The Founder Files Rapid Scaling South Africa’s Largest D2C Solar Provider - Andrew Middleton, GoSolr
In just 3 years, GoSolr became the biggest direct-to-consumer solar provider in South Africa and has invested billions into rooftop residential solar. Today, we have the privilege of hearing from Andrew Middleton, the CEO and co-founder of GoSolr. He'll share insights on how they've achieved their remarkable success and the key lessons he's learned along the way. We discuss the surge in demand during South Africa's worst load-shedding period and how the company had to pivot its sales approach as urgency declined. We explore the challenges of fundraising for a business with high-cost inventory—an intriguing conversation, given Andrew's background in investment banking. We get more into what the journey has been like rapid scaling to a 130-person business in just 3 years: - How to get teams thinking like founders, inspired by purpose, mission, and vision and the significant impact this alignment has had on Andrew’s business. - Managing outsourced installers. - Keeping up with high demand. - Maintaining stock levels. - Ensuring a quality customer experience while scaling rapidly. Amongst all that, Andrew shares his personal experiences within the company, including what turned out to be easier than expected, the toughest challenges, and key lessons learned along the way.
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This episode is brought to you by Metavolve.
Metavolve turns highly capable African founders into confident business leaders by helping them develop clear and comprehensive business strategies that make building a great sustainable business less complex. Reach out to our team to learn more: https://metavolve.co/
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00:00 Introduction 03:27 What is GoSolr? 06:11 How did GoSolr fund this subscription model? 15:22 What Andrew did to make it easy for investors to say yes 19:57 Reopening the investment round to secure funding from African Rainbow Capital and its subsequent impact 30:34 The impact of load shedding ending 35:24 How GoSolr’s sales approach changed after load shedding ended? 52:29 Why B2C and not B2B? 55:37 The scale of GoSolr 57:14 Challenges faced while scaling GoSolr 01:04:55 Keeping up with high demand and rapid scale 01:15:45 Maintaining a good customer experience working with external installers 01:20:46 Creating a culture of ownership, care and intrinsic motivation 01:29:39 What does the next 6 - 12 months look like for GoSolr? 01:31:25 Where can you sign up for GoSolr? 01:31:53 Outro