Serial entrepreneur building at the intersection of energy, AI, and the built environment.

I'm Josh Lake: builder, technologist, and lifelong optimist. From concentrated solar and shared EVs to autonomous delivery robots and home electrification, I've spent nearly two decades starting companies at the frontier of climate technology. Now I'm building with AI.

Co-Founder, Elephant Energy Founder, Infinite Timber MIT '07 Eagle Scout
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From Pennsylvania pines to Colorado peaks.

Josh Lake at Moraine Lake wearing MIT hoodie, surrounded by pine trees and mountains

I grew up in rural Pennsylvania surrounded by pine trees, cold creeks, and white-tailed deer. I earned my Eagle Scout, which taught me self-reliance, service, and a deep respect for the natural world.

MIT was Materials Science & Engineering, the Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies, co-founding Hemetrics (biomedical diagnostics), and winning the $1K Warmup Competition. The best way to understand something is to build it.

After that, California. Concentrated solar at Amonix, world-record CPV modules across the Southwest. Electric vehicles at Evercar, putting Nissan Leafs into rideshare drivers' hands. Autonomous delivery at Nuro, one of the earliest operations hires scaling from a founding team to a real company.

Colorado became home. Rachael, Scout, and I put down roots in Boulder. I co-founded Elephant Energy to electrify everything and spent five years building the team and technology that made it the easiest way to get off fossil fuels. Now I'm building again.

Josh Lake Eagle Scout ceremony, Pennsylvania
Josh Lake skiing in Zermatt with the Matterhorn
Amonix CPV solar tracker in the Nevada desert
Josh Lake with Nuro autonomous delivery robot
Josh Lake at General Sherman tree, Sequoia National Park
AI & Timber2026-Present

Infinite Timber

AI-powered timber research and brokerage platform. Tools like Prospector, Sky, Owl, and Scout bring intelligence and transparency to one of the world's oldest industries.

Home Electrification2021-2026

Elephant Energy

Co-founded and served as CTO. Built the platform making it easy for homeowners to ditch fossil fuel appliances for heat pumps, induction stoves, and EV chargers. Three states. Series A from Building Ventures and Arborview Capital.

Autonomous Delivery2017-2018

Nuro

Head of Operations. Early operations leader, building the foundation from founding team through early growth. Nuro went on to raise over $2B and partner with Uber and Kroger.

Electric Vehicles2013-2017

Evercar / Vision Fleet

COO & Board Member. Built operations for one of the first shared EV fleets for rideshare drivers. Pioneered EV-as-a-service in LA, SF, and Indianapolis.

Concentrated Solar2010-2013

Amonix

Sr. Program Manager. Managed utility-scale CPV deployments across the American Southwest. World records for solar module efficiency (34.9%) verified by NREL.

Solar Development2009-2010

532 Solar

Co-founded a solar project development company. My first step into clean energy, right out of strategy consulting. Named for the wavelength of green light (532nm).

Josh Lake with Mitsubishi hyper-heating heat pump installed by Elephant Energy
Mitsubishi Smart Multi h2i heat pump with Elephant Energy sticker, running in snow
Earlier Career
Consulting
Embark Trucks, NJ Resources
Independent consultant. Advised autonomous trucking and utility-scale energy companies on operations, strategy, and scaling. 2018-2021.
Strategy
Altman Vilandrie & Co
Business analyst. Telecom and technology strategy consulting in Boston. 2007-2009.
Education
Stanford University
Mechanical Engineering certificate. Design for Customer Value & Market Success. 2011-2012.
Education
MIT '07
B.S. Materials Science & Engineering. J&J Biomedical Engineering Award. $1K Warmup Competition winner. Co-founded Hemetrics and Sensornet.
Now Building

Electrify Everything Now

Free calculators that show you the real costs and savings of going electric. No sales pitch. Just math.

LivePlug-In Solar Calculator
Coming SoonRebate & Incentive Stacker
Coming SoonElectrification Sequencer
Coming SoonAppliance Death Clock
Coming SoonHeat Pump vs. Gas Costs
Coming SoonRate Plan Optimizer
Closing the information gap for home electrification

The future is electric, intelligent, and abundant.

01

Electrify Everything

Every fossil fuel appliance in every building will be replaced by an electric one. Heat pumps, induction stoves, EV chargers, smart panels. This is the largest market transformation since the internet. I built Elephant Energy on this conviction.

02

AI Changes Everything, Again

AI agents will create entirely new business models with near-zero marginal cost. Companies that understand this will build with 10 people what used to require 100. I'm building every new venture AI-first, not AI-added.

03

Zero Marginal Cost Is Real

Solar, wind, batteries, and now AI are all riding exponential cost curves toward zero. The question is how fast we can rewire our institutions to match the physics.

04

The Built Environment Is the Battleground

Buildings account for 40% of US emissions. The energy transition isn't just about the grid. It's about every furnace, water heater, and gas stove in every home. A building-by-building revolution that needs both technology and trust.

