Cole Ashman is an old friend of mine, whom I met during the CELI SF program in 2018. In 2024, after spending years as an engineer at Tesla and Span, he decided to start his own company, Pila Energy.

Pila addresses some of the biggest challenges in the home battery storage market: cost, accessibility, and complexity. Pila is a small, plug-and-play battery the size roughly of a DVR that anyone, including renters and those in multi-family homes, can buy and use. It's much smaller and more affordable than a traditional home battery or propane/gas backup system.

In this episode, I talk to Cole about why he started Pila, and how his past experiences at Tesla and Span shaped this company. We also get into deeper topics like his childhood in New Orleans and how the decimation from Hurricane Katrina impacted him and his work.

I want to be up front that I am investor in Pila, but I would have done this episode anyways because I have so much respect for Cole and his vision.

Check out www.pila.energy to learn more!