# Nicholas Zesty Blog
> A collection of thoughts, experiments, and adventures in tech, nature, and entrepreneurship by Nicholas Johnson.
Public Ghost content for AI and LLM tooling. Use `/llms-full.txt` for consolidated page and post context.
Append `.md` to any post or page URL to get the content in Markdown (for example, `/example-post.md`).

## Pages
- [about-experience](https://nicholasjohnson.blog/about-experience.md) - Jan 2024 – Present Baukunst Collective Part Of A Collection Of Creative Technologists Part Of A Collection Of Creative Technologists Advancing The Art Of Building At The Forefront Of Technology And Design. Working With Select Practitioners To Advise Founders, Support Company Building, And Promote C…
- [About Me](https://nicholasjohnson.blog/about.md) - About Me Hi, I’m Nicholas Johnson. I’m an electrical engineer and computer scientist by training and a founder by accident, someone who’s spent the last decade learning by building, shipping, breaking things, fixing them, and doing it all again. I didn’t start out trying to collect titles. I starte…
- [Founder Mode](https://nicholasjohnson.blog/founder-mode.md) - September 2024 At a YC event last week, Brian Chesky gave a talk that everyone who was there will remember. Most founders I talked to afterward said it was the best they'd ever heard. Ron Conway, for the first time in his life, forgot to take notes. I'm not going to try to reproduce it here. Instea…

## Posts
- [Agency is not about agents](https://nicholasjohnson.blog/agency-is-not-about-agents.md) - Agency is not about agents. AI multiplies output for people qualified to filter it, and multiplies garbage for everyone else.
- [Rivian's 🔥 Burning Cash to Scale](https://nicholasjohnson.blog/rivains-burning-up-tesla.md) - A white paper on the only American automaker running Tesla's playbook against Tesla, with every material figure sourced and rated. All financial data is drawn from SEC filings, company disclosures, and rated third-party sources; see Methodology and the Bibliography at the end. Executive Summary Riv…
- [The Distributed Home Data Center Fallacy](https://nicholasjohnson.blog/the-distributed-home-data-center-fallacy.md) - In April 2026, SPAN announced XFRA, a distributed data-center architecture in which exterior-mounted compute nodes are used. It's fundamentally a bad idea.
- [Could extended-range EVs encourage more car buyers to opt for full electric?](https://nicholasjohnson.blog/could-extended-range-evs-encourage-more-car-buyers-to-opt-for-full-electric.md) - Problem: The fundamental idea here is that current EVs with 300-400-mile ranges still don't work for large SUVs that Americans actually buy. No actual pickup truck has been built that's comparable to an F150 or F250 capable of doing real work in the United States. This has left most electric vehicl…
- [A Founder’s Reflection of 2025](https://nicholasjohnson.blog/a-founders-reflection-of-2025.md) - A founder’s reflection on leaving Orange, the collapse and rebirth of energy markets, and why AI and infrastructure are entering a new phase in 2026.
- [Zero to One Through Great Customer Discovery](https://nicholasjohnson.blog/0-1-is-just-great-customer-discovery.md) - Over the last several months, I've been helping several other founders who are early or have had to pivot from their original idea. Each time I encounter the same friction or resistance from founders, I have been there myself, facing the pushback of talking with customers and asking for money. Cust…
- [Three Quarters of Growth: What Orange Learned Building EV Charging for Multifamily](https://nicholasjohnson.blog/three-quarters-of-growth-what-orange-learned-building-ev-charging-for-multifamily.md) - Context: A deep dive into Orange’s last three quarters—covering GTM execution, revenue growth, hardware challenges, and the unique dynamics of selling into multifamily properties. Focuses on business model design, utilization, connectivity, and why Orange’s approach is fundamentally different from…
- [Too Many Cooks in the Kitchen: Baking EV Charging](https://nicholasjohnson.blog/too-many-cooks-in-the-kitchen-baking-ev-charging.md) - ⚖️ Navigating the Complex Standards Landscape of EVSE The biggest challenge facing EVSE innovation today is not a lack of technology, but rather the overwhelming number of agencies simultaneously attempting to regulate it. The adjacent Venn diagram illustrates this crowded space. Each organization…
- [Why 🔥 Burnt Outlets Are Dangerous](https://nicholasjohnson.blog/why-burnt-outlets-are-dangerous.md) - When installing EV charging, several critical factors must be considered to ensure the infrastructure's lifespan. The first is how to provide power to a parking space, which can be achieved by using an outlet or a hardwired charger. Outlets are the most affordable and easy way to switch between cha…
- [Building EV Hardware To Solve Installation Problems](https://nicholasjohnson.blog/why-orange-needs-to-exist.md) - I fell into starting an EV charging company, not because I wanted to start a new company, but because I wanted to solve problems that would be monumental to humanity's sustainable future. The story that most people know about Orange is a cheeky anecdote from a podcast and friends. "I lost a bet to…
- [Why Orange Had to Exist: The Origin Story](https://nicholasjohnson.blog/why-orange-had-to-exist-the-origin-story.md) - Orange was born in 2020 to solve a simple problem: EV charging doesn’t work for renters. We built plug-and-play chargers and a scalable network for multi-family housing—because the future was here, and it had nowhere to plug in.

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