SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
100 Solar Panel Firms Pay $83k/mo To Manage $1.5b in Projects on Enact
20 Dec 2021
Chapter 1: What is the current revenue run rate for Enact?
We are right now around a million dollar a year run rate in revenue and it's growing rapidly, especially the last 18 months. You are listening to Conversations with Nathan Latka, where I sit down and interview the top SaaS founders, like Eric Wan from Zoom. If you'd like to subscribe, go to getlatka.com.
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Chapter 2: How does Enact measure its global leadership in the solar software industry?
Hey folks, my guest today is Deep Chakraborty. He is an entrepreneur business leader currently leading Enact, an award-winning cloud platform for the distributed energy industry. The company is on its fifth year with market leadership globally in the sector of software platforms for solar and storage. Deep, are you ready to take us to the top?
Chapter 3: What unique features does Enact's platform offer for solar project management?
Absolutely. Okay. So when you say global leader in this space, how do you measure that? We measure it by number of users, customers, and projects. So an X platform processes over $1.5 billion of projects now for solar and storage across the world in 23 countries. And we have deployed over 3 gigawatts of projects we always measure in terms of capacity. Okay.
Chapter 4: How many customers are currently using Enact's platform?
And is that historically over the past five years or just in 2021? The run rate is in 2020. Since September 2020, we have a process of one and a half billion. And of course, just to remind you, we are a software platform. We are not a developer.
Chapter 5: What is the average cost for providers using Enact's technology?
We're not selling any hardware or financing anything. We're just doing what we call the solar lifecycle project management software. And so that's really unique, having a platform that's so active in so many countries. So what does that mean? Since September 2020, you put 1.5 billion of solar projects through your platform. What does that mean? So our platform is unique.
It's a cloud software hosted on Amazon, used by both solar developers and installers, as well as the end customer.
Chapter 6: What percentage of revenue comes from providers versus homeowners?
And what it does is automates the entire journey of the project. So they can pick any address in the world, design a system remotely, generate signed contracts, and then execute the project, all tracked online. And of course, the end customer, they're spending a lot of money on these projects, to save money on the electric bills, as well as doing the green thing.
they're able to measure the benefit too for the first time in dollars. So we project the benefit in dollars and then we measure it. So we're really making it transparent for customers and providers to now do these transactions seamlessly using an independent platform that is the source of truth. And so this platform has processed over $1.5 billion of projects in the last 12 months.
And deep across how many customers? So we have over 100 enterprises in 23 countries and 1,000 plus users. Users meaning people who actually log in and do work on it.
Chapter 7: How has Enact's funding strategy evolved since its launch?
Industry, of course, is a niche. Solar is not a massive industry. But even in the U.S., there's a potential 50,000 plus users for our platform. And we've already crossed the first 1,000. What does the average provider pay you per month or per year to use the technology to manage these solar installations and projects?
The average company on the SMBs or small and medium companies, which is the majority of the market, they're spending less than $10,000 a year to use the platform. And it's a user per month subscription model. The end customer, which would be a building owner, a home might spend only $50 a year on the app. A large commercial hospital might spend $1,000 a year because their system is much bigger.
When you look at your revenue over the past 12 months, what percent came from the providers versus the homeowner wanting to track their energy usage and tax rebates and things like that? Great question. So we actually launched with the providers first in 2015, and that platform is still 80% of our revenues. The end customer app, which is now on iOS and Android too, that's less than a year old.
It's growing really quick, but the revenues are 20% of the total because it's a newer offering. How many homeowners are on it so far or larger facilities with solar installations? Yeah, we have crossed 1,000 homes last quarter in Q3.
And in specific markets, specifically markets like California, where we are in, or even across the world, like in Delhi or in Dubai, the pockets of dense use because we have very active platform users. And for example, in Delhi now, we have crossed 500 users on the platform in the city of Delhi who have solar. And it's growing rapidly because of the ecosystem we've built there.
So the 100 providers, which is 80% of your revenue, paying on average $10,000 per year, that would mean you're doing just on that side of the business about $90,000 a month in revenue.
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Chapter 8: What are the future growth plans for Enact in the solar market?
Is that accurate? Yeah, I don't want to disclose our revenues, but I will say that we are right now around a million-dollar-a-year run rate in revenue, and it's growing rapidly, especially the last 18 months. So you'll break a million in terms of run rate by the end of December? Okay. And where were you exactly a year ago, so we can calculate growth rate?
We are much lower, probably like we've grown about 40% this year. And so, which is a great growth rate considering we haven't really invested much in the business. We're still bootstrapped. There's no venture investor on this. We are not institutionally funded. So you own 100% of the business? No, our employees do.
I mean, every employee has equity in an act, but together the founders and employees still own the company. We have no institutional ownership. How much of your ESOP pool did you decide to set up? I mean, we're talking 10%, 20% to employees or more? We have always done, you know, we've maximized the ESOP grants legally possible in the last five years, but employees typically in the U.S.
have, you know, an annual ESOP cannot be more than 15% of your holding. And we have tried to maximize that. So, yes, together the employees and founders own the majority of the company. We do have, though, some equity investors this year. We have announced that, you know, early stage SaaS investors, family offices, they're on our website. We also now listed on StartEngine. Oh, sorry.
So how much did you raise in equity? We have raised almost $4 million now, but our cumulative revenue has been more than that. So we're kind of leading by example. Revenue comes first. So sorry, $4 million you closed this year? We have close $4 million of equity investment in NX systems since launch. And of course, the first round was in 15, which was announced.
In the 18, we got seed investors who took preferred shares. And then we also got early stage SaaS investors now in the last year who are helping us grow specifically. Break this down for me. So the SaaS investors this year, how much did they put in? We have raised $700,000 on SaaS investments. I think you should go to Crunchbase. It should have the exact numbers.
Please don't quote my numbers on the interview. I don't have them on the top of my head. But Crunchbase has all the exact details. And on our website, we have lists of the investors also. I understand. But I want to capture more of the pattern here, right? So when you did the round in 2015, why couldn't you bootstrap the business?
And how much did you raise from those family and friends or however you did it to get the MVP up? Oh, we still, so what's the question exactly again? Could you repeat that? How much did you raise in 2015 to get the MVP live? We raised a million dollars in 2015 May. which was announced release.
And then we were probably the only company that has gotten a US government grants, Department of Energy grants to develop a platform, which is patented by the way. It's a blockchain enabled platform. And that in 17. So we could not have done it with just a million. It's a massive platform now active in 23 countries. same product. But yes, the government grants helped us.
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