When solar panel installers go out of business, homeowners can be left "orphaned" with loan payments due and no clear path to repairs for their panels.

• Florida-based SoFlo Solar founders Luis Galarza and Laura Gutiérrez believe there are potentially millions of solar orphans across the country and expect the number to increase.

Galarza and Gutiérrez used to sell solar systems for other companies, but that gap drove them to build a business servicing solar systems after seeing former customers stranded.

Next up: The founders explain how they use Claude to identify that demand and streamline day-to-day operations.

1. First things first: What problem were you seeing in the solar industry that led you to found SoFlo Solar?

Galarza: The industry sold 25-year promises from companies with five-year lifespans, and Laura and I were on the front lines of that.

We sat in people's living rooms and told them the warranty would outlast their mortgage and all these other things that we truly believed. Then, a year later, the phone would ring, and it was the same customer asking what happened to the company.

• At the same time, all the equipment is still on the roof, loan payments are still coming out of their checking account, and the entity has just dissolved.
• If the financing outlives the installer, that's a huge issue. And if nobody else was going to get licensed and climb back on those roofs to fix this stuff, we were going to do it.

That's how we became a solar service company and stopped just deploying clean energy relentlessly.

In South Florida alone, we believe there are over 12,000 orphaned systems. Nationwide, we believe there are almost 2 million systems out of the 6 million installed that are in some way neglected, abandoned, in need of service or an orphan waiting to happen.

The owners just don't know it yet.

2. The challenge: What makes servicing existing solar systems especially difficult for homeowners?

Gutiérrez: When the company that installed and sold this system to the homeowner is no longer in business and something happens, they don't really know who to call.

They don't have the information about what equipment is on their roof because nobody is going up there to see the label.

• First, you do a lot of digging and research to determine what was installed, whether it was approved and everything else.
• Second, is that many installers don't want to touch the work of another installer. Even if it's going to be a $300 or $400 service, they say: "Well, I don't necessarily want to take on the liability of touching this system when I'm not the installer on record."

If you're a homeowner in that bucket of issues, you feel a lot of despair.

3. The strategy: When you were building the business, how did Claude help you figure out where SoFlo could have the biggest impact?

Galarza: We had a hunch that orphan systems were a real market, but we didn't know exactly how to attack it or where to spend our money.

I did this complex analysis by pulling public permit data. In Fort Lauderdale alone, there were 4,000 permits tied to more than 400 different contractors.

• I used Claude to cross-reference that database against state corporate licensing records and basically mine out which contractors weren't still operating.
• Then I overlaid that onto a map, and it became a business, not just a hunch.

We could basically see clusters where certain installers went into a neighborhood. It created this network effect. Once we got into a neighborhood and found one person, they'd tell all their friends, "go talk to these people."

Ever since then, we've been so busy that we've never really had to rethink this.

Gutiérrez: And Claude gave us the tools to structure everything because we're a very small organization.

• We were able to map out the plan, find the buckets of opportunity and then structure how we're going to service and scale the business.
• As a two- or four-person team, this has allowed us to act as if we were a 20-person team. That's what we've found has enabled our success further.

4. The impact: How has Claude changed what your small business is able to accomplish day to day?

Gutiérrez: One helpful process we've been able to create with Claude is for when our site technicians are onsite. They're able to talk and verbally walk through what they're seeing and what the issues are.

It also gives a small report to the homeowner in plain language so they can understand what's going on.

• By the time they're off the roof and have said goodbye to the customer, there's a full-blown report that they can bring back to us.
• Then we can figure out the cost of the job and the follow-up action items to continue moving the service work forward.

That has created a lot more fluid communication between us as business owners, our service techs and the homeowners.

Galarza: The way we collect data in the field from our field technicians has changed completely. Before we had a decent tech stack, my phone was full of solar panel pictures.

• They would show up onsite and text them to me, and I would have to go through my text messages to submit warranty claims. It was a disaster.

Where we are today is just unbelievable.

Gutiérrez: We also have technicians who speak English, technicians who speak Spanish and technicians whose main language is Portuguese.

• Sometimes things can get lost in translation, and the tool helps us all be on the same page.

5. Looking ahead: How has working with Claude changed the way you think about what a small business like yours can build or take on?

Gutiérrez: Whatever we thought was our ceiling, we've pushed it much higher. We're able to do a lot more with a lot less in terms of cost, people and time.

• It has also helped us reduce the time between having an idea for how we need to structure a workflow to fix a problem and being able to map it.
• Claude helps us structure every workflow and every next step in a way that is clear and that we can grasp. For me specifically, that has been the best way for us to move forward.

Galarza: It's a good thought partner, but you have to be responsible for all its outputs. In some ways, we feel like we built this productivity machine.

Learn more about Claude for small businesses.