I've been building with LLMs since March 2023
The full arc of how Colabra adopted LLMs, from the first GPT ticket in March 2023 through hallucination fixes, vector search, the pivot, and prompt cache optimization today.
Posts
Posts
The newer posts are about building Colabra, selling into M&A, and using AI as a founder. The older archive is from 2016 to 2018, when I wrote frequently about energy, climate, and technology. I leave it all up because it shows how I reason from first principles.
The recent writing covers what I have learned building and selling an AI product for buy-side M&A diligence. The earlier posts were written while moving from battery research into the energy industry and then into my first startup. Writing in public was how I forced myself to understand a market instead of just reading around the edges of it.
That body of work eventually reached more than 10,000 views. I do not care much about the number on its own, but it is useful evidence that the writing found real readers while I was still working out my own point of view.
I keep the archive up because it shows the working style behind a lot of the later company-building: break a complicated system into parts, decide what matters, and make the argument concrete enough for other people to disagree with.
2026 5 posts
How our pitch changed when our buyers got smarter
How Colabra's sales pitch evolved from feature descriptions to persona-native language as M&A buyers became more sophisticated.
The founder's AI stack: how I actually use it
A detailed look at the skills, integrations, and workflow I use to get real leverage from AI as a founder.
What I was wrong about
Eight bets I got wrong building Colabra: Benchling, alliance managers, raise size, interaction models, sales language, pain framing, and more.
How I run GTM and sales with AI
The specific system behind my outbound, meeting prep, follow-ups, and re-engagement, all grounded in transcripts and run through custom AI skills.
2021 1 post
Linus' Law: What greater collaboration could do for scientific research
Bylined commentary on collaboration and scientific research workflows.
2018 5 posts
Table of Contents / Preface
The reading order and entry point for the full cleantech curriculum.
The next 10 years in electricity
A look at where electricity markets and infrastructure were heading next.
Hidden Economic Opportunities
A Jumpstart-era piece on overlooked opportunities in clean energy finance.
Climate self-determination
An argument for wider participation in climate investing and ownership.
Rethinking clean energy investing
A closer look at how clean energy investing should evolve.
2017 12 posts
The limits of our electrical infrastructure
On the constraints of the grid and what it takes to modernize it.
Solar energy
A first-principles primer on solar energy.
Wind energy
A plain-language look at wind energy and its role in the grid.
Fuel cells
On fuel cells, their promise, and their practical limits.
Nuclear energy
Why I don't like simplistic '100% renewables' thinking.
Battery materials
A breakdown of battery materials and why they matter.
Business models of battery companies
A survey of how battery companies make money.
The future of batteries
A look at what battery progress actually depends on.
Energy efficiency
Why efficiency is still one of the most important levers in energy.
The Paris Agreement
A skeptical take on the agreement as a climate solution.
Willingness to learn
A short essay on learning and intellectual posture.
Probabilistic thinking
A piece on thinking in probabilities instead of certainty.
2016 7 posts
The decline of oil
A piece on the structural pressures facing the oil industry.
The rise of oil
Historical context for how oil came to dominate the modern economy.
The failure of cleantech investing
Why the first cleantech wave disappointed and what investors missed.
Tesla and the battery revolution
A piece on batteries and Tesla as a clean energy wedge.
Trump and cleantech
Why political headwinds alone could not stop clean tech.
Why talk about climate change now?
A piece on urgency and the case for talking about climate now.
Engineering our planet
On realism, engineering, and large-scale climate work.