In 2020, I was scrambling to get chips for our battery modules. Lead times had jumped from 2-3 months to over 9 months. Chipmakers prioritized gaming consoles and automotive giants, leaving cleantech startups like ours at the back of the line. That experience taught me just how fragile and unpredictable supply chains can be—and how they can make or break a scale-up.
I was reminded of this while listening to The Green Blueprint podcast episode, How Supply Chain Chaos Sank SunFolding. SunFolding, a solar tracker startup founded in 2012, shut down in 2023—not because of tech failure, but because supply chain disruptions proved too much to handle.
Three Hard Lessons from SunFolding’s Collapse:
1️⃣ When key inputs surge in price, your business model may not survive.
SunFolding used U.S. steel for its trackers to save on logistics costs. But as Chinese steel stayed cheap, U.S. steel prices tripled. That forced them to rebuild their supply chain—too little, too late.
2️⃣ A supply chain built for one scale might not work for the next.
SunFolding hired a COO when it landed its first utility-scale solar project. But the supply chain was already locked in, and not up to the task. Scaling up requires designing for supply chain resilience from day one.
3️⃣ You are not your supplier’s priority.
In 2023, an earthquake in Turkey disrupted a key material supplier to DuPont, which made SunFolding’s specialized polymer. DuPont refocused on serving its largest customers (automotive), leaving SunFolding without a critical component.
The Big Takeaway:
Your supply chain is as critical as your technology. It needs to be flexible, scalable, and protected against shocks. If you’re building a cleantech scale-up, don’t just ask, Can we manufacture this at scale? Ask, Can we still manufacture this if the supply chain shifts under us?
If you’ve had to navigate supply chain chaos while scaling up, I’d love to hear your experiences. What lessons have you learned?