ModSolar takes guesswork out of installing solar

MIKE DERSHOWITZ, 39, of Bryn Mawr, is co-founder and president of ModSolar, an Ardmore B2B company that supports solar installers. ModSolar, which began in 2011, has a software platform enabling the installer to use a satellite snapshot of a customer's roof and design the ideal solar array on a mobile device or web browser, reducing expenses.

Q: How'd you come up with the idea for ModSolar?

A: I was at a home show and noticed home-improvement and solar companies making sales pitches and few used technology. It was basic sales methods. I did research on others in solar; no one had streamlined the process from design to sale.

Q: Startup money?

A: We're still completely bootstrapped. I invested $3,500 of my own money.

Q: What's the biz do?

A: We provide software-as-a-service to solar companies. If you're an installer and want to put panels on somebody's roof, you must figure out how many, what it's going to cost, how much energy it's going to produce and how you're going to get it financed. We streamline that process and reduce their costs.

Q: The biz model?

A: We license the software on a per-seat monthly basis to installers and solar-finance companies. Most installers pay $100 per month per user. Obviously, that number goes down the more people you have on your system. If the installer has three people in their company, it's $100 per user; if they have 10 people, it's about $83 per user.

Q: Value proposition?

A: A process that used to take eight hours - driving to a site, getting up on a roof, measuring, bringing that back to the office, plotting it out - we've cut to five minutes.

Q: Your customers?

A: Both solar installers and solar-financing companies.

Q: With whom do you compete, and how do you differ?

A: Lots of folks are tackling the design-and-proposal process. We and Clean Power Finance are the only two doing design-to-transacting. There are captive platforms like Solar City and Sun Power, but it's custom to them. Our platform is open so you can tailor it to your needs.

Q: What's been the biggest challenge growing the biz?

A: Finding the right people who can do the work and keeping them motivated.

Q: How big a biz is this?

A: We have 15 employees in Ardmore, one in Massachusetts, and software-development teams in Romania and the Philippines. We've doubled revenues annually since 2011 and we're on track to do 125 percent over 2013.

Q: What's next?

A: Right now, on any given day in the U.S., between 7 percent and 12 percent of the solar industry starts their process on ModSolar. In three to five years, we'd like to see that at 30 percent.