Six Lessons Learned From the Road to $10 Billion

Inside OpenSolar’s milestone and what it says about the future of clean energy

Today, I’m thrilled to share something big: OpenSolar has officially surpassed $10 billion in cumulative solar sales and installations. 

That’s $10 billion in ambition turned into action. In homes, businesses, and communities ditching the fossil default and choosing the future.

It’s more than a major milestone for us, it's irrefutable proof of what’s working in the market. It signals that real-world climate action is happening right now, not in 2030, not "after innovation," not once the “perfect” policy framework materializes.

It signals that when you remove friction, give professionals the tools they need, and don’t make them pay for software just to do their job, they run with it.

And most of all, it signals that we’re just getting started.

This milestone didn’t happen by accident. Since Adam and I co-founded OpenSolar in 2017, our team has been on a mission to remove the friction holding solar back. Every feature, every design decision, every late-night meeting came down to one question: Will this help installers move faster and win more work?

Here’s what we’ve learned along the way to $10 Billion:

1. Free access unlocks scale Solar pros don’t need more paywalls. They need software that works, and works for them. By keeping OpenSolar free, we scaled faster and removed barriers that slowed the industry down.

2. Product and partners drive community We didn’t throw money at growth. We built something people actually wanted to use. Every new user didn’t come from ads, they often came from partners and  installers saying, “Hey, you’ve got to try this thing.”

3. Move fast or miss out Installers live and die by how fast they can move. Speed to quote, speed to sale, speed to install. We obsessed over cutting seconds, then minutes, then days from every step.

4. The climate fight is won behind the scenes It’s not just the big announcements or global summits, and it’s certainly not the frequently disastrous policy decisions from lawmakers. It’s the proposal sent on a Tuesday night, the permit application that doesn’t get stuck, the homeowner who says “yes” because they got a design that actually made sense. That’s where this battle is being won: in the quiet, steady work of professionals using better tools, and in smart, pragmatic decisions being made by homeowners to cut their energy costs and improve their standard of living

5. Staying open makes you resilient We could’ve narrowed our focus, added expensive premium features, raised paywalls. Instead, we stayed open. That openness to users, to feedback, to the world made us stronger.

6. The data always beats the doomers Sentiment lags reality. While some papers still say renewables are "too expensive," April 2025 marked the first time solar surpassed nuclear, now contributing over 10% of global power, and it was way back in October 2020 that solar became the world’s cheapest source of energy. The S-Curve predicted it. The data proves it. Yet the stories we tell in the media are still stuck in 2015… it’s time to update the narrative!

What’s Next? Well, $20 billion’s not going to sell itself.

We’re entering the #SolarDecade with a global community that’s proving, every day, what’s possible when the right tech meets the right mission.

So: thank you. To the installers, the early adopters, the partners and the believers. This is your milestone too.

Thank you for reading, let’s keep going. Sunshine’s got work to do.

Birchy