From Data to Energy: Jean-Yves Stephan’s Mission to Power the Energy Transition with Storio

Jean-Yves Stephan is the founder of Storio Energy , a company revolutionizing commercial energy storage through AI-powered solutions. Previously, he was an early employee at Databricks before founding Data Mechanics (YC S19), which was acquired in 2021.?

What early experience shaped who you are?

When I was seven years old, I declared I wanted to be an inventor. My first "invention" was a flying car design – looking back, it was quite ambitious for a kid, with turbo reactors on the sides and even a plant to recycle CO2 into oxygen. I’m not trying to say I was a business genius, but I was really excited by numbers and would pepper my parents with questions about TV advertising costs and what people might pay for such a car. Coming from a family of doctors rather than entrepreneurs, I’m not sure where this business interest came from, but I was clearly this rather geeky kid fascinated by both technical problems and numbers. It’s funny to look back on that now, seeing how it foreshadowed my path from engineering studies to eventually starting companies.

What advice should first-time founders heed?

Talk to your clients before doing anything else – and don’t just ask if something would be valuable. Try to actually sell them the product, even if it’s not finished. Get as close as possible to a real sales conversation. Create a deck, make concrete asks, and get them to spend time working through the problem with you. This is the only way to validate your idea. I also learned through YC that you should either be completely focused on talking to clients or, when you're ready to raise funding, fully dedicated to investor conversations. There’s no in-between. Don’t get caught up talking to other startups in your space – your potential customers are the only ones who can tell you if your idea has merit.

What's a lesson you learned the hard way?

You need to go for an ambitious idea, particularly if you want to be VC-backed. We learned this during YC with Data Mechanics. Initially, we were building an add-on tool for existing data infrastructure platforms like Amazon EMR or Databricks. While it provided some value, the integration was complicated and the total addressable market was small. Two-thirds through YC, we pivoted to become a full Spark platform, directly competing with large companies like Databricks – my former employer. Though pivoting was tough, it gave us a cleaner interface and a much larger market opportunity. The key was focusing on a specific segment where we could excel: the intersection of Spark and Kubernetes infrastructure.

How do you proceed when there's no right answer?

I believe in making clear decisions, even when there’s no ideal answer. When choosing between options, I write down my reasoning so that later – whether it’s two weeks or three months – I can evaluate that decision objectively. This documentation is crucial because entrepreneurs go through periods of doubt, and having your original reasoning recorded helps you understand the context of your choices. Two things to avoid: analysis paralysis and trying to pursue multiple options simultaneously. As an early-stage startup, you need to pick one direction and commit fully. Excellence comes from focus – you can always build on your success later, but trying to do everything at once typically leads to mediocrity.

What future opportunities will be born from recent events?

Most people and businesses underestimate the speed and impact of the energy transition. The shift from fossil fuels to electricity creates numerous opportunities, particularly in grid management and energy flexibility. While renewable energy is cheaper than ever, we face two major challenges: balancing production with consumption and delivering energy efficiently. This creates opportunities in areas like flexible demand, smart charging, industrial process optimization, and energy storage. The energy infrastructure sector needs significant innovation in software and AI. That’s why I moved from data infrastructure to energy – while AI can revolutionize many things, addressing climate change requires fundamental changes to how we organize the physical world. The energy transition presents massive opportunities for startups to make a meaningful impact.