Leadership Profile: Tom Werner (Part 3)

In this next segment of the interview, Tom takes us through the history of SunPower. From the inception, it was a company driven by innovation, yet faced the common business challenges which have been the demise of numerous other hi-tech startups.

SM: Can you briefly tell us about the history of SunPower? TW: SunPower is, in a lot of ways, a classic Silicon Valley startup. You have a professor from Stanford who is brilliant, Dick Swanson, and like a lot of professors he saw the solution to a problem and knew he could turn it into a great business but probably did not appreciate, at least as much, all of the other aspects of the business such as getting the right customers, getting margins, and all of those things.

SM: Building businesses are for lesser mortals like us! TW: Sure! We are kidding around a bit, but it takes complementary skills. Dick had these great ideas; among them was his realization that silicon costs a lot of money, so he built a high efficiency solar cell and used concentrators or mirrors to shine a lot of light on that cell.

Doing so allows you to divide the cost of silicon by a lot of power. A lot of light is shone on this silicon solar cell, and more of that light is converted to energy with higher efficiency. It was VC funded, and during early 1985 to 1989 it became a real corporation. From 1989 through the better part of the decade, Dick and his founding team pursued the dream of concentrator solar power.

It turned out that all of the mechanics and balance system costs, everything except for the silicon, were also very expensive. Also, when you concentrate the sun you also want to track the sun, and the cost of doing so was quite high. Dick and his team spent the better part of a decade figuring out better ways to track the sun and get things out of it.

Meanwhile what is known as the One Sun, or non-concentrated market, which was the mainstream photovoltaic market, was chugging along averaging 20% growth.

(to be continued)
(Part 2)
(Part 1)

This segment is part 3 in the series : Leadership Profile: Tom Werner
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