GameChanging Leadership: Q&A with Derick Botha, CCO
- GameChange Solar
- Oct 1, 2025
- 3 min read
October 2, 2025
How does GameChange Solar stand out in a competitive renewable energy market? Our success comes from our customer-focused approach and dedication to innovation. These qualities start at the top, with our fantastic leadership team.
Today we're chatting with our CCO, Derick Botha!
What originally brought you to GameChange Solar?
I knew Andrew Worden even before he started GameChange, and was intrigued by the market challenge when he shared his vision of making solar energy more affordable and available.
What’s it been like to help GameChange grow from a small company to a Top 3 global leader in the industry? What’s changed, and what’s stayed the same?
Some words that spring to mind: challenging, fulfilling, and occasionally nerve-wracking!
Building a major international company from scratch in under 12 years comes with many challenges, but our can-do attitude here at GameChange has stayed the same from the beginning. We’re always working to find new, innovative ways to solve our customers’ problems. And we’re always looking to the future and asking ourselves where we can go next. So every day is exciting!
What's an accomplishment you're especially proud of?
When we started scaling, our status as a brand-new company was a big challenge to building our reputation and name recognition. At the time, our largest project was 2 MW. Then we were suddenly awarded a 30 MW project, which was massive back in 2014 – 15 times bigger than anything we’d done before!
I remember thinking, “How in the world are we going to deliver this?” But we did, and that 30 MW project gained us recognition and a foothold in the market. Now we deliver systems measured in GW, not MW, across the world.
A few other breakthrough points that I’m also proud of are selling our first GeniusTracker™, and delivering our first international project. Both of these milestones kicked off amazing periods of growth for the company.
What trends are you seeing in how owners and EPCs evaluate trackers?
Right now, owners are primarily looking for long-term reliability and operational excellence, to maximize their ROI.
EPCs are looking for ease: ease of doing business, ease of install, and also reliability of deliveries.
So we combine all those priorities into creating sturdy, reliable systems that can be delivered quickly and installed easily.
In a competitive global tracker market, what makes GameChange stand out?
The larger the project and the longer customers own it, the more they look for a flexible, communicative partner who offers long-term support. At GameChange, we focus on being that partner.
Our clients know they can rely on us to work with them closely, be transparent with them, change plans quickly if needed, and deliver on time. They know their investment is secure with us.
How do customer pain points (installation time, terrain challenges, extreme weather, etc.) shape your sales strategy?
We want to know what each customer is looking for, and what they value the most. Each project has specific, individual issues, so we don’t just offer one single solution. Instead, we work to determine which customized solution best meets their site requirements and situation.
For instance, our specialized Product Delivery System (PDS) makes the process of working with the EPC and the delivery experience as simple as possible. We ensure ease of use with Genius Tracker's software applications and monitoring systems. And most of all, we make sure your system is generating the most energy possible; we’re always innovating how our trackers can better follow the sun and maximize power production.
We’re always asking ourselves how our product can make our customers' lives easier both in the short term, during installation, and in the long term, by standing the test of time over 20-40 years. We’re there for our customers both today and tomorrow.
What makes you most excited for GameChange’s future?
What excites me most are all the areas we haven’t covered yet. We’re always developing newer products to increase our offerings and further improve the ones we already carry. For example, in the past year we’ve added transformers to our product offerings.
We've also expanded across multiple continents — North and South America, Africa, and Asia. There’s so much potential in how we can add to both our product offerings, and the regions we serve.