How Cole Ashman went from Tesla to founding his own home battery company

New Orleanians like Cole Ashman know what it means to lose power during a storm. Ashman lived in the city through Hurricane Katrina and other major storms, and as residents turned to generators for backup power, he felt that there must be a better way for people to take care of their families, homes, and businesses during natural disasters.

That nascent mission drove him to product engineering jobs at companies like Tesla and Span, working on residential powerwalls and panels that allow homeowners to bank (and save money on) energy. But Ashman wanted to create a product that would let everyone, everywhere take advantage of battery-powered storage.

“Focusing on the human element, in a funny way, is what allowed us to see the mass-market opportunity,” Ashman told Morning Brew. “Just shrink it down to: What do we actually need to do here? For a lot of folks, it’s just their refrigerator in a power outage, or keeping wi-fi on.”

To do those things, Ashman founded Pila, a company that makes storage-scale batteries that can be plugged into any outlet and power appliances during outages. The product, which sells for $1,299, was recently named an honoree at CES’s 2026 Innovation Awards, and Ashman’s coworkers and collaborators told us that his strong vision and amiable leadership style got him to where he is today.

Strategic partnerships

Creating a home battery that doesn’t require professional installation comes with some obstacles. Ashman, sensing that he wasn’t the only one with the idea, said that rather than building battery cells in-house, he decided to partner with a battery manufacturer to get the product off the ground quicker.

“[Speed] becomes a mode of operation,” Ashman said. “How do we stay really focused to get the immediate things done quickly? Where do we bring in partners to stand on the shoulders of giants?”

As for deployment, partnerships with installers traditionally help small power businesses get off the ground. But because Pila doesn’t require installers, Ashman found other ways to make connections in the industry: Pila is working on pilots with utility companies to help get their batteries into homes, which may yield energy provider incentives that significantly reduce the cost of owning a Pila battery.

“Even some households, asking for a $1,000 expenditure is too much. And that’s about the cost of a generator. We’re [at] parity, but we want to do better,” Ashman said. “Ideally this becomes free and default and just the way that we build our homes. And that’s where these partnerships come into play.”

Professional drive

Chad Conway, a Pila advisor who hired Ashman at Tesla and Span, told Morning Brew that Ashman gave his all to the products he worked on—so much so that Conway pushed him to start his own company.

“As I was leaving Span, I was telling him, ‘Man, you’re burning the midnight oil on this company. You need to start your own company because you’re so smart and capable,’” Conway said. “I didn’t really care what the idea was; it was really much more about seeing him ascend and reach his potential.”

Conway describes Ashman’s potential as a “fire” in the face of rejection, which is almost inevitable when founding a startup.

“It’s a lonely place as a CEO and everybody telling you ‘no’ all the time—investors and even potential employees,” Conway said. “So you need to have some burning fire inside of you to say, ‘I’m gonna carry me through.’ And Cole has that.”

Both Conway and Hans von Clemm, a product lead at Pila, told Morning Brew that Ashman excels at communicating, bringing people into his vision for Pila, and creating an environment that fosters innovation and stays focused.

“It’s one thing to have a clear vision and understand what needs to be made, but [another] to bring people along and make them feel like they clearly contributed to the outcome,” von Clemm said. “For Cole, it’s way more than just about the mission or just about the goal or about making the money…He’s so excited to be building this thing and building it with good people.”