20 Things You Didn’t Know About Aurora Solar
Aurora Solar is a tech startup that provides software as a service for the solar industry. The company has recently made the news with an influx of investor interest to boost its growth and expansion. It has the potential to become a game-changer as the world moves toward cleaner and more environmentally friendly ways to power our cities. The company is in the right place at the right time in history to help become a part of new and exciting changes in the power industry. To help you become better acquainted with this innovative solutions company, here are 20 things you didn’t know about Aurora Solar.
1. Aurora Solar uses aerial imaging
According to Techcrunch, Aurora Solar takes a more streamlined approach for measuring the roofs of houses before solar panel installation. The company provides equipment and software that provides aerial scans to produce images of the areas where solar panels are to be installed. It’s a more streamlined and faster approach than the previous method of climbing up on a roof and manually measuring the rooftop area.
2. The processes for Aurora Solar’s services are complex
Although the solutions provided by Aurora Solar are simpler for clients, there is a lot that goes into the process of obtaining aerial scans and imagery. It involves the collection of a massive amount of data for the topography, the physical and the infrastructure of cities. The service must navigate power lines, and even measure how the sun hits certain locations. It involves the use of satellite imagery and aerial lidar scans, and it is not as simple to obtain the massive data collection as it appears. The result is a simplification for clients (solar installers), however.
3. Aurora Solar’s remote services provide a fast feasibility study
Many potential solar customers must first learn the facts about their location. The truth is that not all homes or businesses are in the ideal location to install solar energy panels. While it’s a potentially money-saving solution, in the long run, there might be factors involved that make it a bad idea for certain locations. Aurora Solar uses a system that is operated remotely to gather data quickly and accurately about a location, to determine if solar installation makes sense for the location. Aurora Solar provides a fast turnaround for providing the necessary data to determine the costs of such installations and requirements for the size and angle of the panes that would be most appropriate. It provides solar companies with the data that allows them to have meaningful conversations with potential customers that relate to the feasibility of installing solar power panels in their homes or businesses.
4. Aurora Solar helps make the cost of solar installation more affordable
One of the benefits that Aurora Solar provides solar companies is the ability to reduce the cost of solar panel installation. It’s common for a quote to represent double the actual cost of the hardware and other equipment that goes into an installation. Other charges are due to the high amount of time and effort required for the setup of a system. The charges are legitimate as they are made for design, and the legwork involved in making assessments, measurements, and so forth. Solar companies that rely on Aurora Solar’s solutions decrease the amount of time and effort required to serve clients, therefore, reducing their overhead costs. They can provide solar panel installations for less of a cost, which makes their products and service more affordable to a broader segment of the population. This is how Aurora Solar is set to be a game-changer in the solar power industry.
5. Aurora Solar is at a critical phase of development
The CEO of Aurora Solar explained that the business does not provide solar installations or perform its lidar flights, but the cost of its enterprise-scale software is expensive. The company is raising funds to finance the further development and expansion of its current operation to help meet the demand for its services, which is high. So far, Aurora Solar’s software solutions have been used to evaluate around 5 million different solar projects. Impressively, a fifth of those assessments has resulted in projects being completed. This is a drop in the bucket for meeting the demand, however. It represents just two percent of the estimated market for the services.
6. Aurora Solar began as a bootstrapped operation
The co-founders of Aurora Solar discussed the history of the 8-year-old enterprise. The first five years involved raising investor funding for the development and creation of the software solutions, and a million dollars only took them so far because of the high overhead costs of the process. Being a SaaS enterprise, a lot goes into creating complex software solutions. Fundraising is essential at this stage of development. Although Aurora Solar has been fully operational, it’s not coming close to meeting the current and projected future demand for this type of service. There is much more to do and it’s going to require hundreds of millions more in overhead expenses.
7. Aurora Solar falls under four industry categories
According to Crunchbase, Aurora Solar is a complex tech startup that falls under four major industry classifications. It is a software developer, that also supplies Software-as-a-service for its clients. It is also categorized under the industries of clean energy, renewable energy, and solar.
8. Aurora Solar empowers engineers and solar companies
The software provided by Aurora Solar is empowering for solar companies and engineers who must deal with multiple time-consuming tasks to serve their customers. The cloud-based software solutions provide solar PV engineering design that allows for better workflow management for solar companies. It also opens up more precise and meaningful conversations among all stakeholders in the installation process, such as sales and customer conversations, and between solar installers and the companies that finance these ventures. Much data is considered when determining whether or not a given project will be a good value for its cost. Aurora Solar provides major stakeholders with accurate data more quickly to help them move to meaningful conversations more quickly.
