About CTLR’s #HumansOfCleantech

Modeled after the New York Times' Humans of New York series, this is an idea by Peter Kelley and the RenewComm team for us to showcase our members!

Follow #humansofcleantech on LinkedIn for more in this series. #climatetech #energytransition #cleantechleadersroundtable 

“When I was 11 or 12, I set up a company called Hostile Web Hosting. I had clients from New Zealand mailing $35 monthly checks to host their website. I tried to get a server in my home and the company called me and said, ‘You’re in a residential area. You can’t get this.’

“I EVENTUALLY ENDED UP GETTING THE SERVER, BUT THEN SENT IT TO A COMPANY TO CO-LOCATE AT THEIR DATA CENTER. I PAID THEM, AND THEY TOOK IT, AND DISABLED MY ACCESS. MY SERVER WAS GONE. IT WAS DEFINITELY A USEFUL EXPERIENCE AT THAT YOUNG AGE, KIND OF EXPERIMENTING AND SEEING HOW THINGS OPERATE.

“In high school I was distracted. I certainly enjoyed the social environment, but I was not as productive as the earlier years when I taught myself C++ and Visual Basic.

“When I was in college some friends and I started reselling iPhones on the Internet. I came up with another business idea to sell solar panels and renewable energy products. My mind just clicked: ‘You make electricity from the sun.’ 

“I knew nothing about solar, nothing at all. I printed out flyers and went door-to-door for nine hours a day through Queens, New York. I got my friends to help, and we’d get calls from people who were interested. We had no idea what to do because we knew nothing about this. We called another company that did solar and tried to get them to bridge the gap. It was a little challenging. 

“THEN AN ENERGY-EFFICIENCY COMPANY IN BUFFALO HIRED ME TO START UP THEIR SOLAR BUSINESS AND FIGURE IT OUT. OH, PERFECT! I'M IN COLLEGE, BUT I'D LOVE TO DO THAT.

“We had a residential project where the wife just had a baby. They were redoing their home with geothermal, solar, all these great items. The company that we hired to do the geothermal ended up taking about 70% of the project money and vanishing. The couple’s heating system was taken out and I'm like, ‘Oh my God, what do we do?’ 

"In our first year, without any prior experience in drilling geothermal wells or setting up HVAC systems, we had to dive right in. We started from scratch: watching Youtube videos, cutting holes in the floor, constructing a duct system, and piecing it all together. One individual had experience operating equipment. We found a NJ company to rent us a drill rig, it was all-hands-on-deck. We got it done with creativity, to overcome the hurdles and adapt to our surroundings.

“I’m excited about the technological advances in renewable energy, in electric vehicles, in every single thing we're doing in cleantech. These are very complex problems. I know that I and a lot of other people were attracted to the challenge. We are problem solvers and there’s a good chance that some things that we try are not going to be successful. Just keep doing it, to find that path.”

David Magid, Managing Partner and Founder of YSGSolar, is a serial entrepreneur who’s never afraid to get his hands dirty if it means he will learn more about his business. In 2018, he was named to Forbes’ “30 Under 30” list for energy.