I met Josh Hotvet at a veterans happy hour at an ACP conference that maybe six of us showed up to. His parents wouldn’t sign his enlistment papers at 17, so he finished his freshman year of college, turned 18, and walked into a Marine Corps recruiter’s office. In 2003 his Reserve unit mobilized for Iraq, and he did what he calls his semester abroad there during his senior year.
He spent 11 years on active duty as an infantry officer and retired from the Reserves in August, 26 years in. Today he’s a co-founder of HK Power, which buys solar and battery storage projects while they’re still in development and gets them ready to build.
Josh describes development as taking stakeholders with opposing views, bringing them to the same table, and finding solutions “that at least everyone doesn’t hate.” That was his job every day on active duty, and he says it paid off from his first day in energy. The finance he had to go learn. Before business school he had never put an equal sign into an Excel cell, and now financial modeling is a huge part of his job. You come out with the soft skills. The hard skills you have to figure out one way or another.
We also got into the Marine Innovation Unit, where reservists from Google and Goldman Sachs help the Corps find and buy new technology, and why Josh calls every energy source a tool when people tell him his projects don’t make money.
Chapters
00:00 - Introduction
01:26 - New Hampshire’s $100-a-Year State Lawmakers
05:42 - How Kevin and Josh Met
10:24 - Joining the Marines at 18 and Serving 26 Years
12:43 - How the Marines Put Reservists’ Day Jobs to Work
18:37 - Business School and Learning Finance From Zero
21:04 - Do Energy Projects Make Money?
23:28 - Taking the Politics Out of Energy
28:52 - How HK Power Gets Projects Ready to Build
30:52 - From Project Developer to Starting His Own Company
34:53 - Building Projects Without Federal Tax Credits
38:51 - Advice for Veterans Getting Into Energy
44:55 - Closing
Resources
People & Organizations
Kevin Doffing (LinkedIn)
Josh Hotvet (LinkedIn - Atlantic Council)
HK Power (Website)
Veteran & Transition Resources
Company & Industry News
HK Power Launches as New Distributed Solar and Storage Developer
U.S. Marine Corps Activates First-Ever Marine Innovation Unit
Policy & Programs
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