A year ago, the solar company I co-founded in 2009, Sunbug Solar, merged with the solar and renewable energy company ReVision Energy.
For a lot of solar consumers, “merger” is one of the dirtiest words in the industry.
Many solar system owners feel hung out to dry because their original installation company is no longer around to help them. Those feelings are borne out by data: nationally, of the 8,700 different companies that installed a residential solar electric system between 2000 and 2016, 5,800 of them were inactive by the end of 2016. Yet simultaneously, homeowners are saturated by door knockers and tabling reps at home improvement stores, pushing folks to become the next client of one of the large national solar companies. There’s a flood of effort to sell new customers and not nearly enough energy spent taking care of existing ones.
Paradoxically, that is the biggest reason I was so excited for Sunbug to become part of ReVision.
The two companies had a long history of shared values, so I knew ReVision would enthusiastically assume 100% of my customers’ warranties. I also knew the overarching cultural fit would be strong. SunBug and ReVision knew each other as longstanding members of the Amicus Solar Cooperative, an 80-member nationwide buying co-op comprised of the highest quality local installers in North America. We were both B Corps, and as such, we had each signed up for a rigorous 3rd party certification proving we considered people, the planet, and profit in our decision-making (a corporate equivalent of Fair Trade Organic for coffee). We were both employee-owned, though Revision’s version of 100% employee ownership through an ESOP structure is vastly better than Sunbug’s version, which suffered during market swings.
I did not know it when starting Sunbug, but over time, I learned that building a company from scratch is, in essence, building a series of commitments. At first, your commitments are to your founding partners and angel investors, who are really your family and friends. If successful, you also end up with a series of commitments to a growing group of dedicated employees working shoulder-to-shoulder with you. But of all the commitments you build, the most foundational are to your customers.
You never forget the first person who says, “Yes, I’ll pay you tens of thousands of dollars to drill sixty holes in my roof and electrically connect a new type of high-voltage power plant to my home.” In my case, it was Steve from Franklin, MA. You never forget the first customer for whom you make a design modeling error, delivering a system that makes 5,000 kilowatt hours a year rather than the 6,000 you had told them it would make. In my case, that was David from Lincoln, MA. You also never make that mistake again, despite David’s generosity with his forgiveness: “We all make mistakes, Ben.”
Fifteen years of Sunbug turned into over 3,000 of these commitments. They were my primary motivators for becoming part of ReVision. I knew that in the tempestuous waters of the solar industry, the 60-person Sunbug boat could not weather the same size storms that a 500-person ReVision boat could. In this way, I expected that becoming ReVision customers would be a big upgrade in solidity and longevity for all my Sunbug customers. Now that a choppy 2024 for the solar industry is almost behind us, I can see just how right I was.
Because ReVision is 100% employee-owned, I’ve witnessed first-hand a bottom-to-top mindset that prioritizes quality over speed, in an industry famous for pushing the limits of how everything should be done faster and cheaper. Because ReVision is an ESOP, we can’t be bought and won’t be sold: any company that wants to acquire ReVision needs agreement from the ESOP's fiduciary trustees via an employee-owner vote, which is why ESOPs are notoriously difficult for venture capital firms to buy and roll up. Because ReVision’s sales team is not 100% commission-based pay - like all the door knockers and reps in Home Depot - we are not motivated to use pushy sales tactics rife with misinformation, or worse, outright dishonesty. Because ReVision’s mission is carbon reduction, not just solar installation, all my Sunbug customers can now consider installing air source heat pumps (aka “mini splits”) as well as renewable hot water technologies. And as an employee-owner myself, my 15-year-old solar company became my 21-year-old solar company, an even more solid presence with a deeper track record of success in our communities.
Has everything gone smoothly in the last twelve months of learning new software, systems, and processes? Of course not. There are always bumps in the road. But the road ahead for me and my customers is much longer, wider, and well maintained. Plus, I’m driving electric on it because ReVision builds EV charging infrastructure!
