At Correlate, our team is our biggest asset and we’re proud to have an incredible group of individuals who bring a wide range of backgrounds and expertise to the table. We recently sat down with Director of Corporate Business Development Jason Loyet to get to know him better, learn what brought him to Correlate and what he’s most excited for as he looks ahead.
Have you always been in the clean tech space? What led you to it?
My professional career has been focused exclusively on software and energy development, which in large part stems from how I was raised.
I grew up in Saint Louis in an entrepreneurial family and became fascinated with technology and business innovation at an early age. After graduating from Westminster College in 1997, I immediately immersed myself in the Internet boom and founded a streaming media platform called GlobalStreams, followed by a platform serving the newspaper industry called MyCapture.
Nearly a decade later, in 2005, the entrepreneurial bug bit again and I jumped on an opportunity to spend two months trailing an inventor friend in China. Innovation was booming across China and it was during this time visiting several large tradeshows that we discovered solar module manufacturing in its early infancy. This sparked my start-up fire for the third time, and participating in the revolution of the energy industry has been my exclusive focus ever since.
How long have you been with Correlate? How did you end up there, and what is your role specifically?
In 2013, my wife (Samantha) and I founded the Solar Site Design (SSD) software platform with the goal of driving down the cost of solar through accelerating the prospecting and engineering process. We built the SSD platform to help streamline our own solar development projects, but our goal expanded to introduce our platform across the emerging solar industry.
To execute our scaling plan, we joined our first start-up accelerator program with Village Capital. Through that program, we received our early growth capital to hire our software team that allowed us to expand our technology. Our platform received early national exposure and we were one of the companies selected to be showcased at the first-ever Startup Alley cohort at Solar Power International in Chicago.
It was at Solar Power International in Chicago where we caught up with Todd Michaels, who at the time was the Director of Innovation at SunEdison. With Todd, we negotiated a licensing agreement with SunEdison, where we continued to evolve the SSD platform into the project origination platform it is today. Eventually, when Correlate launched, the SSD team continued working with the Correlate team, as we shared a vision of revolutionizing energy optimization across all energy assets. Our combined focus on accelerating solar origination and project development positioned SSD to become the first company to merge into Correlate in December of 2021.
My current role at Correlate is Director of Corporate Business Development, and I also serve on the Board of Directors.
What are you focused on, in your role specifically, in the immediate future? Long term?
I am primarily focused on project development and evolving our growing ecosystem of partners. Every day poses an exciting new challenge here and I thrive on the opportunity to meet them head on in order to continue to accelerate Correlate’s growth, including assisting the senior management team with our aggressive acquisition strategies.
What’s your favorite part about working at Correlate?
We are building a legacy platform that is revolutionizing the decarbonization of all energy assets. It’s hard to imagine a more important initiative in this high-growth industry.
What’s your team like? What’s the culture like?
We combine entrepreneurs with top engineers across multiple energy technologies to accelerate project development and finance. This team is laser focused on leading energy optimization across commercial real estate, and it's a huge motivator to be working alongside a team who is as excited and passionate as I am about reaching the goals we’ve set for Correlate.
What are you most excited about professionally?
I’ve never been more excited about where Correlate is headed in our industry. We are continuing to assemble an incredibly talented team through our new hires and series of upcoming acquisitions. Correlate is positioned at the forefront of decarbonization and leading the next generation of energy infrastructure. When I look back at my nearly 20 years in the clean tech industry, I can’t think of anything more motivating than the ecosystem we are building around now.
Where do you look for inspiration? What do you like to do outside of work?
I feel really fortunate to be surrounded by inspiration everyday living in Nashville, Tennessee. With so many entrepreneurs, songwriters, musicians, and artists here, I’m moved listening to songwriters perform their songs at writer’s rounds or watching entrepreneur pitch competitions within the explosive start-up community here.
Outside of work, I enjoy traveling, hiking, and spending time in nature, which also influences me. You’ll likely find me traveling around with my wife and dog (Sunny) in our Sprinter RV, exploring the many beautiful areas throughout the Southeast.
