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hen Jonathan Lord, 29, first set out to electrify the marine industry, he was just a college student with a suitcase-sized prototype and a bold idea: to create electric motors that could replace noisy, polluting gas engines typically on boats. He launched Flux Marine, an electric motor maker, in 2018 to solve the issue. The cofounders’ vision garnered significant support from those who agreed that the maritime industry was ripe for disruption. Today he’s backed by $30 million in funding from investors like Ocean Zero and Collide Capital. And it was a win-win for those who shipped off investor checks: “A lot of our early investors were also our customers,” he told Forbes.
Lord has since spent a decade turning that idea into a full-scale operation, alongside over-30 cofounders Benjamin Sorkin and Daylin Frantin. Today, his team designs and manufactures electric motors, batteries, and control systems for outboard boats and serves customers across the United States—from private sailors on small lakes to fleets in the British Virgin Islands. “The marine industry is a huge contributor to global warming,” Lord says. “We wanted to be the catalyst to build technology from the ground up, specifically for marine electrification.”
