A Problem That Needed Solving

In 2019, a master-planned community in Wesley Chapel, Florida, faced a problem. The development’s utility provider was delaying the installation of traditional streetlights, leaving new homebuyers in the dark. It wasn’t just an inconvenience — it was a costly headache. That’s when Liam Ryan saw an opening.

Ryan, whose family business is in Florida land development, recognized the opportunity. Why not remove the need for the power grid altogether? Why not create an off-grid, solar-powered alternative that would eliminate delays, cut infrastructure costs, and provide resilience during power outages?

From Idea to Execution

StreetLeaf wasn’t born in a high-rise boardroom or a Silicon Valley incubator. It took shape on the ground, in real-world conditions, where homebuilders and developers were wrestling with the complexities of street lighting installation.

Ryan teamed up with Karthik Goyani, a principal at Metro Development Group, who had already been experimenting with alternatives to utility-controlled streetlights. With the help of Panasonic and Tesla’s SolarCity unit, they put together a prototype. It wasn’t long before Lennar, one of the largest homebuilders in the country, took notice.

Ryan’s journey to this moment, however, wasn’t a straight line. He studied economics at Cornell, originally envisioning a career in business and finance. But a single anthropology class—Chimpanzees and Politics—changed everything.

It was the weirdest class I’d ever taken,” Ryan says. “But it led me down a rabbit hole, and I ended up minoring in anthropology.”

That shift in thinking propelled him to Mozambique, where he worked as a deputy park ranger and helped local communities develop businesses less reliant on eco-tourism.

That experience was humbling,” Ryan says. “I went in bright-eyed, thinking I’d fix everything in six months. Instead, I learned how complicated real solutions are.”

By 2020, Ryan had pivoted from conservation and economic development to running a company that aimed to transform community lighting. He wasn’t just selling solar streetlights; he was pitching a smarter way to build neighborhoods—one that, ironically, leaned heavily on a more planet-sustaining approach to residential development.

The First Test: Proving the Model

When we first started pitching to developers, the pushback was immediate,” Ryan recalls. “They didn’t want that ugly solar panel in their community.”

Now, Ryan says,

Those exact same people have come back to me and been like, I love the fact that there’s streetlights, they have solar panels there. It’s almost like a billboard to new residents, new customers as they drive in, like we’re a forward-thinking community. Look at our streetlights.”

The pitch was simple: no trenching, no underground wiring, no permitting headaches with the local utility. Just install the light, and it works—independent of the grid.

A 2023 Fast Company article by Adele Peters notes:

For a new development, it can be cheaper to install solar lights than typical lights tied to the electric grid because it’s possible to avoid the expense of new wiring. Installation of Streetleaf’s lights takes around 15 minutes. Because they aren’t connected to the grid, they can also run directly on DC power—the energy that solar panels produce and normally has to be converted before it can run an appliance—making them able to produce more light with less power. The current design is optimized for sunny climates, though with a larger battery, it could work nearly anywhere, Ryan says."

Lennar saw the value. Over the next five years, the homebuilding giant would roll out nearly 1,500 StreetLeaf lights across 29 of its communities in Florida, with expansion into Texas.

Scaling Up: The D.R. Horton and Forestar Deals

The real breakthrough came in early 2025 when StreetLeaf secured a national vendor agreement with Forestar, the development enterprise spun off by D.R. Horton, the nation’s largest homebuilder. The deal signaled that StreetLeaf wasn’t just a niche solution — it could scale.

We’re not just selling lights,” Ryan says. “We’re helping developers lower infrastructure costs, speed up project timelines, and improve community resilience. That’s a package that resonates.”

The Business Model: Lean, Scalable, and Capital-Light

StreetLeaf’s growth model has been intentional. Ryan leveraged his family’s development company to finance the first prototype installations. From there, the company used revenue financing—reinvesting cash flow from early projects to scale up without taking on excessive debt.

We were lucky because we had that backing,” Ryan says. “But then we were able to quickly pay that back and then kind of continue to use that as like our base to grow our customers then, and then just kind of raise on debt financing from there.”

The company controls product design but works with manufacturing partners across North America, Australia, and Asia. Assemblies come together at StreetLeaf’s warehouse in Zephyrhills, Florida, before deployment to communities across the U.S.

“We’ve doubled the size of the company every year since we launched,” Ryan says. “And we plan to keep that pace.”

More Than Just Streetlights

At its core, StreetLeaf is about more than illumination. It’s about making communities more resilient in an era of intensifying climate events.

Ryan recalls that in past hurricanes, “Our lights aren’t just staying on. They’re keeping neighborhoods safe when they need it most.”

Recent research supports the link between enhanced street lighting and public safety. A 2025 study by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania examined the impact of Philadelphia’s large-scale LED streetlight upgrade. The study found a 15% reduction in outdoor nighttime street crimes and a 21% decline in outdoor nighttime gun violence following the lighting enhancements. The findings suggest that improved illumination can be a key factor in crime prevention strategies.

StreetLeaf’s approach — deploying independent, solar-powered streetlights — could extend these benefits to communities without requiring costly municipal infrastructure investments.

The Future: A Broader Infrastructure Play?

While StreetLeaf is laser-focused on street lighting today, Ryan sees a much bigger opportunity ahead.

We sit in this very interesting pocket of renewable energy product also involved in, like, critical infrastructure,” Ryan says. “I think there is a very wide net that StreetLeaf, as we grow, can get involved in, not only from just the type of projects we’re in, but also like the kind of solutions that we can provide.”

• Grid-independent infrastructure that supports homebuilding and land development at scale
• Additional off-grid energy solutions beyond lighting
• Expansion into new construction markets across the U.S.

There’s a huge gap between what’s needed and what’s currently being built,” Ryan says. “If we can provide smart, cost-effective infrastructure solutions that developers can plug into their projects from day one, the impact could be massive.”

A Company in Motion

For now, StreetLeaf is still in its proving stage. While the company has secured partnerships with two of the biggest names in homebuilding, the challenge ahead is scaling sustainably without losing control of quality or service.

But if the last five years have proven anything, it’s that Ryan and his team are solving a problem that builders and developers need fixed. And they’re doing it in a way that cuts costs, reduces risk, and builds smarter, more resilient communities.

We’re just getting started,” Ryan says. “But I think we’re onto something big.”