Back in Tel Aviv University we had a pleasure of meeting with Lior Handelsman – partner at Grove Ventures and a co-founder of Solar Edge. In short ‘solar energy won’.
Lior Handelsman had quite a journey with Solar Edge. One of the interesting differentiators of the team was the fact that there were 5 co-founders - major red flag for the investors, yet in the case of the Solar Edge their synergies were their biggest strengths. Yet their journey was not that smooth.
The first hurdle that the 5 co-founders experienced was difficulty in determining which market to target. Their initial instinct was to go to the USA, only to find out that their idea is great, and the technology is impressive, but the competitors are oligopolies, that will leave no space for a newcomer. After 20 ‘no’s’ from the VCs Solar Edge founders finally received honest advice – ‘change the market’.
In 2007 they switched their market to Europe, and business was booming. Comfortable and happy Solar Edge had nothing to fear, but here comes 2008 when Lior was faced with the news that National Semiconductor is investing millions into the development of web-connected solar energy. Lior’s first thoughts? Fear! There’s a huge competitor coming in with similar technology but more power. What was the bottom line? National Semiconductor’s product was inferior and expensive. This competition was in fact a good sign, as they invested millions in market education. This was one of the biggest lessons any entrepreneur learns – do not fear the competition, but rather embrace it. The opportunity was still there but yet another hurdle was formed for Solar Edge, in 2010 electronic component crisis hits the market. However, yet again, a potential disaster is turned into an advantage, prolonged lead times have formed an opportunity, as customers would change suppliers based on the product availability, leaving Solar Edge exposed to many new clients. In 2015 Solar Edge IPO’d on NASDAQ with a ticker SEDG at a $700M valuation. That same year Lior meets Elon Musk at the time when Tesla was working on a secret project - Power Wall - the battery for Tesla cars. During the meeting Lior shared Solar Edge’s technology which has led to publicly announced collaboration between the two companies, 5 years later however Solar Edge was replaced. Today Solar Edge is valued at $20B.
Israelis' degree of separation is 1/2 as opposed to the worlds number that is 6, meaning that it is very easy to get a good advice here. Today Solar Edge has multiple production countries, with Israel being fully robotic.
