Nothing worth doing is easy. Do what you love.
Maryssa Barron had Post-it notes of those quotes on her dorm room wall at Stanford Law School for motivation as she created her own tech startup in 2024 while studying for the bar exam.
The Las Vegas entrepreneur posted the quotes above a handwritten timesheet on which she tracked the hours she worked on BuildQ, an artificial intelligence-powered platform designed to help streamline the development of energy projects.
“I wanted the reminder that I chose this,” said Barron, 31. “Instead of taking the rational path of working at a law firm after graduating, I chose to build something I truly believed in. I chose uncertainty. I chose risk. I chose doing something I loved over doing something I wouldn’t.
“Building a startup is hard, so you have to be mentally prepared to break through walls and just keep going. It’s about having grit and being willing to tackle every challenge that’s thrown your way with the belief that it’s worthwhile.”
From growing up in Section 8 housing in rural Texas to graduating from Harvard University and Stanford Law School, Barron is quite familiar with breaking through walls and having grit.
‘Generational poverty’
She said she learned those traits from her mother, Dr. Candace Barron, a United Methodist Church minister in Arkansas, whom she considers her inspiration.
“I grew up with a single mom who went to school all through my childhood. She really served as that North Star for what it looked like to break the cycle of generational poverty through education,” Barron said. “It was never a question of whether or not I would go to college, just how. We certainly couldn’t pay for my education without scholarships.
“A lot of my childhood, even from early on, was spent working to be the best candidate for scholarships. … Striving for academic excellence, volunteerism, being very involved in my community, excelling in one or two key extracurriculars. … I was always striving to do more and had a belief that I could, in large part informed by my upbringing and background.”
For six years of Barron’s childhood, her mother made only $6,000 a year working part-time as a church secretary while putting herself through college.
“It’s been me and her against the world since she was 2,” Candace Barron said. “It was pretty rough there for a few years. We were on Medicaid and food stamps and Section 8 housing. I figured the only way to get out of this hole of my life was to go to college and get a degree.
“So I started working and going to school, and once I got started, I said I’m never stopping until I reach the top, so I got my doctorate at the end of it all.
“I had to do it for her. I didn’t want her to have to live in that situation anymore.”
They moved to Arkansas when Barron was in eighth grade. After graduating from Little Rock Central High School, she received the equivalent of a full scholarship to Harvard in the form of financial aid.
“I was so proud,” her mother said. “She was the only person in the state of Arkansas to go to Harvard that year.”
The 4-foot-11-inch Barron walked onto the Harvard men’s heavyweight rowing team her freshman year and served as coxswain for a season, steering the boat and directing and motivating the crew.
“It’s not just yelling. You have to be decisive under pressure and you have to know how to motivate and galvanize people in the race,” she said. “Crucially, a lot of the same skills and leadership show up in running a company. You have to learn how to motivate a team toward a common goal, and all be rowing in the same direction, pun intended.
“That was very aligned with my personality and what I like to do.”
‘Solving the energy crisis’
Barron said her childhood dream and ultimate goal has always been to make the world a better place.
“For me today, that looks like solving the energy crisis driven by AI power demand and electrification,” she said. “Helping power the world and the future of the grid in a cleaner and more sustainable way.
“Over the next decade, energy is going to be one of the defining buildouts of our lifetime, and the team doing that work deserves software that’s been built for them.”
The BuildQ founder and CEO came up with the idea for her company — “Think TurboTax for project finance,” she said — while working in the energy industry for nearly a decade after earning her bachelor’s degree from Harvard.
“The idea for BuildQ really came out of firsthand experience working in the renewable energy development sector and project finance,” she said. “I saw just how fragmented the process of getting energy projects built was.
“BuildQ solves a pain that I have actually lived and the industry needed.”
Project finance is a method of funding a capital intensive project or asset. Unlike traditional corporate loans, which are secured by a company’s overall balance sheet, project finance relies solely on the future cash flows generated by the project to repay debt.
BuildQ won the 2025 AngelNV “Shark Tank”-style competition created by StartUpNV founder Jeff Saling, and the company has received a total of more than $1 million in investments from affiliated funds.
“Maryssa went to Harvard and Stanford. She had the perfect pedigree to start BuildQ in Silicon Valley. But she decided this was a better place to get it started,” Saling said. “I feel fortunate that shortly after she moved here, she found us, and as soon as I saw what she was doing and the capabilities she had, we were the first check in.”
AI runs in data centers that consume massive amounts of electricity, and Saling said the country probably needs five times the amount it currently produces to continue to power AI, electric cars and more in the future.
“Unless we as a society create much more energy than we’re creating right now, none of the stuff in the data centers works,” he said. “That’s the problem that Maryssa and BuildQ are solving and that’s why we’re excited.”
Saling said energy projects typically take a long time and are very complicated, with dozens of different providers involved. BuildQ is designed to speed up the process by bringing together the stakeholders, including construction companies, developers, engineers, financiers, landowners, lawyers, regulators and more.
“Maryssa built a platform where all these people can live and they can find each other, and it’s all AI-based so it will follow all the rules and regulations,” Saling said. “And when you need something approved, the regulators are all in there so they can approve stuff really quickly.
“It puts all the right parties together to get these projects done.”
‘Moving quickly’
Less than a year after BuildQ went live, Barron said eight people work for the company, there are more than 300 projects on the platform, more than 10 gigawatts of clean energy capacity and more than $150 million in deal flow.
“Building a company is not without its challenges but it’s moving very quickly,” she said. “We’re in active deployments with energy project teams across the country, and the pipeline definitely has built faster than we modeled.
“The pull from customers, especially around AI-assisted due diligence and project management workflows, has been stronger than expected.”
Will Crane, head of development for Bluestern Energy Solutions, said BuildQ has given his company a competitive edge.
“BuildQ has cut our contract review time by nearly 30 percent, giving our team back hours each week and allowing us to move with greater speed and confidence,” he said. “That efficiency translates directly into deal efficiency. We are able to organize diligence and submit bids earlier, a competitive advantage that’s been invaluable.”
Barron, whose husband’s family lives in Arizona, said she made a deliberate decision to build BuildQ outside the typical startup ecosystems.
“Las Vegas is actually a very practical choice for what we’re building. There is a ton of data center growth and demand out here,” she said. “From a business standpoint, it’s also a place where you can build efficiently. Practically, costs are lower than in coastal tech hubs and there’s still strong access to talent and capital and networks like StartUpNV and FundNV.
“I love Las Vegas. It’s been such a welcoming city.”
Contact reporter Todd Dewey at tdewey@reviewjournal.com. Follow @tdewey33 on X.
