America’s Electric Power Grid Is Broken. This Startup Is Trying to Fix It. (Zach Dell, co-founder & CEO of Base)
For decades, America’s electrical system has rewarded utilities for building more infrastructure, not for lowering costs. The result is a grid that expanded but rarely improved. Zach Dell, co-founder and CEO of Base, is building a different kind of power company. In under three years, Base has grown into a vertically integrated business valued in the billions. It combines home batteries and software to store electricity when it is cheap and deliver it when demand spikes. Dell’s interest in energy began long before Base. In college, he tried to lease a Hawaiian lava field for a solar project. He also experimented with anaerobic digestion systems in India and worked at Blackstone and Thrive Capital, where he met his co-founder.
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- Uploaded May 26, 2026
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Speaker A: It's no secret that electricity is the fundamental input to human creation and productivity. There has been very little innovation. I proposed this concept of doing to energy what SpaceX had done to aerospace and Android had done to defense, building around this paradigm shift of solar and storage in this vertically integrated way and focusing first on battery storage, not just storage and retail electricity, but all 4 parts of the power stack, which we defined as make, move, store, and sell. And the battery is just the most effective technology to do that.
We are building infrastructure for the grid and we're not building high-end consumer devices. Are sold with this premium product valence at high gross margins for wealthy people. We're building great infrastructure to serve everybody and ultimately lower cost and increase reliability. And that's the North Star in everything we do. We want to be America's power company. We want to be a symbol for the entrepreneurial spirit, the ambition, the drive of this country, and the great things we can do when we come together to solve hard problems with technology to make the world better.
Speaker B: Nobody loves their power company. There's no Costco of kilowatts or Southwest Airlines of electrons. Zach Dell, the co-founder and CEO of Base, wants to build America's first beloved energy company. He's off to an impressive start. In less than 3 years, he and his team have built a thriving Texas business valued in the billions of dollars. And Zach believes they're still just at the top of the first inning. In today's episode, Zach and I discuss America's stagnant grid infrastructure, the college-era attempt to lease a Hawaiian lava field that first sent him down the energy rabbit hole, how NBA coach Phil Jackson's ability to align superstars shapes the way that he builds teams, and what growing up as the son of Susan and Michael Dell taught him about truth-seeking, competition, and reinvention.
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