How to build tech that transforms commercial real-estate.
Source: Lumen
In the summer of 2024, I launched a series of interviews for the Xooglers in Climate Community, aimed at inspiring and educating our climate tech community and aspiring entrepreneurs.
The goal was to share valuable insights from founders tackling critical challenges in the space, providing a behind-the-scenes look at their journeys, strategies, and the obstacles they've overcome.
Our September session featured Peter Light, Founder and CEO of Lumen Energy.
Here are some of the takeaways from our conversation and you can find the full video here.
Peter builds on 2 decades of expertise in commercializing technology that advances our global transition to carbon-free energy. Peter previously co-founded the green fuel company Ohmium, co-founded the power grid moonshot Tapestry Google X, led Product Management at Bloom Energy, and started his career at the Rocky Mountain Institute.
“Commercial buildings use about 40% of the electricity in the US. There’s 6 million of them and there’s only about 3 or 4% penetration of solar across these rooftops.
Why aren’t real estate owners doing this? I just fell in love with that question.”
Finding opportunities at the steam of different industries
Lumen Energy's mission is to accelerate the decarbonization of commercial real estate by making clean energy deployment simple, cost-effective, and scalable.
They aim to help property owners reduce their carbon footprint while maximizing financial returns, addressing the complexities of each unique building’s energy needs.
They see tremendous opportunity at the intersection of different fields—energy, technology, finance, and real estate. Their team combines expertise in software engineering, data science, and project finance, allowing them to navigate the complexities of clean energy deployment. For example, the financial side—especially navigating tax credits and incentives like those from the Inflation Reduction Act—can be particularly challenging. Having deep expertise in project finance is crucial to ensure that our solutions are both economically viable and scalable.
“There are a lot of opportunities at the seams of different fields of knowledge and adjacent industries.”
Refining their Go-to-Market strategy
Lumen Energy initially explored working with utilities but quickly pivoted to targeting commercial real estate owners directly. By focusing on large-scale owners who manage portfolios of hundreds or thousands of buildings, Peter and his team could offer a scalable solution that pinpoints which properties can best benefit from solar and energy-saving technologies. A key turning point was realizing that building owners wanted straightforward financial answers—what they could save, and how fast they could see a return on investment.
Source: Lumen Energy "One source of solar data"
This insight shaped Lumen’s core product offering: software that enables rapid assessment of commercial properties, simplifying decision-making, and helping building owners unlock economic value from decarbonization.
Build around the voice of the customer
When it comes to building a product and refining the go-to-market strategy, Peter offers practical advice: “Set a goal of 100 conversations every 2 weeks or something like that. Just setting a quantitative goal of just getting the reps is one good practice. Recording calls is great. You just build up your own data set, you're training your own neural net to just find out what are the patterns here. And then make sure you reserve time to go look back and assess [...] what is sticking out here? What did I learn this week?”
At Lumen, they use these insights to keep the entire team aligned with customer needs: “We have a Slack channel Voice Of the Customer, and just encourage people to post liberally on that, so that it's just broadcast to the whole company all the time, and just verbatim. Here are the words that people said, and here's a link to the conversation.”
De-risk adoption with case studies and the right language-market fit
Peter underscores the role of clear communication, stating that Lumen’s success hinges on making complex energy decisions "safe" and straightforward for building owners. They’ve adopted a strategic marketing approach that leverages case studies and real-world examples to build trust. Demonstrating tangible financial and environmental benefits helps de-risk the decision for potential clients.
For founders looking to raise capital, Peter advises early engagement with investors: “If you really feel like you're onto something, and you think you want to speak with VCs, [...] there's the old sort of paradigm of the author, and the editor, meaning the founding team being the sort of author group and the venture community being the editor. [...] They may not see and understand the thing that you're working on now or yet, but it's a great way to get feedback.”
For early-stage founders, Peter stresses the importance of language-market fit—ensuring that the way you talk about your product resonates directly with your target market. His approach involves regular customer conversations to capture the real language of their challenges, which then informs both product development and messaging.
Scaling
Lumen Energy’s growth strategy revolves around refining its technology to offer holistic solutions for a range of commercial buildings, each with unique energy profiles. They focus on optimizing existing customer relationships, allowing them to scale across portfolios nationally. Looking ahead, Peter envisions further automating their platform to allow broader adoption without sacrificing the rigor required by real estate owners and financiers.
“Going from a world that was 6 billion people to 9 billion people by mid-century, if you just look at the GDP growth and energy per capita, it really goes up as GDP rises. I’m deeply committed to finding ways to allow that energy use to increase but have the carbon impact go down. It’s bracing math and it requires essentially a reimagining and a transition of infrastructure.”
The takeaways
Find the opportunity at the intersection of different fields
Be ready to pivot, especially in your go-to-market
Prioritize finding the right language-market fit
Create a habit of talking to a lot of customers and sharing widely
Get early testimonials to remove fears and uncertainty