9. Aurora Solar is led by a ten-member executive team
The executive leadership team for Aurora Solar is comprised of ten people. Christopher Hopper serves as co-founder, with co-founder Samuel Adeyemo serving as the chief operating officer. Dn Smolkin is the head of people operations. Katherine Burk leads the product marketing department. Rahul Nihalani is the senior product manager. Marc Georgious is the senior client engagement manager. Rahul Pathak is the vice president of engineering, and Sunny Wang is the director of government affairs and communications. This is a small yet dynamic team of talented professionals.
10. Aurora Solar has a five-member board of directors
The board of Aurora Solar is comprised of five members. Board members provide advisement for developing the strategic plan for the company and offer their professional expertise for moving the company forward into the future. Shvetank Jain serves on the board. He is a partner at S28 Capital and has founded one organization. Christopher Hopper and Samuel Adeyemo both sit on the board representing Aurora Solar’s executive leadership team. Will Griffith joined the board in December of 2020. He is a founding partner at Iconiq Capital. He is an investor who currently serves on 42 different board and advisory committees. Doug Pepper is the fifth board member. He is a general partner at Iconiq Capital with 2 portfolio companies and 2 exits.
11. Aurora Solar uses a complex array of technologies
The website alone for Aurora Solar relies upon a complicated collection of 49 active technologies to power the site. The 49 technologies are distributed across 34 different technology products. These include Google Analytics, jQuery, HTML5, Viewport Meta, iPhone Mobile Compatible, and dozens more. The technology used is expensive and contributes to a high overhead cost for running the company.
12. Interest is growing in Aurora Solar
We were impressed to learn that Aurora Solar is experiencing a surge in interest in the products and services it offers. The monthly visits rate analytics show that there is an average of 85,446 visitors to the website monthly. This represents a monthly growth rate of 14.33 percent. This is a significant indicator that interest in the products is growing.
13. Most interest in Aurora Solar is from the United States
Aurora Solar’s website traffic comes from a variety of different countries throughout the world, but most of the visitors are from the United States. Analytics for the site traffic has ranked Aurora Solar as number 314,564 among all websites in the world that are registered on the web. Seventy-seven percent of visitors are from the United States showing a 6.45 percent monthly growth in visits. Six percent originate in Poland, with three percent from the country of India. Two percent of visitors are from Canada with an eight percent growth rate, and two percent come from Australia.
14. Aurora Solar has participated in three funding rounds
Aurora Solar is financially backed by venture capital funding. The company has raised a total of $3.13.5 million from investors. The most recent round of funding closed on May 24, 2021. This was a Series C round of funding.
15. Investor confidence is high for the enterprise
Aurora Solar has gained the confidence of six venture capital investors. Each of the investors believes that the company will advance to a state of profitability that will provide them with a good return on the investments made. Investor confidence is high because they’ve contributed more than $300 million in support so far.
16. Aurora Solar has 6 investors.
A total of six different investors support the fundraising efforts for Aurora Solar. The most recent investors to join the effort are Energize Ventures and Iconiq Capital. Other investors include Fifth Wall, Coatue, S28 Capital, and Pear Venture Capital. Fifth Wall, Iconiq, and Coatue are the lead investors.
17. Aurora Solar has a small workforce
According to its LinkedIn page, Aurora Solar operates with a small workforce. The headcount is under 200 employees. So far, 165 professionals are working for the enterprise but we believe this is about to change.
18. Aurora Solar is hiring
We also discovered that Aurora Solar is getting ready for a period of growth and expansion. The company has announced 32 new job openings. The majority of these jobs are listed as remote opportunities for workers who live within the United States. Some of them require work at a physical location with most in San Francisco, and a few in the state of Oregon. At this point in the company’s development, all offices and jobs are maintained within the borders of the United States. Aurora Solar has not yet expanded into foreign countries with its presence.
19. Aurora Solar is a privately held company
You won’t find Aurora Solar listed on any of the public stock exchanges. The owners of the business have kept the business as a privately held operation. There has not been any public discussion about the possibility of filing for an IPO or for going public, offering shares at this time. So far, Aurora Solar is doing very well with the support of its six powerful venture capital investors. It will likely continue to function as a privately owned company in the foreseeable future.
20. Aurora Solar is forming new partnerships
According to Alt Energy Magazine, Aurora Solar is now partnering with other companies in the solar power industry to expand its outreach. It formed an agreement with Q Cells, an Irvine, California-based total energy solutions provider in the solar cells, module, and energy storage niche of the industry. The partnership will help Q Cells’ installers expand their revenue and streamline their delivery processes, thanks to the benefits of the software from Aurora Solar. The deal will provide partner program members of Q Cells with exclusive access. This was a brilliant move that will help both companies to grow and prosper.
