SunPower, Adieu

Some reflections this evening on my cleantech journey and SunPower's profound influence.

I joined a little solar startup called PowerLight in 2001, joining a passionate scrum of 40-odd brilliant weirdos seeking to change the world by surfing to commercial roof solar domination on a sea of blue foam. A pretty oddball idea that just happened to be the right thing at the right time to bust open a whole new market segment.

Eventually, PowerLight zigged to the nascent utility scale tracker opportunity, breaking open yet another new vertical, this time globally. But around that time a totally different opportunity to emerged, and with most of the company focused elsewhere, I seized it.

Joined at the hip with Kurt Johnson and Samuel Truthseeker, P.E. we created what was probably the most commercially successful US residential building integrated solar roof tile ever: SunTile (sorry Elon). It was the catalyst in some sorcery that led to utter domination of SunPower in New Homes for 20 odd years (with much due credit to once and future colleague Matt Brost). Howard Wenger probably still has the first prototype sitting in his tennis court, wired up like an astronaut and gathering data to this day. At least that's what I'd like to think.

As it turns out, we built that product around an amazing, high efficiency PV module from this hot new startup, SunPower.

SunTile was in the right place at the right time to serve as a kind of avatar and proof point of the vertical integration thesis between SunPower and PowerLight -- which led to SunPower's $300M acquisition of PowerLight, a seismic event in cleantech.

SunPower was mainly a cell & module company with unique IP spun out of Stanford and the seeds of a residential 'value added reseller' channel behemoth. PowerLight was mainly a C&I and utility solar EPC with strong 'systems' product chops and the start of a new homes business.

There was real synergy, if you will. The combination was something new.

A star was born.

The combined, new SunPower was truly a rocket ship, accelerating at ludicrous speed. More than once it seemed like the whole contraption was about to come apart at the seams. At first the cultures of the two companies could have not been more different. But it worked somehow.

PowerLight - the Berkeley crew - was all about being scrappy and pragmatic, sometimes fast and loose, always be closing, aggressive, roll the dice, get 'er done; with pride in thinking so far out of the box that we sometimes forgot where the box was; a conference room called "The Hay Cave"; with office furniture made from scrapped doors and windows, located in a former ketchup factory.

SunPower - in a vanilla Silicon Valley office complex, all beige partitions and tinted windows - had a buttoned down, rigorous, metrics-driven culture, management largely placed from Cypress Semi by TJ Rodgers, full of brilliant PhD engineers pushing the envelope on what was in many respects arcane technology. And, it turned out, more than a dash of Philippines rizz.

This amalgamation, this stew and collision of philosophy and approach, this creative conflict, took a while to gel but turned into something really special. It ultimately pushed everyone to get out of their comfort zone, think differently, and take the best of each company to heart.

I had the opportunity to work on all sorts of wildly different, cutting edge product development and engineering challenges, traveled the world, shipped a bunch of innovative and successful products (and shelved quite a number more), got on a lot of roofs and filed a lot of patents; then had the opportunity to transition into product management, threw myself into the deep end on IoT and digital experiences, energy management, and getting close to customers, strategic partnerships, investments, and shipping more products.

It was years of pivoting and sprinting and adjusting and pivoting again, as the 'dynamic' solar market shifted beneath and around us through market booms and busts - through sector booms and busts - and more than one spectacular collapse of once-formidable companies in the space.

Same as it ever was.

I certainly gained a deep appreciation for and learned to employ and instill the power of perseverance, grit, creativity, ownership. The spirit of "Strong Like Bull" embodied by Daniel Shugar ; the passionate creativity and uncompromising belief in the power of simplicity and design elegance of Tom Dinwoodie ; the clarity and focus achievable by driving results with data and intellectual rigor of Tom Werner -- not to mention getting to rub shoulders with the solar GOAT, Dick Swanson, from time to time.

Those are just a very few of that era of SunPower's amazing leadership team, who transformed a couple of scrappy little companies into a global powerhouse deploying solar (and batteries!) at a bigger scale than anyone else, across residential, C&I and utility. We did it all. Maybe we did too much, too fast. Maybe in the end it wasn't enough. But it was a hell of a ride, wasn't it?

I learned so much from too many to shout out everyone, truely -- but I do especially want to thank those managers and/or mentors at SunPower that directly challenged and taught me, drove me crazy from time to time, but always pushed me to grow and be better. Colleen O'Brien Jonathan Botkin Jack Peurach Mike Dooley Matt Kennedy Gary Wayne Julie Blunden Tom Starrs Linda Blauner Cindi Bough Bill Mulligan Ivo Steklac -- a big 'thank you', and hope we have a chance to pour one out for SunPower in person one of these days.

Look - the end of SunPower is just another washout in a sector that's always been a tough neighborhood. But you can get a sense of how much it meant to so many people.

So a few closing thoughts on why it meant so much to me.

I came in as a pretty young mechanical engineer with just a BS degree. PowerLight was, basically, an EPC with a wild visionary architect founder with a lot of product ideas. I bootstrapped and gained some hard-earned knowledge in some interesting niches (boundary-layer aerodynamics on flat roofs, anyone?) as we figured out how to translate those visions into reality - with a lot of trial and error.

At SunPower I was suddenly able to rub shoulders with and learn from seriously world class technologists - people like Peter Cousins as one example - wrestling with some of the hairest problems imaginable in solar cell design and scaled manufacturing.

That exposure to hardcore design for manufacturing, semiconductor physics, statistical process control, and general rigor around how to work through high stakes, one way door decisions was amazing.

But what was really astonishing was the generosity of time and patience for dumb questions - when I attended some cell architecture talk at a conference that went straight over my head, or was challenged to help solve some hairy problem (cough polarization) I knew almost nothing about, or just couldn't help but ask some question from the peanut gallery. Not only that, but these folks were so keen to learn from what I'd developed expertise in, across totally different domains of engineering and product.

This sincere dedication to learning and collaboration, and accessibility of peers and mentors with deep expertise in cutting edge areas across a whole value chain is so, so rare. I don't just mean semiconductors now -- that was just an example -- but utility scale project development, energy policy strategy, high performance SCADA controls and grid integration; we were pioneers in IoT; we deployed behind the meter batteries for customer benefit and grid services before hardly anyone; it went on and on.

This depth and breadth of expertise and eagerness to learn and teach and experiment is what made SunPower really special, and I think pretty unique.

Of course this all comes down to the people of SunPower, committed to collaboration and cross-pollination and making it work - sometimes against all odds, sometimes at odds, sometimes just plain odd - but always making it work.

So: cheers to you, the SunPower diaspora, dandelion seeds before the solar wind, pioneers and innovators and operators all. We've done so much, and there is so much more to do.

And if you're part of the group that's getting dislocated from SunPower now, or for that matter from any of the other companies in clean energy that are struggling right now -- if you're passionate to stay in the game, the diaspora is here for you. I'm here for you. Drop a line.

Ever forward!