Greg Lee, Co-founder  |  greg@risesolar.com

Greg has four years experience working on solar concentrators, including at CoolEarth Solar, where as the first employee he focused his efforts on the mirror surface and adhesives. While Greg was at the company, CoolEarth raised a seed financing round and then a $20 million Series A financing round, expanding to over 20 employees.

He also worked at D-Rev, a non-profit incubator for market-driven technologies for the developing world. D-Rev is where he first designed Rise Solar’s technology, traveling extensively in Africa and briefly to India.

He graduated with a M.S. and B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford, with relevant classes in heat transfer, mechatronics, design, and rapid prototyping. He also completed Entrepreneurial Design for Extreme Affordability, a project class through the Stanford Design School focused on developing and marketing technologies for the developing world.  

Jon Casto, Co-founder  |  jon@risesolar.com 

Jon most recently spent two years with Lazard’s San Francisco biotech mergers and acquisitions practice where he worked on a variety of transactions, including Onyx’s acquisition of Proteolix (up to $851 million), Maxygen’s protein therapeutic joint venture with Astellas (up to $123 million) and Affymax’s underwritten registered direct financing ($80 million).

Other relevant experience includes time spent with Stanford’s Program on Liberation Technology and Dristhee (an Acumen Fund company) in Delhi, India where he worked on Drishtee’s Rural Health and Rural BPO initiatives.

He graduated from Stanford with a B.A. in Economics and a secondary major in International Relations, completing relevant coursework in international and development economics, entrepreneurship and finance. While at Stanford, he published articles related to innovation policy in two undergraduate research journals (Stanford Undergraduate Research Journal, PRISM USP Undergraduate Journal).