Recurrent Energy: Financing 'News'

With the rise of the solar PPA, we've been experiencing increased press inquiries about Recurrent Energy and Solar as a Service. As a result, we made the decision last week to officially confirm the facts of Recurrent Energy's March financing to reporters.

The funny thing was that in trying to make the news sound more current, the early coverage we received (from Venture Beat and Red Herring) gave the story a more immediate angle and made it sound like we'd just raised the round last week. The fact is we raised the $10MM round in back in March and the business has been around (as my readers know) since early 2006. The stories also made it sound like our investors--Mohr Davidow Ventures and JEN Partners--were piling into a hot category when in fact both have been supportive and involved with Recurrent Energy from our early days. Of course, we're happy to get the coverage and it's been nice to get the congratulatory notes.

One of the key reasons we were able to raise our round was that we convinced our investors we had a well differentiated strategy. What makes us different is our market focus on organizations with large property portfolios—the largest and most valuable market segment—and innovations in our Solar as a Service offering that meet some very unique needs of our target customers. Raising the round back in March means we've been actively engaged in the market with our offering, validating the approach.

We believe the market for solar services is huge and growth will be sustained over the long-term. We don't think that being first or biggest at this moment matters all that much because it's so early. What matters is being smart about what you're selling and who you're selling it to--it can't just be about "solar financing" or selling the lowest cost kilowatt-hours via a PPA. Price is important of course, but there are other critical components to delivering value via solar services. Our focus on providing a differentiated service to the highest value market segment is the core of a strategy that will ultimately deliver market leading growth.

We intend to tell more of our story over time of course, but the pace will be determined by what makes sense for our customers--which is of course the way it should be.

Comments

[Nathan Schock]

Arno,

Interesting perspective on the news coverage. Congrats on the coverage and the funding.

[Joe Garma]

"Solar as a Service" is very smart -- Salesforce.com has spent millions of marketing dollars to get people thinking and accepting the proposition that something traditionally owned (software in their case, and solar panels in yours) is better suited to be, in effect, leased as a service.

The experts take care of things... no headaches, no worries.

You're on to something.