That way, buyers could claim green tax credits while using the energy bill savings for monthly payments.īarnard shopped his idea to dozens of banks. Now he wanted to finance homeowner purchases-with no money down. Paramount had either leased solar systems to homeowners or sold them outright. Barnard left to pursue his next brainstorm. That year, SolarCity bought Paramount Solar for $120 million and made Barnard its chief revenue officer.īy 2016, SolarCity was struggling and being acquired by Musk’s Tesla. Good move: By 2013, Barnard’s company, Paramount Solar, was bringing in 40% of his business.

He and mortgage partner Dawson would build a brand-new online residential solar sales operation all by themselves, so long as SolarCity would handle the installations. Rive later delivered their verdict: Solar panel installation was too complicated to be sold online. After hearing his spiel, they kicked him out of the room to caucus. Within two weeks, Barnard was pitching execs at SolarCity’s Silicon Valley offices.

He left a voicemail for Lyndon Rive, the CEO and cofounder of SolarCity, a company partly funded by Rive’s cousin Elon Musk. Barnard started cold-calling solar industry honchos. Yet even then he was hatching his next big idea: selling solar power to homeowners virtually. “They say you’re never a real CEO until you go through a near-death experience. As mortgage volume fell 75%, Barnard was forced to fire or furlough more than half of his 600 employees. It was crazy,” he says.īy 2009, Paramount Equity was reeling from the housing bust. “That day, when it hit, we received about 150 phone calls. They were down to their last $20,000 when Barnard personally recorded a local radio ad. They scraped together $150,000 and set up shop in Sacramento. In 2003, at age 30, he persuaded two college friends, Matt Dawson and Jason Walker, who were in the mortgage brokerage business back in Missouri, to join him in launching Paramount Equity Mortgage, an early attempt to take online the paper-intensive business of applying for a mortgage. RADOSLAV ZILINSKY/GETTY IMAGESīarnard didn’t just idolize Oracle founder Larry Ellison-he wanted to be him. DEMAND FLARE | Between power outages and soaring utility prices, residential solar installations are up 37% from the second quarter of 2021, per research firm Wood Mackenzie.

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