Case Study: SolarPrint

Company Profile

SolarPrint Limited was founded in 2008 by Dr. Mazhar Bari, Roy Horgan and Andre Fernon.  SolarPrint Limited develops and manufactures dye sensitised solar cell (DSSC) photovoltaic technology. Its technology is used in various consumer electronic products, such as portable devices, displays, marine applications, solar battery rechargers, sensors, and active radio frequency identification tags; building materials, such as roofing, skylights, and internal and external facades; and transportation products. The company also supplies components, such as titania pastes, ionic salts, electrolytes, organic dyes, PET and PEN substrates coated with ITO, glass substrates with FTO, PET with micro grid conducting surface, and nano materials for making DSSCs.

SolarPrint operates from its state of the art development facility at Sandyford Business Park, Dublin.

Starting up

SolarPrint’s founders understood that the company would not initially be suitable for Bank funding irrespective of the funding environment.

They also realised that getting funding for an early stage business from the Irish Venture Capital community was going to be a challenge.

Given the amount of capital required to establish a business such as SolarPrint, the founders were conscious that if they were ever going achieve their goal of gaining any significant investment from private investors, they would firstly need to develop a sound and credible infrastructure in order to make the company investor ready.

Preparing for Angel Investment

Initial funding of €100K (10 tranches of €10,000) from friends and family, afforded SolarPrint to begin working on building the infrastructure necessary for investment.

A strong Board of Management was established and a hugely credible senior advisory board was created with the appointment of Padraic White, former CEO of IDA and Prof. John Gregg, Oxford University. An office was rented and insurance and legal documentation, including a very stringent corporate governance policy were put in place. SolarPrint’s first large-scale prototype was developed and a very detailed and comprehensive business plan was created.

From the time SolarPrint was incorporated to the date the company completed their Series A round of investment, the founders worked relentlessly to develop and advance all aspects of the business from the technology to the finances, commercial reference points, operations and the development roadmap. At this stage it became clear that there was a very real opportunity emerging and that SolarPrint was now ready for angel investment.

The Investment Process

As a next step, SolarPrint approached Enterprise Ireland’s High Potential Start Up (HPSU) team and presented their plan. They were assigned an excellent Development Advisor within the HPSU team who worked tirelessly with the founders in carrying out a very detailed and comprehensive due diligence process in order to demonstrate that SolarPrint was a suitable candidate for investment when the case was later presented to Enterprise Ireland’s investment committee.

Once SolarPrint’s investment was approved, they were then required to supplement Enterprise Ireland’s investment with matching funding of c.65% from the private sector.

The founders felt that Enterprise Ireland’s rigorous due diligence process would assist in providing potential investors with a degree of comfort and they were proven right.

Their signal largest investor Custom House Capital, a private wealth fund manager based in Dublin, at the time of their assessment of the business also required another detailed and comprehensive due diligence process, which took a further month to complete. Following this due diligence process, the founders were confident that they had done enough to win the support of the business angels whom they had been constantly in contact with over the period. The results proved positive and Solarprint have been successful in realising a significant investment of over €750,000 from the angel community.

SolarPrint’s top tips for angel investment

  • A well-rounded team is key.
  • Create as many reference points as possible, technical, commercial, financial etc
  • Don’t underestimate the need for a high quality, well written, concise business plan. It will take longer than you think and the people that you think you can rely on for investment may not be there when you come looking for the funding.
  • It is a process of many very defined steps.
  • Take nothing for granted. It’s not done until the money is in the Bank and only then does the journey and hard work really begin!