Starlight Charging: tools for launching and scaling your EV charging business
When people think about electric vehicle charging infrastructure, most people think about the necessity of affordable and accessible charging in workplaces and publicly accessible areas. Given most early adopters of electric cars have tended to live in single-family homes with affordable and convenient access to home-charging, this has felt like the most important build out in the years to come.
But, there’s a massive untapped market of underserved EV drivers within multi-family rental units and condominium communities. Starlight Charging was founded to serve these exact customers with the mission of putting an EV charger in every parking spot. Founded in 2022 by Andrew Kouri, Starlight just announced their Partner Program, aimed at helping electricians to easily own and operate EV charging stations in both multifamily and commercial buildings.
Starlight recognizes that electricians are America’s asset to attaining energy independence, and without electricians, new infrastructure to support EVs, solar and wind power, and energy-efficient homes will not be built. The Starlight Partner Program was created so electricians can participate in the financial upside of their work. Electricians can now profitably own and operate these revenue-generating assets with tools that help streamline the permitting, installation, and ongoing operation of EV charging stations.
Fresh off the heels of this announcement, we sat down with Andrew to hear more about the EV market more broadly, as well as what got him personally so motivated to build a start-up in this space.
Many investors have softened on the EV market – while others remain quite bullish. Why do you think EVs are set for solid growth in 2025 and beyond?
I think it’s inevitable that most Americans will switch to driving EVs in the next 5-10 years. The Tesla Model Y is already the best-selling car in California, selling over 400k in 2024. And Tesla doesn’t advertise at all, so people don’t really understand the car or how it works unless they have driven one. Anecdotally, I have seen people switch to driving an EV regularly, and only then do they realize that all of their range-anxiety woes that kept them from buying an EV in the first place were misplaced. It takes time to educate people, especially about the anxieties around charging.
In the next 10 years we will get to about 80-90% of cars (excluding trucks) on the road being EV or hybrid. Right now we are at under 5%. Investors like things that have high-risk, but exponential growth. The ramp on EVs is less of a gamble and more of a certainty, but it will take some time to age out the existing fleet.
Why do multi-family rental units and condos remain an untapped market for EV infrastructure?
It’s really hard to bring charging to multi-family rental units and especially condos. This is not really a technology issue, but an incentives issue. For a single-family homeowner, the process of installing an EV charger is actually quite easy - they just call up an electrician and they’re done. For multifamily, there are legal matters to sort through, insurance questions, financing hurdles, and generally the software for managing all this hasn’t been built yet, so it’s a largely manual process. Starlight is systematizing this process so that it’s just as easy to get charging in multifamily as it is to get it in single family today.
All of this is really important because if folks don’t have good options for charging in the places where they park their cars every night, the inconvenience of owning an EV is going to outweigh the benefits. So, I think it’s critical that we figure out how to solve the incentives issue and put good infrastructure in these buildings. Over 30% of Americans live in multifamily buildings, and I hope that number will continue to grow as we build denser, more human-focused cities.
What got you personally so motivated to build a product in this space?
As someone who drives an EV and lives in a multi-family rental building, I have the issue myself! To be honest, I thought it would be an easier to solve than it actually is – as someone who likes building hardware and software products, I started out tackling this problem with a new piece of hardware, but it turns out that the real problem is the incentives and operations behind getting charging installed and empowering electricians to build out this sorely needed infrastructure.
This or that:
San Francisco or East Bay: Neither…Texas! 🤠
Cats or Dogs: Dogs
East Coast or West Coast: Grew up in MA, so have to say East Coast
Favorite recent book: Faith-Driven Investing
Favorite podcast: How I Built This w/ Guy Raz
Favorite quote or mantra: “The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do” (from Apple’s Think Different ad)