Resident 'Summer Design Associate' here - (might be time to take that one off my LinkedIn).
We've been placing 100K+ solar facilities with accredited investors for a few months now as we've gotten our private beta version off the ground. We've also been working with more experienced finance partners to structure future investments available on Legends Solar.
My wonderful cofounder hails from the art world, and has been helping to place our accredited product. She will be key in helping Legends create a resonant brand with cultural currency as we grow and evolve.
Before we raise seed or launch our retail product, we will bring some project finance experience in-house. Recruiting has been easy because people outside of climate love our brand and mission, and people inside of solar finance are often finance professionals who rarely have an outlet to share what they do for the world and the industry publicly. (You should see us as solar finance conferences, we're the bell of the ball - not kidding, we found many of our finance partners there).
I wanna push back on the idea that designers are no 'doers'... 'Doing' is an ethic, not a discipline, and there are plenty of examples of designers rising to be successful entrepreneurs (AirBnB, et al.).
Rooting for you to succeed, but to be candid your response kind of proved my point. Many of us on this site have a lot of experience with early stage startups and get nervous when we hear founder roles described like this:
> She will be key in helping Legends create a resonant brand with cultural currency as we grow and evolve.
Brand is no doubt important, but execution is what makes a startup work.
> I wanna push back on the idea that designers are no 'doers'... 'Doing' is an ethic, not a discipline,
Hard disagree. Plenty of startups have risen to fame on impressive branding only to fail because they treated execution as an afterthought. Execution is at the core of every startup, and it's certainly not just a mindset. Someone has to execute.
> there are plenty of examples of designers rising to be successful entrepreneurs (AirBnB, et al.).
True! But in the startup world I've also seen many, many founding teams who thought they'd design the product and then figure out how to execute it later using future hires.
It's basically a meme: Usually "we have it all figured out, we just need a few engineers..."
It doesn't work out. Getting someone on the team who knows how to execute should be the top priority.
We are more than just a website/hype machine... we've sold a few $100K worth of panels to accredited investors while we get our app and platform off the ground. We are only 5 months old, but plan on bringing on project finance experience ASAP. For the time being, we lean on some of our pre-seed investors for help on that front.
I am running things fairly conservatively, the marketing site is the tip of the iceberg. We need to prove retail demand to get off the ground but the other pieces are also coming together (project finance, deal flow, transactions, engineering, etc).
Per 'doers' - my point is that 'doing' is not taught in engineering school or consulting or Goldman Sachs any more than it is in product design. In that sense it is an ethic, not a credential or professional discipline. I think we are more or less simpatico here.
> we've sold a few $100K worth of panels to accredited investors
(Accredited investor with solar experience here) - On a commercial scale that's 1 or 2 installs. Good for getting your feet wet with solar but what you're proposing is a different game entirely.
> Per 'doers' - my point is that 'doing' is not taught in engineering school or consulting or Goldman Sachs any more than it is in product design. In that sense it is an ethic, not a credential or professional discipline. I think we are more or less simpatico here.
"Doing" is definitely taught in engineering school in the context of doing engineering things.
I don't think anybody here doubts that you can "do" designs. The point is that the type of "doing" this startup needs has little to no overlap with the founders' experience. It's not enough to make hand-wavy claims that "doing is an ethic". Someone still has to do all of the business things and execution.
We've been placing 100K+ solar facilities with accredited investors for a few months now as we've gotten our private beta version off the ground. We've also been working with more experienced finance partners to structure future investments available on Legends Solar.
My wonderful cofounder hails from the art world, and has been helping to place our accredited product. She will be key in helping Legends create a resonant brand with cultural currency as we grow and evolve.
Before we raise seed or launch our retail product, we will bring some project finance experience in-house. Recruiting has been easy because people outside of climate love our brand and mission, and people inside of solar finance are often finance professionals who rarely have an outlet to share what they do for the world and the industry publicly. (You should see us as solar finance conferences, we're the bell of the ball - not kidding, we found many of our finance partners there).
I wanna push back on the idea that designers are no 'doers'... 'Doing' is an ethic, not a discipline, and there are plenty of examples of designers rising to be successful entrepreneurs (AirBnB, et al.).