GreenLancer, the Detroit-based contract solar design and permitting startup, announced this week that it has raised $5 million in a Series B round from a syndicate of new and returning investors. (For its 2013 Series B round, the company’s investors included BlueWater Angels, the Northern Michigan Angels, Start Garden, and the Detroit-based Bizdom accelerator.)
The company plans to use the money to speed growth. CEO Michael Sharber stepped down as CEO in February, moving over to the executive vice president position after Zac MacVoy, formerly with United Lighting Standards, came on board to lead the company as part of an “executive realignment.”
Sharber said Greenlancer’s revenues quadrupled between 2013 and 2014, and it nearly tripled its customer base. It also recently relocated back to downtown Detroit; the company’s 22-member team works out of the Ford Building.
“In addition to growth on the customer side, we’re also recruiting top talent to help us scale and meet customer demand,” Sharber said. “We’ve honed in on the solar market and we’re starting to transition to large, enterprise customers.”
Greenlancer offers its customers access to a team of contract cleantech engineers based in the cloud. The company also functions as a Web-based engineering firm that helps companies design and develop projects incorporating solar technology. Sharber said Greenlancer is currently working with some of the industry’s largest companies—he declined to be specific—and said the expansion and investment round were needed to keep up with increasing demand for solar design services, thanks in part to government policies encouraging the use of solar power.
