Kent Cissell spent more than a decade climbing the corporate ladder at Heartland, a division of Global Payments Inc. (NYSE: GPN), one of the largest payment processors in the U.S.
Over the years, Cissell worked in nearly every corner of that business, from technology to operations to finance. By 2020, he was in charge of a $2 billion revenue for the company as the head of business strategy and he was top local executive for the 800-employee office in Jeffersonville, Indiana.
But he wanted a change.
As Heartland shifted towards more of an inorganic growth strategy, Cissell was charged with leading integrations with the companies it acquired. The work was challenging, he said, but it wasn't very satisfying.
"I decided I wanted to do something different," he said. "I just didn't know what it was. I left knowing that I wanted a more purposeful career instead of a financially motivated career."
Cissell left his career without knowing exactly what he wanted to pursue. Admittedly, a lot of his ideas for an impactful business kept straying into the nonprofit space.
But while he was still spinning his wheels, Cissell was getting solar installed on his home in Southern Indiana. The experience left a lot to be desired, he said, after he found solar companies were using subcontractors — local service providers without a lot of solar experience — to do the installs.
"I did the research to find what I thought was the best business in Louisville and went through the buyer experience of getting solar," he said. "I had just spent a whole lot of money to go through an experience that I saw so many opportunities to improve, and it was invigorating to think that there's a lot of other people that are going to be in my shoes in this area that shouldn't have to go through what I just went through."
That was the genesis behind EightTwenty, a solar energy company founded by Cissell and Tony Capucille. As the former president of Heartland, Capucille was Cissell's boss and remains one of his closest friends.
Cissell said he and Capucille are working in similar roles at EightTwenty: Capucille is the CEO and Cissell is the president.
"We had two people that were commonly motivated, with fairly big networks and a lot of leadership experience where we didn't have to just bootstrap the early stages of the company ... We could get a lot of the foundation laid with decade's worth of big business experience so that we can set ourselves up to scale," Cissell said.
The company, which got its start through an acquisition of an electrical contractor, is employing its own operations teams of electricians, designers, carpenters and technologists, with the aim of maintaining a higher level of service than other solar companies in the region. It has about 60 employees now, the majority of which are in Oklahoma City, where the company got its start.
Cissell said Oklahoma was a good test market for EightTwenty, because if it could make the model work there, that success could be replicable here in the Midwest. The Louisville region was always part of the company's expansion plans, he said.
In February 2020, Louisville Metro passed a renewable energy resolution that committed to 100% clean energy community-wide by 2040. That means roughly 50% of homes need to have solar installed over the next 20 years, Cissell said, which he estimated to be about 200,000 houses.
That's a big market opportunity — but EightTwenty can't do it alone.
"Energy costs are rising," Cissell said. "The cost of household energy has gone up by 19% in the past year. When we talk to customers about the investment that they're making, relative to our predicted energy rate, we've used 3% to 4% as our estimate, and it still makes sense to buy."
EightTwenty recently opened an 8,000-square-foot office and warehouse space at 97 Industrial Way within the industrial park in Charlestown, Indiana, which will serve as its base of operations for Kentucky and Indiana. Cissell expects the local office to employ 20 people by this time next year.
In order to accelerate that growth, EightTwenty is halfway through an $8 million fundraising round, with the goal of raising $1 million of $4 million remaining in Louisville. Cissell declined to share specifics on revenue, but said the company is seeing steep growth, having installed a megawatt of solar in the past 12 months.
In Louisville, EightTwenty has had 12 installation projects already, without doing any local marketing or advertising.
A portion of EightTwenty's proceeds will be going towards areas of the Louisville community that would otherwise not be able to access solar, Cissell continued.
"Our commitment is that we're going to take a portion of our proceeds and help the underserved," he said. "We want to take proceeds from Louisville, and put them back into the community. I'm actively trying to find a partner or partners here in this community that we can get in touch with for these give solar programs."
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