s3: the solar software summit

Jake is an investor with Emergence Capital and leads the firm’s Natural Resources Cloud practice. With a background as an energy entrepreneur and consultant, he is passionate about bringing the cloud to the natural resources sector by helping to grow software companies focused on agriculture, water, and energy opportunities.
Jake is currently a Board Observer at DroneDeploy and Augmedix.

Prior to joining Emergence, Jake worked in Kleiner Perkins’ Green Growth Fund, where he sourced and led diligence on companies in the geospatial, agricultural tech, and enterprise SaaS sectors.

Prior to investing, Jake led international business development at Astonfield Renewables, a startup focused on developing utility-scale solar power plants in emerging markets. He helped grow the firm from pre-revenue to owner/operator of $75M in assets. Jake began his career in management consulting at Katzenbach Partners (acquired by Booz & Co).

Jake earned his B.A., magna cum laude, from Yale University and his MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he was an Arjay Miller Scholar. Jake also earned an MS in Environment and Resources from Stanford.

MJ Shiao currently serves as the Director of Community Solar at Arcadia Power, where he works to connect residential customers with community solar projects developed by Arcadia Power's partners. Before Arcadia, MJ held various positions at Greentech Media and Wood Mackenzie, including leading GTM Research, a 30-person team tracking, analyzing and forecasting the evolution of the solar, energy storage and grid edge industries.  MJ is a leading expert in the transformation of the electricity sector. He has spoken at numerous conferences, testified in front of the U.S. International Trade Commission on solar trade issues and quoted in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Bloomberg and Buzzfeed. Before joining GTM Research, MJ managed and designed several MWs of residential and commercial PV projects. He holds a bachelor's in electrical engineering from the University of Delaware, where he was named a National Truman Scholar. A believer in the social benefits of solar power, MJ has also researched, installed and tested rural off-grid PV in India and Thailand.

Conlan O'Leary is Co-Founder and CEO of Sighten. Prior to Sighten, Conlan helped manage the structuring and pricing desk at Clean Power Finance, a leading residential solar financing platform. Conlan has a deep knowledge of the US solar marketplace with 6+ years working exclusively in residential solar financing and quoting software. Conlan has prior experience in technology and cleantech investment banking as well as environmental commodities trading. He is a graduate of Dartmouth College in New Hampshire and holds degrees in economics and philosophy.

Unirac’s U-Builder is one of the leading racking design tools in the industry and is provided free of charge to Unirac customers.  Ernest developed Unirac’s original online configurators over eight years ago and continues to lead the development of the newest generation of Unirac online technical services.

Ernest’s role at Unirac is now as a Product Manager in charge of both software and rail-free residential products after spending time as a software developer and product development engineer.  He has a Bachelor’s of Science in Mechanical Engineering and Master’s Degree in Engineering Management.

Paul Grana is the co-founder of Folsom Labs, where he leads sales and marketing, where he has helped to grow the company to thousands of installers in over 70 countries. He founded the Solar Software Summit in partnership with GTM Events. He previously worked at Abound Solar, and led product management and technical marketing with Tigo Energy.  Paul holds a BS in Mathematics and Economics from the University of Chicago, and an MBA from Harvard Business School.