The story of one of the leading solar platforms in the nation ironically begins in a small coal-mining town in Colstrip, Montana.
Brothers and co-founders, Will (CEO) and Dave Anderson (CMO) were raised confronting the reality of the energy crisis. “My brother and I grew up under the shadow of the smokestacks of the coal mining plant and the smoggy clouds left by them. It’s amazing how propaganda works. In school, they’d always tell us the smoke billowing out of the plant was ninety percent water. Can you believe that: ninety percent water? Now that I’m older, it’s like, well what’s the other ten percent?” recounted Dave.
Dave and Will come from humble beginnings, but from an early age came to appreciate the power of education and perseverance. Their mother, a special education school teacher, was a profound role model and guidepost for encouraging her sons to pursue education and strive for excellence. Will Anderson went to Stanford for his MBA and MIT for his undergraduate degree where he studied Chemistry and Finance. He felt inspired to do so as he struggled to answer the question he asked as a child in Colstrip, Montana, “What happens when the coal runs out?” From this very young age, his life’s work has been centered on how to tackle the energy problem and associated environmental crises.
Dave graduated in Economics from the University of Utah and then pursued his career in the security industry, where he hit the ground running in learning, building, and eventually selling a very successful home security company.
The education and experiences of the early 2000s laid the foundation for Dave and Will’s first joint venture in 2007—this joint venture was a business that mediated lending between small regional banks or credit unions and car dealerships. This company was called Risk Allocation Systems, it was a first-of-its-kind system that would allow the lending institution and the dealership to share the risk of the loan.
In 2009, the solar industry was an emerging market in key areas across the United States. The Anderson brothers were excited about the future of solar and wanted to get involved early on. Because of the relationships built with Risk Allocation Systems, Dave and Will’s first venture into solar helped a local credit union start offering solar loans.
Since 2010, with this new partnership, Complete Solar has not deviated from its mission to “power the solar power industry.” Complete Solar’s software, partnerships, and processes make it so that companies at each stage of scale their business by working through the proven Complete Solar platform. As one of the top-rated solar companies in the industry, Complete Solar is proud of the environmental impact of their platform and the way in which they are uniting the solar industry. According to Dave Anderson, “The only way we are going to be able to curb the harmful effects of traditional energy generation is through partnership—it is the fastest, most effective way to further scale the industry.”