PROMOTING AN ECOSYSTEM OF ENTREPRENEURS
As inter-structure takes root and spreads, it creates something beyond infrastructure. It creates an economy. Local, regenerative, and owned by the people doing the work. As OakTREE scales, paid opportunities emerge across neighborhoods: maintaining thermal systems, managing food production, manufacturing components locally, and providing the countless services that keep an ecosystem thriving.
These aren’t just jobs. They’re pathways out of extractive employment and into work that builds wealth and agency. For residents of historically divested communities, particularly those earning low wages in precarious positions, this is a chance to gain high-demand technical skills, while keeping the value of their labor close to home. The work itself requires what no algorithm can replicate: local knowledge, trusted relationships, and the kind of place-based expertise that only comes from being rooted in a community.
And as the ecosystem matures, many will see what’s next: the opportunity to start their own businesses, serving and employing their neighbors. A neighbor runs a delivery service using community electric vehicles, bringing fresh produce, prepared meals, and other basic needs to those who need them. A homeowner transforms their space into a community e-kitchen that becomes a hub for preparing and sharing healthy meals. A thermal systems technician sets up a maintenance cooperative. Someone who works with CAD/CAE tools starts consulting with other neighborhoods ready to build their own thermal systems.
OakTREE nurtures this entrepreneurial growth by providing what emerging businesses need most: support through an OakTREE curated business accelerator and access to seed funding through instruments like revolving loan funds and models developed by organizations like People’s Solar Energy Fund and SEED Commons. Because when infrastructure creates economic opportunity, and that opportunity stays local, entire communities can flourish.