Flick first burst onto the scene in 2014 as a tech-based power company that aimed to disrupt the way things had always been by creating a more transparent way for Kiwis to purchase power.  

It uses smart metering technology and proprietary software to give its customers electricity based on half-hourly wholesale rates, plus a margin.

And in its four years taking on the big dogs, Flick has grown from being a budding start-up to now having around 70 employees, more than 20,000 customers and a 70 percent stake ($46 million) of it bought by Z Energy, the country’s largest fuel retailer.

“Flick is a pretty disruptive, fast growing company based in Wellington, and we’re having a heap of fun disrupting a pretty stale industry,” Hearn says.

“Flick’s point of difference is passing on the wholesale price of power to our customers, whether it be through freestyle in the spot market or through Fixie, we guarantee the fairest price possible.”

Flick’s strength in the marketplace is its tech focus, with everything controlled from this central hub in its app, including its latest product, Fixie. It was rolled out in September and offers Flick customers the new option of wholesale power prices that are at a spot price fixed for six months at a time.

“Flick’s had a heap of success with freestyle in market and it really challenged our thinking bringing a Fixie product, which is in some ways similar to the other guys, so we had to nuance that and bring it into market in a way that presented all of Flick’s awesome values,” Hearn says.

Then there’s its carbon counter called Choice, which gives its users live updates about the carbon impact of their electricity use and gives advice on when to switch things on and off to reduce carbon impact – with the choice of measurement to display the information in being farting goats.

As for what Flick is focusing on for the near future, Hearn says it’s going to be looking at continuing to shake up the system, as well as roll out more products via its app that match the quality of its previous creations.

Our product road map is really, really rich,” he says. “It’s going to be a big challenge for us delivering to that, but it’s important that we do it because our customers are telling us they want to experience things in slightly different ways, so we need to keep appeasing what our customer wants.

We want to get more traction from those in-market who haven’t considered Flick before, so we’re going to continue bring out awesome new ideas and new initiatives to get people thinking about Flick more.”