Have you wondered how some residential solar companies flourish while others languish? Is there a common thread to their success? If there's at least one thing I have known to be true, it's that you can't scale a modern solar company without good financing for your customers. And, while it's getting easier, there have been a Lot of companies to come-and-go over my 15+ yrs in the solar industry.
That said, Residential Solar finance is a hot hot market, and few companies have stormed the proverbial castle and taken a leadership position so decisively as Sunlight Financial. On the surface, it looks like a rather traditional "this banker left his banking job for another banking job" kind of story. But as you'll hear in today's interview with Sunlight's CEO, Matt Potere, it's anything but "traditional". Son of a gas station owner, Matt says "I grew up in the Hamptons like many did, but now quite in the same way they did". In truth, while the hedge fund manager's families were headed to vacation, it was Matt and his family who filled their cars on their way. Those years of entrepreneurial insight gleaned helping with the family business helped create the leader Matt has become. And in today's interview, you'll learn a lot more about a man who has overcome tremendous odds to lead one of the most successful solar finance institutions to come along in a decade.
Matt serves as Sunlight’s CEO and is a member of the Board of Directors. Over the past 25 years, Matt has held leadership roles in credit, business development and strategy from Fortune 50 companies to venture capital backed start-ups. Since joining Sunlight from Bank of America (where he was a Senior Vice President responsible for the Bank’s $90 billion home equity portfolio), he's formed a team that has helped 150K families go solar, finances ~$200Million/mo in loans, and recently became a publicly traded company!
There's a lot to dig into today, so sit back and enjoy
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You can find the resources and links mentioned in today's episode here:
Connect with Matt on LinkedIn
Follow Sunlight Financial on LinkedIn and Twitter, and check out their website.
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