
Question the inherited assumptions. Just because an industry works a certain way doesn’t mean it should. The “slot machine” model for charging made sense for petrol but not for electricity.
Find the human behavior insight. People don’t want infrastructure. They want outcomes. They don’t want to charge their cars. They want charged cars when they need them.
Use disadvantages as advantages. Being small meant Klement could move faster, customize solutions, and adapt to customer needs in ways big companies couldn’t.
Change the business model, not just the technology. Better software is rarely enough. Klement succeeded by changing how charging gets paid for and delivered.
Protect the how, share the why. Build partnerships and attract customers by being clear about your vision and value proposition. But keep your execution methods proprietary.
The Mindset Shift That Changes Everything
Perhaps the most important insight from our conversation wasn’t tactical. It was psychological.
“Building product is hard, but that’s actually the easiest part. Then you need to bring that product to the market.”
Too many entrepreneurs fall in love with their solutions and assume markets will naturally adopt them. Klement learned the opposite.
“If my product is so good, the market will want it everyone. And guess what? It doesn’t work like that. No one cares. So you need to push your product to market.”
The willingness to spend two years convincing people that his model could work. The persistence to keep explaining the vision when people said it was impossible. The patience to build proof points one customer at a time.
That’s the mindset shift that separates successful disruptors from failed startups.
The Future of Destination Everything
Klement’s story points to something bigger than EV charging. It’s about the future of how services get delivered.
Instead of centralized infrastructure that customers travel to, we’re moving toward distributed services that meet customers where they already are.
Banking moves from branches to phones. Entertainment moves from theaters to homes. Retail moves from stores to doorsteps.
Klement applied this principle to energy: instead of energy stations that cars travel to, energy services that meet cars where they park.
“Any destination where people park their car could become a charging station, so to say, to refill.”
The next time you see an entrenched industry, ask yourself: what would happen if we delivered this service where customers already are, instead of making them come to us?
This kind of systems thinking is at the core of how I work with leaders to identify breakthrough opportunities. Learn more about the methodology in my Masterclass.
Why This Conversation Matters Now
We’re living through the largest technological transition in human history. AI, renewable energy, biotechnology, space commerce – entire industries are being rebuilt from the ground up.
The companies that win won’t necessarily be the ones with the most resources. They’ll be the ones that question fundamental assumptions, understand human behavior, and move faster than established players can respond.
Klement’s story provides a blueprint. Not for copying his specific tactics, but for developing the mindset and methodology to spot similar opportunities in your own market.
The visual framework I built during our conversation captures this methodology in a way you can apply immediately. Whether you’re leading innovation inside a large company or building something new from scratch.
The Model That Captures It All
Innovation in hostile markets requires more than good ideas. It requires systematic thinking about human behavior, competitive dynamics, business model design, and execution strategy.
The visual model I created during our conversation maps all of these elements and shows how they connect. It’s the kind of framework that transforms how you see opportunities and make decisions.
Most importantly, it’s reusable. The same thinking that helped Klement disrupt EV charging can help you disrupt whatever market you’re focused on.
Ready to see how this all fits together?
Watch the complete conversation with Klement Kralj and see the full visual model HERE.
Then dive deeper into the methodology I use to capture wisdom like this and turn it into systematic frameworks in the Masterclass.
The future belongs to the people who can see what others miss. Klement saw it in EV charging. Where will you see it in your world?
