Decisions That Made Me: Greg Jackson (Octopus Energy)
The Bottom Line
BBC
4.6 • 606 Ratings
🗓️ 18 September 2025
⏱️ 17 minutes
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Summary
Born in Halifax, West Yorkshire, Greg Jackson left school at 16 to write computer games, later joining Greenpeace before returning to study economics at Cambridge. Growing up in a family so stretched that the energy supply was cut off, he channelled that experience into a drive to make energy fairer and more affordable. By his twenties he was running a mirror business, before moving into tech start-up investing. In 2016 he founded Octopus Energy. Less than a decade on, it serves more than 7 million customers in 18 countries, manages a £6 billion renewable portfolio, and licenses its Kraken technology to utilities worldwide — with the company now valued at close to $9 billion.
Producer: Georgiana Tudor Series Producer: Simon Tulett Editor: Matt Willis Sound: Gareth Jones Production co-ordinator: Katie Morrison and Rosie Strawbridge
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. |
| 0:09.0 | You're dead to me. |
| 0:11.0 | No, no, that's the name of our podcast. Sorry. |
| 0:14.6 | And we're back for a brand new series. |
| 0:17.1 | Not only is it British history, it was a quill drop. |
| 0:21.2 | With more fun and facts from history without taking it too seriously. |
| 0:25.8 | Empress Matilda, what is she going to do now? |
| 0:27.7 | She decides to take back some of the jewels with her. |
| 0:31.0 | I'm taking these as well. |
| 0:32.7 | I'm going to come back for Tuscany one day as well. |
| 0:35.2 | You're dead to me. |
| 0:36.7 | Again, not you. |
| 0:38.0 | Name of the show. |
| 0:38.8 | Listen first on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:42.3 | BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:46.0 | So Greg Jackson, just where did your career start? |
| 0:48.6 | Well, actually, I left school at 16 to write video games back in the 1980s, although |
| 0:53.1 | there was one I wrote that in the end wasn't |
| 0:55.7 | enough fun to play. And so I never got paid for it. And that's when they decided to go to university |
| 1:01.0 | and end up Procter & Gamble for four years in marketing. Right. So you had a good base level |
| 1:06.7 | understanding of how big corporations do marketing. |
| 1:11.1 | Yeah. |
... |
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