Today is the beginning of the 2nd week of SolarAcademy’s life. Well, I mean, 2nd week after its official launch last week.
In reality, SolarAcademy has been an idea in my head since I first came across Khan Academy back in 2011. It lived through a few prior iterations as a public website which served as a supplemental educational resource for our coworkers at my prior company, CivicSolar, and beyond… I created it on WordPress over a weekend and kept it going on and off over the past years.
Truth be told, I really don’t know how SolarAcademy is going to evolve. I don’t know how or whether SolarAcademy will become a self-sustaining business or something else. What I do know is that I have had this idea for the past 9 years and I tried to give it away many times. Talked to other industry insiders about it. No one seemed interested in it, in the way I was.
WIRED magazine co-founder Kevin Kelly has a saying that I like (see this Tim Ferris podcast Episode 25 – Mins 21-26). He says, “When you can’t give away an idea to others, you have to do it yourself”. So, here I am, starting my third (ad)venture.
The prior two times, we bootstrapped both ventures, each time requiring less than $50k of capital (and less than 1 year of founders sweat equity) to get to profitability.
I don’t know if it will be the same this time.
Having been in the solar industry for over a decade, I kind of have an idea of what a more efficient way of doing business, learning, and teaching looks like in my head… for the solar industry.
If I were to summarize it in a few words, it would be – more connected, more transparent, and more personalized. At this time, I know at a high level, what services we want to be providing to the solar industry. Yet, I don’t know what our first service will be. I don’t know how we will monetize that service, at what price, at which channels,… and whether any of this is going to work or not.
I do know that our priority will be education, connection, and sharing of knowledge. Especially valuable proprietary (semi-private) knowledge that usually sits locked up, for no good reason.
Another thing we will aim to do is that we will try to be as transparent about our strategy and thinking as possible. There are a number of reasons why we want to be uber-transparent as we hopefully take SolarAcademy to a level where it is revenue generating, growing, and hopefully with positive cash flow.
- We want to show the world that starting an online business is no rocket science and pretty doable these days. We want to take the mystery out of starting startups.
- We want to encourage others to start their own businesses that reflect their own values and creativity while sharing our approach as a sample template for other ideas.
- We want to record the history of the trials and tribulations we will go through to act as a resource for other entrepreneurs.
- We also believe this openness and vulnerability will not only help attract us people who can help us but will hopefully bring us good ideas, solutions, and recommendations.
On that note, let me share our challenges and goals for this week (and possibly many weeks):
- Decide which product we will generate our first revenue with.
- Reach out to 20+ solar installers and have conversations about the types of services we could offer them.
- Reach out to former colleagues who are leading various types of solar companies to understand their needs around educating their co-workers and pick their brains on how to accelerate their learning and teaching cycles.
- Start working on a solar training product for folks who are looking to enter the solar industry.
- Create a course outline for technical folks like electrical contractors, general contractors and developers.
- Also look into creating a course for sales and service folks.
- Start working on creating a cool, interesting, and inviting course for home and property owners.
If you are a homeowner looking to go solar or if you are a solar professional and you have some thoughts on how we can help you or vice versa, please don’t hesitate to reach out. Simply reply to this email.
Thank you for your time & attention…
Kerim
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