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Comment by yepnopemaybe | Hacker News Reader

These will be commercial and utility scale solar facilities. We may get into residential in the future!

Show your work. Justify your ROI estimate.

It will depend on so many factors. Our current accredited investors are getting about 10%+, but that's only because they have access to tax equity benefits.

We are still in an early stage of creating the financial product, and the realized returns will be a function of the risk profile we choose (i.e. will there be construction risk, insurance, who is the power purchaser, etc.)

Don't worry, you'll get a detailed financial profile/pro forma before you have to make a investment decision.

So let me get this straight. You are soliciting engagement and don’t even have the financials worked out?

I'd say we are 80% of the way there - every solar facility will have different traits and economics as an investment. We have the legal infrastructure and finance partners to make it happen pretty quick.

As with any investment, we can't make claims about financials until everything is finalized and vetted. That will have to wait until we have a pro forma ready to go. Soliciting 'indications of interest' is a fairly common practice across all industries.

To be clear, we are already financing larger $100K+ deals with friendly investors in our network as we design and engineer a product for a larger audience.

You are soliciting "indications of interest" with an estimated 7.3% yield with no justification whatsoever on the site to back it up.

That's why it's 'no commitment', but I would not set exceptions at 7.3% if I did not expect the product to be at or near that number. Our accredited investors do better, but again, that's with tax equity.

Without explaining your expectations that 7.3 number is nothing more than wishful thinking to someone that might be interested in your product. On top of that, your accredited investors have a short track record of returns and do not reflect the product you are soliciting - you admit it isn’t the same return structure. Without showing your work you are going to have a hard time convincing someone this is worthy of a commitment.

Will you be financing future farms, or does this only include existing farms?

For the time being, we are working with either newly operational or existing solar farms. Once we have a community of investors, a lot of doors will open in terms of the kinds of financings we'll be able to accommodate.

For the time being, we want to keep our investors our of construction risk and tell a super simple story through our design. More to come though.

It's a cool idea. I like it.

A product I'd jump at is if you pay me back in electron volts end-to-end, wherever I am. Is that feasible? Say I live in an apartment block. I really want to go solar, but have no roof or land. I'll pay you to erect and manage 1kW of panels out on the farm for me and I get back, say 750W (you skim 25%). But I get it through my utility company (it just comes off my bill).

I'd say that we are like Community Solar (what you described) but more portable. We combine aspects of stock equity with aspects of community solar. A different model, but one that can exist in symbiosis with Community.

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