I was listening to an old podcast and followed a rabbit hole of links that led me to this delightful gem about NextEra Energy. I’m really impressed by what they’ve built.

About NextEra

  • They’ve built a huge renewable energy portfolio – By capitalizing on government tax subsidies for wind and solar energy, NextEra became the largest wind and solar producer globally in 2017.
  • They operate under the radar – They don’t beat their chest or tout their green-ness. From the article, the only sign of self-promotion I saw was the fact they renamed themselves NextEra Energy from Florida Power & Light. Andrew Hoffman, a University of Michigan business professor and former advisory board member, says “They were focused on business fundamentals and not the Hollywood status” that comes with being a champion of green power.”
  • They’ve avoided taking on debt – “NextEra has been careful to build sites only after it has customers lined up, avoiding debt problems that sank rivals such as SunEdison.”
  • They’re thrifty – “While going through a presentation, Mr. Robo, [the CEO], could “stick a screwdriver in you and pry you open,” one former employee recalled, hunting for lax thinking such as overly rosy financial projections. He would do it calmly, the former employee said, while munching through a salad he had brought from home in Tupperware—one manifestation of his frugality.”

My takeaways

What a delightful company! I love their ethos, and this is exactly the way I want to build a business:

  • Under the radar
  • Thrifty
  • Avoided taking on debt
  • Kept their head down and quietly executed on their business.
  • Long term thinking, which is a huge source of arbitrage in business and in life.

I find stories like these both inspiring and informative: inspiring because I want to build a business as good as theirs, and informative because the existence of companies like NextEra shapes how I think about my career.

As I wrote before, you need to set a high bar for the life you’re living and the career path you choose. The more appealing the alternative paths are (in other words, the better the BATNA), the higher the bar I need to set for starting my own company and forgoing the alternatives.1

Which means the existence of NextEra is a wonderful thing. The better NextEra is and the more NextEra’s there are in the world that I could be working at, the more I need to up my game.

Notes

  1. The best analogy I can think of is the risk-free rate. The higher the yield on “risk-free” Treasury bonds, the higher the return you require from equities, in order to justify the extra risk of owning them. ↩