05

Build for the Long Game

Not quarterly returns. Not growth-at-all-costs. Real, durable value creation that compounds over decades. Commit fully, build carefully, endure.

06

Technology Should Create Leverage for People

The goal isn't replacing people. It's making every person 10x more effective. The best technology makes humans better at being human.

What I Read & Follow

Favorite Podcast

Moonshots, Peter Diamandis

Paid Newsletters

Free Newsletters

Thinkers & Influences

  • Jeremy Rifkin , zero marginal cost economics
  • Peter Diamandis , abundance & moonshot thinking
  • Vaclav Smil , energy transitions
  • Saul Griffith , electrify everything
  • Tony Seba , technology disruption curves
  • Rewiring America , policy & deployment
The Shelf
Josh's bookshelf

How I think about building with AI.

I've been building with AI since 2023: multi-agent architectures, MCP servers, Claude Code, the Anthropic API. These are the principles I've developed along the way.

🔧

AI-First, Not AI-Added

Design the workflow around what AI is best at. Every new venture starts with the question: if I had infinite intelligence and zero marginal cost, how would I design this? Then work backward.

🧠

Agents Over Chatbots

Chatbots answer questions. Agents do work. Give an agent a goal, tools, and context, and let it execute. I build multi-agent systems where specialized agents collaborate with their own skills and tools.

Leverage, Not Replacement

The goal is to make one person as effective as ten. The best AI tools amplify human judgment, creativity, and domain expertise. Every tool I build follows this principle.

🏗️

Skills Architecture

Reusable building blocks: skills, bots, and frameworks. Build a skill once, use it everywhere. Package domain expertise into prompts and tools that compound over time. This is how solo founders compete with teams of 50.

🔄

Human-in-the-Loop for Decisions, Not Tasks

Let AI handle execution: research, drafting, data processing, code. Keep humans in the loop for judgment calls: strategy, relationships, ethics, taste.

📐

Build in Public, Iterate Fast

Ship something real in hours, not months. AI makes it possible to build functional prototypes in a single sitting. The feedback loop between idea and working product has collapsed.

The books that shaped how I think about building, energy, and the future.

I read constantly about energy systems, technology, and leadership. Click any title to find it on Amazon.

01
Alfred Lansing
When everything goes wrong, the only thing that matters is the quality of the leader.
02
Saul Griffith
The thesis behind Elephant Energy. Reframes the energy transition as a machine replacement problem and shows it's entirely doable.
03
Jules Verne
The original technology-optimist fiction. Nemo built something the world wasn't ready for. Relatable.
04
Laurence Shames & Peter Barton
A dying entrepreneur's reflections on what actually matters.
05
Andrew McAfee
Economic growth and resource consumption have decoupled. Technology lets us do more with less, and the data proves it.
06
Jigar Shah
The business case for clean energy by the guy who invented the solar PPA. Shah saw the deployment revolution before anyone else.
07
Jeffrey Liker
The bible of lean manufacturing. Changed how I think about operations and building systems that improve over time.
08
Robert Sutton & Huggy Rao
The hardest startup problem isn't 0 to 1, it's 1 to 100. This book tackles the messy reality of scaling.
09
Tae Kim
How Jensen Huang built the most important semiconductor company of the AI era. Culture of speed, technical depth, and relentless iteration.
10
Donella Meadows
Once you see feedback loops, leverage points, and emergent behavior, you can't unsee them. In businesses, in energy grids, in everything.

Pine trees, powder days, and the people I love.

I grew up in the woods of Pennsylvania. Time outdoors shaped who I am long before technology did. Eagle Scout values: preparedness, service, building things that last.

Today I live in Boulder with Rachael and Scout. I ski, lift, run, and read constantly. My bookshelf is heavy on energy policy and startup war stories.

Favorite Places

Glacier National Park, the wildest place in the lower 48
Lassen National Park, volcanic, empty, perfect
Zermatt, Switzerland, skiing with the Matterhorn
Boulder, Colorado, home base
Rural Pennsylvania, where it all started

Scout

Josh and Scout cross-country skiing in Colorado
Josh and Scout on a mountain summit in Colorado
Rachael and Scout hiking among fall aspens
Scout relaxing in a log cabin
Josh, Rachael, and Scout in Halloween costumes
Josh Lake

Let's build something.

I'm always interested in conversations about climate technology, AI-first businesses, and the energy transition. If you're working on something in these spaces, reach out.

X / Twitter@jlake1
LocationBoulder, Colorado
Current Focus

Building Infinite Timber, an AI-powered timber research and brokerage platform. Also exploring AI-agent opportunities in electrification via ElectrifyEverythingNow.com. Open to advisory roles in climate tech, proptech, and AI.

Josh and Rachael Lake, circa 2007
Circa 2007