Joel Jean, CEO of Swift Solar, on how coaching helped him scale as CEO

Joel Jean, Co-Founder and CEO of Swift Solar, in conversation with Titan. Lightly edited for clarity.

What Swift Solar is building

I'm Joel. I'm the co-founder and CEO of Swift Solar, and we're building the future of solar energy in the U.S. Solar is, bar none, the largest energy source we have in the solar system, and it's going to be the future of energy on Earth and beyond Earth.

How Swift reached a step change

In the very early days of Swift, we didn't know what the hell we were doing. We spent a lot of time wandering in the dark. In a way, it's very slow growth until you prove things out and it's ready, and then it's a step change. What's both exciting and scary right now is that we just made that step change. So as we're moving from R&D into production, there's definitely a lot of personal changes that I've had to painfully make.

How he learned to communicate vision

As a scientist, you want to talk about expectation value. You want to be, "OK, here's the median outcome of this company." And what I've had to learn is that by communicating my vision of what that 99 percentile outcome can be, I can shift the median of that curve to be at that 99 percentile outcome. And that's really powerful.

Why he chose a Titan coach

I started thinking about getting a coach many years ago. I think one of the things that held me back was the sort of activation barrier of finding a coach, and Titan is reducing that to near zero. What I really appreciate about my coach is that he's able to be super hard-ass, really, and tell me the straight truth the way he sees it. We meet weekly and we just talk through a number of topics that are on my mind. So whether that's fundraising, a pitch deck, a customer challenge, pricing strategy, a management challenge, some personnel issue or a hiring question, anything is on the table. Since starting coaching, I've been able to make decisions with more confidence behind them. It feels amazing to have a coach who really, really wants to see this succeed and is emotionally invested in the company and in me.

How coaching supports the next stage

Today, Swift is not just an R&D organization. We are now actually planning out our first U.S. factory, which will be producing proven bankable solar technology at gigawatt scale within two years. There's no more important time to be building Swift Solar because we're in the middle of the U.S. separating from China. AI data centers driving unprecedented electricity demand growth and needing a ton of energy and space. All of these things point towards more energy made here in the U.S., and that is Swift Solar's mission. To make Swift realize its full potential, I need to grow into a manufacturing CEO, not a technology development CEO. And that's something that my coach is going to be a critical part of helping me evolve into.