As a little girl growing up in Seoul, Korea, and then later upstate New York, Alice spent many days learning how a simple fold can become a structure. Origami forms were taught to her by her mother, who also taught Alice how to sew her own clothes. Always creative, fascinated by design, structure and forms, Alice studied architecture at Penn State where she obtained her undergraduate degree and went on to earn her Masters in Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania.
With emerging trends in material technology resulting in smarter, lighter, faster, sustainable fabrication, Alice started to sew solar panels to fabric as early experiments for harnessing solar energy with softer, malleable material. She became focused on solar technology and finding ways to create clean energy solutions upon learning her son Quinn was diagnosed with asthma.
While teaching as a Professor in Architecture and Material Technology at Columbia University, Alice created early prototypes of solar lights with her students. Still not satisfied, and fuelled by her passion for helping the underserved, Alice invented the world’s only self-inflatable, portable solar light, eliminating the need for a mouth nozzle. This ensured a healthy, sanitary method to inflate. Alice named this invention the SolarPuff™ and conducted three years of field testing in Haiti. In 2015 she launched Solight Design and initiated a Kickstarter program with unprecedented results. She went on to win numerous awards including the US Patent Award for Humanity and her products have been exhibited at MOMA, the Modern Museum of Art in New York City.
Please tell us a little bit about your company – what is Solight Design all about?
We are a solar innovation company, bringing solar to every household. We design and develop solar lighting and power solutions for every home. From Nigeria or New York, we believe we all have the power to create change by using solar in our lives. You don’t need to spend thousands of dollars to use solar in your life. We all have the power to help heal the planet by using individualized infrastructure. We give people the power to hold the sun in your hands. Energy is all around us, and it’s free, and limitless. By using solar products, collectively we can lower CO2 emissions one light at a time.
1 solarpuff used a few hours a day instead of a regular light bulb, one person can save over 90lbs of carbon emissions a year. Multiplied by 200 million people is 9 million tons.
We founded this company for three reasons:
1.6 Billion people live without access to electricity, they resort to kerosene which is deadly and toxic. Two million children die from the pollution of kerosene and most communities living in these regions spend up to 30% of their income on kerosene.
Climate change is real, and we all have to power to make a difference to change the world.
Believe in the power of self-reliance and that one small thing can make a huge impact if we all work together to create change. We don’t need to tap into the grid all the time. This is individualized infrastructure, light and power any time anywhere.
What would you say are the top 3 skills needed to be a successful entrepreneur, and why?
Empathy: This has been overlooked in corporate structure historically. It is the origin of success with negotiations, raising investment, customer service, sales, effective teamwork, leadership, education and knowledge transfer.
Resourcefulness: A good entrepreneur can jump out of an airplane and build a parachute on the way down. —it’s in line with– “an entrepreneur should have the hands of an angel and mind of a thief.” Resourcefulness is about one part organization of chaos, two parts seeing around corners, and one part imagination.
Grit: Perseverance and purpose, diligence and vigilance are pandamount—never ever give up.
What are your plans for the future, how do you plan to grow this company?
We are planning an intensive marketing campaign which will differentiate us from our competitors leveraging our authenticity and superior design.
What were the top three mistakes you made starting your business, and what did you learn from them?
I made so many mistakes, I don’t know where to begin. The biggest mistake, I think was not believing in myself-trusting the intuition, your gut. I put too much trust in others to deliver on things that never materialized. I’m very grateful for those mistakes because it prepared me to overcome any challenge. Now trusting my data, history, and experience, I’ve learned so much.
How do you go about marketing your business, and what has been the most successful form of marketing for you?
We take marketing very seriously. Marketing is a huge responsibility to communicate to your customers why we do what we do. Now more than ever, it’s so important to be real, sincere, and authentic with your brand and messaging. Connection and engagement are critically important now as the pandemic has quite frankly decimated that on so many levels. The days of hyping glamor for glam sake and promoting false perfection imagery are over. What matters to us, we’ve found out, is that those values matter to everyone. And that’s authenticity, transparency, integrity, innovation, education. People want to be inspired. Wonder, awe, and dignity should be just as important as affordability.
What have been your biggest challenges and how did you overcome them?
I had hired a new CEO to build the revenue and they promised growth, then after 12 months of bad management, I had to let them go. I should have not waited so long. No one ever says “Gosh — I wish I had waited longer to let someone go!”
What is the one thing you wish you knew before starting your business?
How to vet the RIGHT people for your business.
What are the top 3 online tools and resources you’re currently using to grow your company?
- Teams
- Upwork
- Quickbooks
What are three books or courses would you recommend to entrepreneurs?
- The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
- Ride of a Lifetime by Rober Igar
- Shoe Dog by Phil Knight
- Never split the difference by Chris Voss
- Good to Great By Jim Collins
If you had the chance to start your career over again what would you do differently?
I probably would not change the trajectory of my career. But if I did, I’d trust my intuition more when I was younger.
If you only had $1000 dollars to start a new business, knowing everything you know now, how would you spend it?
I would not spend any of it until I did the research and understood a tremendous problem that is hindering or harming people or our environment. And ask yourself “how can we make this better?” Once there is a clear understanding of how the source of that problem could be re-designed and made better, assess what the potential impact would be and how many people it would help.
Then I’d spend the money to build a prototype on my own and test it. It will probably take several if not hundreds of iterations. With the SEEUS95 mask, I spent about a few hundred on materials for prototyping-If there’s any money left after making something tangible and testing it with good feedback-then use the rest to file a company, trademark it, and launch a campaign for proof of concept.
What is your favorite quote?
“The risk of doing nothing is greater than the risk of being wrong.”
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
― Theodore Roosevelt
How can we get in touch with you?
You can go to our website solight-design.com and email us, I get every email that comes in because I like to understand and monitor feedback from our followers and customers, you can also email me directly at alice@solight-design.com.
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