Paul Hodnett is the founder and chief executive of POWWR, the Manchester-based company whose software is used by energy suppliers and brokers to handle pricing, contracts and commissions. He founded UD Group, which merged with POWWR in 2019, and was appointed chief executive in February 2026 alongside a multimillion-pound investment from Five Elms Capital.
On 15 September 2026 the company, which says it serves more than 45 energy suppliers and over 1,600 brokers, launched an AI-powered module that checks Letters of Authority for suppliers.
Here he tells Business Matters why frustration with manual processes still drives him, and why his job is to back other people’s plans.
What do you currently do at POWWR?
I am the founder and CEO at POWWR. I am the person who sets the vision and the strategy, and I support the teams in their plans to fulfil our goals. But I am not the one getting us there. That is down to the people in the business, so my job is to back their plans and make sure they have what they need. If something is in their way, I want to know about it.
Day to day, a lot of that is conversation. Strategy on paper is the easy bit. Making it happen is harder, and that is where most of my time goes.
The best ideas here rarely start with me. They come from the people who work daily with our customers, so I spend a lot of my time listening and learning from them.
What was the inspiration behind your business?
Before POWWR, I was working for an organisation that did everything by hand in one specific industry. All I could think about was how much better we could do this, because our customers were wasting too much time on something that should not be difficult at all.
It is easy to accept that is just how an industry works. I never could. If a process relies on people doing everything by hand, there is usually a better way, and I wanted to find it. So I did something about it and built the first business switching site in the UK.
It came down to frustration. I was faced with something slow, and my intention was to simplify it for the sake of the consumer. This is the perspective I still have on issues today. When I create something new, the question becomes whether it will benefit the user.
Who do you admire?
Founders, mostly. Any of them, really. Coming up with an idea is one thing. Starting a business from nothing and getting it to the point where it is properly established is something else entirely, and it takes a lot.
There are stretches where nothing is certain, and the decisions you make affect real people, your team and your customers. You do not see that from the outside.
I have known many founders throughout my life, and I always learn something from them. Each has a unique story of their own, but they have one thing in common: they have had to keep pushing despite having an easy way out. Not everybody knows how hard it can be to start from scratch.
Looking back, is there anything you would have done differently?
Lots, but I would not change anything. It is why we are where we are now, and I would not swap that. Everything I have done wrong, everything I have done badly, has helped bring me to where I am with POWWR.
I learnt as much from the hard times as I did from the good ones, probably more. It teaches you how to proceed next time. I would rather look ahead than think back.
What defines your way of doing business?
I would consider myself to be open, honest and transparent, and I have only ever worked with people who I would consider to be the same. As a business, we say what we mean and we are upfront with customers and partners. We are also very good at what we do, the best, I would say, and we work hard to back that up.
We are also very easy-going. We value our people and we value our customers because there is a connection between them. If you take care of your people, they will take care of your customers.
The other thing that sets us apart is how the business is built. We do not offer one isolated service. We have built an ecosystem with lots of touch points, so the more we grow, the more people rely on us to keep the market working. That makes us very hard to dislodge.
But this is not something that I take for granted. People rely on us because we deserve to be relied upon.
What advice would you give to someone starting out?
I am writing a book for exactly that. I have included everything that I know, especially those things that I wish somebody had taught me when I was starting out.
Until then, my suggestion is actually quite simple. Be honest with yourself and those around you. Trust yourself and your team.
Accept the fact that you will learn as you go. You will not do everything correctly, and that is okay, because most things about business are learned along the way.
