About Solesca

Who is on the Solesca team?

These are the people who build, sell and support Solesca, starting with the three who founded it in 2022.

Sam SchierlohCofounder and CEO

Sam cofounded Solesca in 2022 and leads the company. He took it to the finals of the U.S. Department of Energy’s American-Made Solar Prize in 2023 and to profitability in 2024, and he sets the company’s direction.

Brendan DevineCofounder and CTO

Brendan leads engineering. His team builds and runs the Solesca platform, and he is responsible for how Solesca stores and protects customer data.

Tom YaoCofounder and Chief Gigawatt Officer

Tom is one of Solesca’s three cofounders. He created the design system this website is built on.

Rocco FucetolaChief Operating Officer

Rocco Fucetola has worked across the full solar asset lifecycle, from development and project financing through operations and maintenance and long-term asset management. He is currently COO of Solesca, a solar design and engineering platform, where he leads product and technical direction. His work there includes building Solesca’s in-house energy modeling and engineering tools, along with value-engineering features such as ARGUS AI obstruction detection, automated hanging-module removal, and 3D terrain modeling for ground-mount sites.

Michael MorrisDirector of Sales

Michael leads sales. Before Solesca he managed enterprise accounts across Europe and the US at HelioScope, so he knows how engineering teams evaluate design software and what a switch costs them. He works each evaluation as a business case that gives your team an ROI to present to its leadership team.

Where is Solesca incorporated and based?

Solesca Energy, Inc. is incorporated in the State of Delaware, and its principal office is in Chicago, Illinois. It is the legal entity behind the Solesca software: the Terms of Service, the Privacy Policy and the Data Processing Addendum are all issued in its name.

Legal name

Solesca Energy, Inc.

Incorporated in

Delaware, United States

Headquarters

4809 N. Ravenswood Ave., Suite 421, Chicago, IL 60640, United States

Founded

2022, in Chicago

Founders

Brendan Devine, Sam Schierloh and Tom Yao

Backed by

Hustle Fund, Pareto and Z-Fellows, plus non-dilutive funding from the U.S. Department of Energy’s American-Made Solar Prize

Profitable since

2024

Contact

contact@solesca.com, (312) 899-6750

What problem was Solesca built to solve?

One handoff. In 2022 the two halves of a solar project barely spoke: sales-side developers produced layouts that engineers could not build, and engineers produced designs that arrived after the deal was priced. Leads declined, unbuildable designs multiplied, and everyone involved treated it as weather rather than a fixable problem.

Solesca is the attempt to make it one model instead of two — a layout that carries its own simulation, stringing, bill of materials and drawings forward, so that what was sold and what gets built are the same object. Every product decision since has been downstream of that.

How did Solesca start, and how is it funded?

Brendan Devine, Sam Schierloh and Tom Yao left college to start Solesca in 2022, backed early by Hustle Fund, Pareto and Z-Fellows. Solesca 1.0 launched at RE+ Northeast in 2023, and the same year the company was a finalist in the U.S. Department of Energy's American-Made Solar Prize, which brought significant non-dilutive funding.

By 2024 the company had reached profitability while bootstrapped, which is a less glamorous milestone than a raise and a more useful one for a customer: it means the tool your team standardises on is not dependent on the next round. The fuller timeline, year by year, is on the careers page.

Who does Solesca build with?

Solesca holds a cooperative research agreement with NREL, CRADA CRD-23-23746, and DNV SolarFarmer runs inside Solesca through DNV's API Partner Program. Simulations validate within 1% of PVsyst, and in August 2025 the California Energy Commission published a staff certification review recommending the Solesca tool for certification under the 2022 Energy Code.

Those relationships are the reason a Solesca number travels. How the validation work is done, and what it does and does not prove, is set out on the technology page — including the fact that a formal methodology publication is not yet posted.

Who uses it, and for what kind of project?

Developers, EPCs and engineering firms working on commercial and industrial, community solar and ground-mount projects. Over 340 GW has been designed on Solesca. It is not a residential tool, and the very largest ground mount is not where it competes; the middle of the market is where it was built and where it is strongest.

What customers tend to mention is the release cadence and the support rather than a feature. Monthly releases and a concierge approach to service are the reason accounts renew with more seats than they started with, and both are choices the company made early and has kept.

How does Solesca talk about what it cannot do?

Directly, and in writing. Solesca does not stamp drawings — a licensed PE partner does. It does not grade a site or model cut and fill. It does not replace PVsyst; it exports to it. Those limits are stated on the product pages themselves rather than discovered mid-project, and the comparison pages say where competing tools win.

That is a deliberate policy, not modesty. In a category where everybody claims everything, the useful signal a buyer can act on is a vendor whose boundaries are written down.

Common questions