Entrepreneurs for Impact #189: Yaniv Kalish, CEO of SolarKal — Biggest U.S. Solar Marketplace. Clients Manage 100+ Million Square Feet. 200 Vetted Solar Installers. Bootstrap to Private Equity.
SolarKal is a curated marketplace and trusted advisor that makes solar installations easy for commercial real estate owners. Their clients represent 100 million square feet of real estate, and their 200 vetted solar installers have generated $1.6 billion in project bids to date. And over 80% of positive ROI solar projects get built.
Yaniv is a mechanical engineer, 2x founder, and MBA from Columbia with over a decade of experience in the solar industry.
In this episode, you’ll learn these four important takeaways and much more.
- How they get paid (it might not be what you think)
- How he bootstrapped the business for years until recently taking private equity investment
- How they built their software and their roadmap going forward
- The origin of their name and how that relates to the reason that clients choose them
🔗 PODCAST SHOW LINKS:
SolarKal - https://www.solarkal.com
Yaniv - https://www.linkedin.com/in/yanivkalish
How I Built This (podcast) - https://www.npr.org/series/490248027/how-i-built-this
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🤔 PODCAST HOST:
Dr. Chris Wedding is the founder of EFI (climate CEO peer groups), cofounder of Terraset (carbon removal), Senior Advisor at Javelin Capital (investment banking), Board member at World Tree (regenerative forestry), Board Advisor at DG Matrix (next-gen power electronics), Duke & UNC professor, ex-private equity investor, ex-investment banker, occasional monk, father of three, 2x ax-throwing champ (huh?), Time Magazine Person of the Year in 2006 (Google it), and super humble guy (as evidenced by this long bio).