I created a new managers training for our employees (via an email sequence of the best short form content I've found over the years) and thought it could be interesting to send to others to see if it helps. Feel free to reach out with any questions and hope it's useful!
Bright is hiring a Software Engineer to help bring solar to developing countries - more here: www.thinkbright.mx/jobs
You’ll help build out Bright’s technology – a wide range of projects, including:
- Building an automated solar monitoring and alerting system from scratch (data analysis + visualization, solar modeling).
- Data integrations with existing Mexican energy infrastructure (reverse engineering, API integrations).
- Design / architect / implement a web platform for homeowners, local solar partners, and financiers (web technologies, API design, backend software).
- Working with finance, operations, investors and customers to develop a deep empathy for Bright’s end users, iterating quickly.
Here’s what we’re looking for:
- 5+ years of professional full-stack experience. You’ve led development in large projects before. You’ve built stuff from the ground up before. You’ve used a well-known web framework before (Django/Python, Rails/Ruby, etc.).
- Working knowledge of ops and efficient monitoring. You’ve carried a pager before. We’re on AWS+Docker.
- Versatility: In addition to having an intimate knowledge of the whole web stack, you understand how all the pieces fit together (front-end, database, network layer, etc.) and how they will impact the performance of our platform.
- Practical experience with unit testing and functional testing.
- Experience working with various relational databases (Postgres, MySQL, etc.), non-relational databases (Redis, Cassandra, etc.), and caching systems (memcached).
- Strong opinions on technology decisions. We’re currently using React backed by Node.js, but we’re open to the right tool for the job.
- Strong architecture skills. You know how to build highly scalable, robust, and fault-tolerant services that support our unique rate-of-growth requirements.
- Prior startup experience and product intuition is a plus
Bright is a distributed solar utility for the developing world. We're funded by YC, First Round Capital, and the founders of PayPal, Sunrun, Stripe, and Twitch, and we're looking for our first engineer (full-stack) to build a platform that will enable millions in the developing world to get access to cleaner and cheaper electricity. As one of our earliest and most important hires you'll work directly with our CEO and play a critical role in building the company's DNA.
Apply: Along with your resume, please include links to any projects you've built to jonah@thinkbright.mx.
Indeed! The customer can become the owner at some point usually between year 10 and year 20 if of interest. Also, we're fascinated by PAYG solar installations and plan on supporting them in any way we can. An awesome one in Mexico is http://ilumexico.mx/.
Fascinating - @spiritplumber, would you be willing to email me at jonah@thinkbright.co to discuss further? We haven't encountered this problem since we're targeting safe areas but I would love to learn more.
Great questions. Although there is a 100% depreciation in year one tax benefit (that's complicated to capture unfortunately), the beauty of this market is that its actually just more economic to produce energy from solar panels than buy from the grid for unsubsidized customers. Sonora, Jalisco, and many of the other locations you mentioned are great markets and very economic. The driving reason is that electricity is quite expensive when unsubsidized by the government.
Great point - we often see bills for the highest electricity consumers between 1,500 and 5,000 pesos per month, which is around $100 to $350 USDs per month
SCTY is definitely a great model and has done amazing things in the US. The key difference with Bright is we focus just on software and finance to enable local Mexican installers to scale. In comparison, SCTY is a totally integrated entity and installs all of its own projects. Analytics around underwriting to protect project investors is a key element for us as well.
Great point about zero-down solar and we're by no means wed to any one structure to enable solar for the masses (lease, loan, PPA, etc.). Our goal is to get solar on as many houses as possible.
Depending on where you go, you'll have to integrate yourself into the community if you want to do business -- just showing up and "being gringos" will result in getting a cold shoulder in a lot of situations.
Great point. Today, I'm actually the only team member not Mexican (and in Mexico) and continuing to grow this way is definitely a key part of the plan.
