Meet John Witchel | Entrepreneur

We had the good fortune of connecting with John Witchel and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi John, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
I had worked in solar for a few years and left the industry for another opportunity, but I found I really missed it working in renewables. I missed being on the right side of history. I missed working toward a meaningful impactful larger goal. So when I went looking for my next start up, I knew I wanted to get back into renewables.

My focus was to find an unsolved problem that if you found a solution, you would have a unique advantage that would make the company competitive above and beyond good execution.

Secondly, I wanted to find a problem that my personal skill set gave me a leg up. This meant software and finance. So I went looking for problems in solar that software and innovative finance might be able to solve.

Most people know solar as the business of installing panels on homes. That’s a part of it, but there’s a much bigger aspect to the industry in the financing of solar. So began the search with the simple question: What wasn’t getting financed and why?

Alright, so for those in our community who might not be familiar with your business, can you tell us more?
King Energy is my tenth startup. Like most things in life you get better with practice and that includes starting companies. King Energy tackles a very challenging problem in solar called the “Split Incentive Problem” that goes like this.

Think of the local shopping center where you get your groceries and have pizza after your kids’ soccer game. That building rarely has solar on it because the pizza shop pays for their own electricity and the landlord has no incentive to invest in solar to lower the pizza shop’s cost of electricity. The pizza shop has no incentive to invest in solar on a building he or she doesn’t own. Since neither the landlord nor the tenants have proper incentives, the result is no solar.

King Energy solves that by paying the landlord a monthly fee to rent the roof. We install the solar at our expense and we take care of everything after that. We then sell the energy from the solar to the tenants in the building at a discount to what they would have paid the local utility. Everyone one wins. The landlord makes extra rental income and the tenants save money on their electric bills. And King Energy makes enough money to pay our bills so the business is worthwhile.

As you can imagine, this is very tricky and there are a lot of moving parts to the business: what happens if the landlord needs to reroof? What happens when a tenant moves out? Who insures the system? We handle everything and make it super easy for both landlords and tenants to say yes. It’s great value to everyone.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
I live in Durango, Colorado which is in the southwest corner of the state. First, we would go wake surfing on Lake Nighthorse, then we would drink beers and hit the food trucks at 11th Street.

Next we would grab sammies from Bread and go mountain biking at Phil’s World.

Beers that evening at Ska Brewing.

All day BBQ with meat from Sunnyside Farms Market. Probably, slow cooked pork belly and ribeyes.

Then more biking, more lake time. More BBQ. Probably hit EsoTerra Ciderworks for some local cider and James Ranch for burgers at some point. More biking, more lake time.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
My daughters, Violet and Georgia were probably more inspirational to me than they know. I see them working so hard in their own lives and feel deeply motivated to also work hard in meaningful ways.

Website: www.kingenergy.com

Instagram: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jwitchel/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/king-energy/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/king_energy_usa

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KingEnergyUSA

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxF7FLau80U692ReubbFDFQ/featured