{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Straits Signal","title":"The Patience Tax: Building a RM111M Solar Company When Everything Keeps Changing | Zeth Lim","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":2215,"description":"Most people will look at @Verdant Solar's listing and see the highlight reel. 39.6 times oversubscribed. 19% debut jump. Malaysia Book of Records. RM111 million in revenue.That's the ending. This conversation is about the price of getting there.Zeth Lim founded Verdant Solar in 2013. He didn't hire a single person for five years. He chose residential rooftops — one customer at a time — in an industry where one commercial contract could equal thousands of homes in revenue. And right before the company went public, the government policy that powered his entire market ran out of quota.Every patient decision had a cost. The patience tax. And the argument this conversation makes is that the tax compounded into the thing that made the listing possible.In the second episode of Straits Signal, I sat down with Zeth — weeks after his IPO — to unpack what it actually takes to build conviction in a market where the rules keep changing. From a solo founder running installations alone, to a 160-person company navigating policy shifts, stock price volatility, and the question of who solar is really accessible to.Here's what we got into:1. The residential bet nobody wanted — why Zeth chose the hardest path in Malaysian solar and spent a decade building the operational muscle most competitors skipped. \"If we cannot win by doing things people cannot do, why not choose a path people don't want to do?\"2. The five-year solo run — no employees, no team, just a founder building conviction alone from 2013 to 2018. What made him finally hire, and why it took a leap of faith — literally3. The sales freeze that shouldn't make sense — Verdant was growing 2-3x in months. Customer complaints were rising. So they froze sales hiring during their best quarter. The decision that looks cautious on a 12-month view and inevitable on a 10-year one4. The accessibility arithmetic — solar systems cost RM16K to RM50K. Median household income is RM5-6K a month. I pushed Zeth on whether \"accessible to...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/Jvuyoa6-0IXq4v0siuD9GonJpl1IgTQmKSKpdKs6wWg/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS84NTgz/YmJmOTVhYjFhMzJm/NzljYTgyNDVjMzdh/MjQ2ZS5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}