CEO lessons from 20 years in the solar industry

Executive overview

Most founders build companies around what they love doing — not around what the market needs. The CEO role requires making hard calls that nobody else will make, and that means separating personal attachment from what's right for the business.

Mike Hall built Anza from residential solar installations into a data platform serving 95% of the U.S. utility-scale solar market. The pivot required selling off a 120-person business unit overnight.

The CEO's job is to create the environment for others to succeed, not to succeed yourself.

Starting out and early growth

• Founder's first customers were family; sold $25–50k rooftop systems door-to-door
• Early market: had to explain solar from scratch; 100% failure rates on first power converters
• Industry has grown 35,000x since Hall started; renewable is now the cheapest new energy source
• Early-stage energy comes from chasing wins — but wins alone don't build a durable business

Identifying problems worth solving

• Customers often can't name their problems — they've normalised the friction
• Ask: how many hours does it take? How long on the calendar? How much does it cost? How many repetitions?
• Any gap between process time and calendar time is a source of waste
• Focus on the industry you know best; validate with customers before building

Making the hard pivot

• Residential solar margins compressed; spent 18 months trying to turn it around before deciding to exit
• Two options: chase competition down or find a higher-leverage market
• Chose to sell the entire residential unit — went from 165 to 45 people overnight
• Larger commercial projects: fewer people per dollar, higher leverage
• Not pivoting would have meant staying — inaction is also a decision

Pricing strategy

• Don't price backwards from your forecast or from cost — both can be disconnected from willingness to pay
• Ask customers to rate a specific price (e.g. $30k) on a scale: a 5 = ~80% likely to buy; 1–2 = overpriced
• Avoid open-ended "what would you pay?" — customers default to low because they think it's a negotiation
• Anchor them first, then ask for their response
• If market share genuinely creates a competitive moat, price to capture it; otherwise price for unit economics
• Watch payback period on cost of sales — two years to recover is a problem

The CEO role

• Not all the work is yours to do, but all the responsibility is
• Decisions aren't democratic — asking everyone to vote defaults to the status quo
• Hardest transition: from star individual contributor to building the infrastructure for others to succeed
• Credit flows to the team; your job is the environment, not the output
• Don't start a company just because you love the craft — you may not be happy as CEO long-term