Angaza: A Silicon Valley journey
Angaza’s story is not a typical solar light story, but the story of a female social entrepreneur with a for-profit Silicon Valley mindset transforming a social enterprise from a hardware to a software business model. It is about pivots, changing value propositions, and new products and business models as Angaza evolves to escalate social impact while still making money. Angaza began as a solar-light company founded in 2010 by Stanford graduate Lesley Silverthorn Marincola to address energy poverty in rural off-grid communities. In her quest to address affordability, Lesley realized that the main problem confronting rural off-grid communities was not the price of solar lights per se, but finding a way to spread payments over time. In 2012, Angaza pivoted from being a solar-light producer to a software provider offering pay-as-you-go (PAYG) metering and monitoring technology to players in the solar-light ecosystem – manufacturers, distributors and mobile network operators. The PAYG technology allowed end consumers to buy solar-light products by paying small amounts over time, until they eventually owned them outright. At the end of the case, students are confronted with a very real dilemma facing the founder and leadership team of many start-ups, including Angaza – what are the next opportunities for the company? Is it further scaling (if so, scaling up or deep), a pivot (into data), or an exit (sell the business)?
• Identify features of business models used by a for-profit social business
• Analyse differences between the growth potential of hardware vs. software value propositions
• Recognize the growth tensions and dilemmas of a for-profit social business
2010-2019
Cranfield University
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Harvard Business School Publishing
60 Harvard Way, Boston MA 02163, USA
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NUCB Business School
1-3-1 Nishiki Naka
Nagoya Aichi, Japan 460-0003
Tel +81 52 20 38 111
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- Angaza: A Silicon Valley journey
- Angaza: A Silicon Valley journey (Abridged)
- Angaza: A Silicon Valley journey
- Angaza: A Silicon Valley journey (Abridged)
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Narrow views of systemic sustainability risks can result in ecological concerns being neglected, as well as giving rise to unequal distribution and exploitation of natural resources, creating injustice. Given recent advancements in integrating jus...
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in Binder, Julia Katharina (Ed.); Haanaes, Knut Bjarne (Ed.) / Leading the sustainable business transformation: A playbook from IMD, pp. 59-62 / Hoboken: Wiley, 2025
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in Binder, Julia Katharina (Ed.); Haanaes, Knut Bjarne (Ed.) / Leading the sustainable business transformation: A playbook from IMD, pp. 19-32 / Hoboken: Wiley, 2025
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in Binder, Julia Katharina (Ed.); Haanaes, Knut Bjarne (Ed.) / Leading the sustainable business transformation: A playbook from IMD, pp. 9-18 / Hoboken: Wiley, 2025
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in Binder, Julia Katharina (Ed.); Haanaes, Knut Bjarne (Ed.) / Leading the sustainable business transformation: A playbook from IMD, pp. 33-45 / Hoboken: Wiley, 2025
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