My Next Electric 4x25 Is ON

Meet 4 clever people building the future of My Next Electric.

Jun 01, 2023

It’s June 1; you know what that means.

4x25: The Experimental COO Project is a go.

Before we get to the 4 folks leading us through the summer, let me talk to the entire My Next Electric community.

Thank you.

To everyone who helped get the word out, shared feedback, made edits. And especially to those of you who took the time to apply. Thank you. We ALL make a helluva team. Words keep failing to explain my gratitude; maybe a Tina GIF can do the job?

That’s better. Let’s get to it. When this started, I laid down two goals:

Validate 4 promising My Next Electric business models
Help four curious people learn electrification, batteries on wheels and how to CEO/COO better.

Here’s where we are today:

Experimental Lab

What we said: Run controlled experiments that explore design, use, and ownership of electric vehicles, charging gear, and appliances that store energy.
Our lead: Colin Davis, New Orleans, LA
What he’s doing: Colin’s a world-class mechanical engineer building a remote battery monitor for smaller electric vehicles and machines.
Why I’m psyched: Colin’s a super-contributor to the local My Next Electric community who happens to be an expert hardware designer. He’s already got a bench-top prototype working that could help the 200 Million (and growing fast) people who ride e-bikes get the same functionality considered table stakes for more expensive electric vehicles. I can’t wait to see how he iterates on this.

Agency

What we said: Help local governments, schools, utilities and corporate clients speed adoption of electric vehicles, charging gear, and appliances that store energy.
Our lead: Malliron Hodge, St. Louis, MO
What she’s doing: Malliron’s a world-class coach and community-designer building a solution to help small business owners electrify.
Why I’m psyched: Malliron’s one of the best community builders I know. Baddies with Business is a community she built for Black women entrepreneurs to celebrate and support one another. Malliron’s exploring ways to help business owners in her community electrify, and I can’t wait to see what she learns. Most electrifying efforts ignore this 44% pie-slice of our economy, focusing instead on homeowners or huge commercial clients.

Holding Company

What we said: Take ownership stakes in new and existing producers and installers of electric vehicles, charging gear, and appliances that store energy.
Our lead: Pete Christensen, San Diego, CA
What he’s doing: Pete’s a world-class chemist/entrepreneur crafting a coherent angel investing strategy for My Next Electric that leads to at least one new investment by the end of the summer.
Why I’m psyched: From micro-mobility to recycling, Pete’s leveraged his unique take as a chemist to build some amazing clean-energy-transition companies. He’s leaning on that unique perspective to build a fresh take on investing that’s aligned with our take on co-creating wealth and having fun as key levers to speed the pace of going electric.

School

What we said: Teach industry apprentices to install and consumers how to adopt electric vehicles, charging gear, and appliances that store energy.
Our lead: Laurie McGinley, Minneapolis, MN
What she’s doing: Laurie’s a world-class architect building a solution to help installers and sellers of electric appliances.
Why I’m psyched: Laurie expertise in many areas, from leadership coaching to $100M project management, combined with her passion for working and learning alongside people who do the hardest work - people in the building trades - puts her in a unique spot to explore the installer/supply-house/retail-floor side of the electrification equation, a community often overlooked by folks trying to speed electrification. But one I think has the greatest potential of all.

What’s next?

I’ll share why I'm particularly excited about each project in the next few weeks.

And some 1:1’s so you can hear from Colin, Malliron, Pete and Laurie directly.

If you have anything you want to ask them, please drop by the comments below; we’d love to hear from you.

Remember, you make this a community. A dynamic, delightful community of clever humans electrifying your way forward. Let’s do this summer thing. Together.