Welcome to Founder Spotlight Rewind — a chance to catch up with the incredible founders we've previously featured and get the latest on how their companies are evolving. Whether it's major milestones, new products, or expanded impact, we're excited to share what's next in their journey.
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Before we dive in…
Dive into the capital stack with Joel Armin Hoiland on June 13 at 12:00 PM PT. Hear how government funding and policy shifts are shaping the climate tech landscape. You’ll get fresh insights on how to diligence startups for grant readiness, which technologies are best positioned, and how grants fit into the broader funding stack.
Meet Angelo Campus and Anderson Barkow, founders of BoxPower
Invest in startups like BoxPower alongside Climate Capital here.
Founders: Angelo Campus, Anderson Barkow
Motto/Mission: BoxPower’s mission is to provide clean, reliable, and affordable energy to rural and underserved by streamlining the deployment of microgrid solutions
Year Founded: 2016
Stage: Series B
Location: Grass Valley, California, USA
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Climate Capital: What made you want to solve this problem?
Angelo and Anderson: We both grew up in rural areas where unreliable power wasn’t just a nuisance—it created real challenges for daily life, from education to healthcare to economic opportunity. Experiencing these disruptions firsthand, we realized that clean, reliable energy is essential for the communities that need it most, including rural, remote, and underserved populations.
The spark for BoxPower came after the 2010 Haiti earthquake, where the collapse of the diesel supply chain left communities without critical power. This highlighted the need for rapidly deployable resilient energy solutions. We saw the potential for productized, rugged microgrids to not only address disaster relief but also solve broader challenges like aging distribution lines, increasing wildfires, and extreme weather events. These microgrids offer solutions for resiliency and climate adaptation, providing a reliable, sustainable alternative to traditional power systems.
Recognizing that utilities are key stakeholders in the clean energy transition, BoxPower focuses on partnering with them to deploy microgrids at scale. These partnerships are crucial for reducing diesel reliance, modernizing infrastructure, and bringing reliable power to areas that need it most, ensuring that no community is left behind in the push toward sustainable energy.
Climate Capital: What are you building?
Angelo and Anderson: At BoxPower, we’re building more than just microgrids—we’re creating a platform that simplifies and scales clean energy deployment. Our approach includes an ecosystem of software services and modular hardware that streamlines everything from site identification and engineering design to commissioning and ongoing operations. By standardizing components and prefabricating systems, we make it easy to deploy energy solutions at scale, providing reliable power to even the most rugged environments.
We’re focused on making the portfolio-level deployment of standalone power systems simple, fast, and scalable. By combining our technology and expertise, we enable utilities and organizations to deploy microgrids efficiently, ensuring that clean energy and resiliency reach the communities and locations that need them most. Ultimately, we’re building a future where energy is not just reliable, but resilient and adaptable to the challenges posed by climate change and aging infrastructure.
Climate Capital: What is next?
Angelo and Anderson: Looking ahead, BoxPower is focused on serving a wider range of system sizes and end markets. Over the past few years, we've primarily partnered with utilities in the Western U.S. on wildfire mitigation initiatives, removing vulnerable distribution lines in high-risk areas. Now, we’re expanding our work across the country with rural cooperatives, municipalities, IOUs, and commercial businesses to deploy microgrids as distribution assets, enhance extreme weather resilience, and offer cost-effective alternatives to undergrounding. To drive this expansion, we’re preparing for a Series B raise early next year, which will allow us to accelerate our growth and continue leading the clean energy transition.
Climate Capital: What are the core elements of the culture you are building at your company?
Angelo and Anderson: At BoxPower, we’re a team united by our mission to provide clean, reliable energy where it's needed most. Based in Grass Valley, our passion for the environment runs deep—it’s reflected in both our location and our work. We’re not just engineers, developers, and project managers—we’re problem solvers who care about nature and sustainability.
We value inclusivity and cross-departmental collaboration. We believe that the best ideas come from diverse voices working together, and we foster that through regular team activities like our company talent show, office Olympics, and trips to the river.
Climate Capital: What are the key challenges as you scale your company?
Angelo and Anderson: Scaling BoxPower presents unique challenges, largely due to the inherent nature of our business working in infrastructure and building physical systems. Managing complex projects while keeping everything on track is critical, but the complexity of infrastructure work requires constant coordination and precision. We’re delivering real-world systems that need to perform reliably in some of the most demanding environments. In addition, navigating the regulatory and permitting landscape adds another layer of complexity. Each region comes with its own set of permitting and compliance requirements, and managing these processes efficiently is key as we continue to expand.
Climate Capital: What have you learned that you want to share with other founders?
Angelo and Anderson: One of the biggest lessons we’ve learned is the importance of resilience (pun intended). As a founder, things rarely go exactly as planned, and the ability to adjust course quickly is critical to maintaining momentum and solving problems as they arise. You can’t control everything, but you can control how you respond.
We also believe that endurance is key. The idea of a ‘10-year overnight success’ is real – things take time, and the journey is often less glamorous than it seems. Scaling a company requires patience and persistence. Success comes from staying focused on the long-term vision and staying disciplined in strategy.
Climate Capital: How can the broader climate community help you on your mission?
Angelo and Anderson: We’re always looking to collaborate with like-minded partners—whether you’re a utility, a municipality, or an organization committed to advancing clean energy solutions, we’d love to explore how we can work together to create impactful, scalable projects.
If you want to learn more, visit https://boxpower.io/!