The Climatetech Founder's Podcast

Marianne Lehnis
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Helping climatetech entrepreneurs and investors build, grow, and thrive. Listen to interviews with sustainability leaders to learn about business growth and innovation and connect with likeminded movers and shakers. thegreentechpreneur.substack.com

  1. 07/19/2024

    How to harness the sunlight – meet the minds making solar power affordable

    The Green Techpreneur (GT) is here to #SparkTheTransition to a world where people, planet and profit align. We are a springboard platform for climate tech startups: we offer an investor/startup marketplace to help you raise funds and a magazine/podcast to share innovation and insight – by founders for founders. Join our network of over 5,200 climate tech entrepreneurs, investors, and sustainability warriors who are moving the needle on climate change. Investors take note: Ourobio - a synthetic biology and fermentation startup has just announced their pre-Seed/Seed round, in which they are targeting a raise ~$2M to construct their pilot fermentation line to deliver the first kilograms of PHA and pigment to customers, initiate material certification, secure long-term commercial offtake agreements, improve yields to scale production further to 1 tpa, file PCT and continuation in-part conversion applications, and bring new members onto their team. For investment enquiries, contact: abrewer@ourobio.com Pluri’s Coffeesai - is raising $6.5 million to scale a ground-breaking solution in cell coffee production. It harnesses two decades of biotechnological expertise to deliver 100% authentic coffee through cellular agriculture, reducing water usage by 98% compared to traditional methods. Watch this video to learn more. For investment enquiries, contact: Michal.ogolnik@pluri-biotech.com Together with co-founders Aslan Shamsutdin, Murshid M. Ali and Petter S. Berge, Pratik Ghoshal, CEO and Co-founder of Skyfri Technologies developed technology which could streamline and automate solar asset operations to make solar power cheaper and solar capital investment significantly more sustainable. Skyfri’s technology targeted a genuine market pain point and within just a few months of launching, company growth soared by 500%. And with Skyfri’s solar asset management solution offering immediate savings of operating heads by 20-30% for power plants that were previously manually managed, their skyrocketing growth is hardly a surprise. Backed by climate investors SpeedInvest, Singularity and Link Venture, Skyfri manages about 185 sites worldwide and is dramatically accelerating growth through targeted acquisitions. Pratik says there was a strong element of right place, right time serendipity to Skyfri’s growth: the solar market was in desperate need of a better management solution, to a point where money and investors may have started to flow out of the space if more efficient ways of operating weren’t found. But the most important component of Skyfri’s success, he says, was not the market or the service or technology they provide – it was the people behind the name. “What’s the most important thing I’ve seen in my journey as an entrepreneur? “It’s that your team is your biggest asset. “Most of the time you fail as an entrepreneur because you just don’t have likeminded people. You don’t have people who you can depend on. Because you alone can’t be a one man army. “For me, having a co-founding team, not just a co-founder, was the key for Skyfri. “I do my 10% of the work, they their 90% of the work and we all do it together. If we hadn’t found that team, we probably wouldn’t be here,” says Pratik. To launch and build Skyfri just before the pandemic shook the world, the co-founding team had to take a leap of faith; “we started recruiting people to work remote, that’s how we grew. It was six months before I even met my co-founders in person – by then we had already raised funds.” His motto? “The entrepreneur’s job is to make the receptionist rich.” In this Green Techpreneur interview, Pratik talks all things growth, solar and team-building. Where did the idea behind Skyfri come from? My co-founders were all serial entrepreneurs in Oslo, Norway. We’ve known each other since almost five years now - since 2017 when I was working as Head of Global Sales in a manufacturing company in Munich. They wanted to develop a solar project. I went my way and became a global asset manager in London, but we always kept in touch and thought we could one day do something together. And incidentally, we found we were all facing similar issues. In 2020, we started connecting with each other; we had these solar power plants that didn’t work. We didn’t know what was happening, it was like a black box that we didn’t understand and our investment was at risk. So we decided to do something about it and we had a breakthrough from a technological point of view and that’s how Skyfri was born. What are key elements to working together successfully as co-founders? The most important thing is, you all share a common vision, you all have the same pain points, and you all are frustrated with the status quo. You have to be frustrated with the status quo to start something new. There’s no way the world moves ahead with incremental changes, you have to change things overnight, or at least have the ambition to change things. What does your technology do? We wanted to make solar plant management more systemized, we wanted to modernise it with automation. We target and transform three key underperformance areas: We identify energy losses in real-time When reporting happens on the asset management, you get a report after a month or a quarter and you suddenly realise that some of your plants didn't work. Something burnt out and needed replacement and by the time you know you already lost revenue and need to spend more to fix the issues. So we wanted to know exactly when things fail, or even futuristically predict when they might finish or start showing signs of underperformance. That's real-time management.  We break the silos We wanted to fundamentally change the system of operations, accounting and monitoring as siloed systems to have this be a single source of truth in a single integrated platform. We do all of this autonomously  The algorithm runs on machine learning, deep learning setup, and it monitors solar plants and does things automatically that previously needed a 20–30 member team depending on portfolio size. So the final value proposition to the investor goes back in the form of increased rate of return. What’s your knock-on impact on the solar industry? 20 years ago it cost 5 million Euros to build one megawatt of solar power – now that figure is just 0.5 million Euros per megawatt: because of the immense drop in capital expenditure, it has already become a mainstream class asset but what would have derailed its potential is the lack of management of the solar power plants – and that's where we come in. We are seeing an increased amount of investment and we want to not only sustain that money, we want more to come in to reduce global warming. If we had not done it, we probably would see the capital drain out of renewable energy investments. What is it about entrepreneurship that gives you that kick, and makes you go ‘yes, this is what I want to do!’? You of course have your freedom of thought, everyone has it in a free world. But the freedom of execution to channel the energy that you have without having to stick to a frame structure which already exists is what's most interesting. And the second thing is, at the beginning of entrepreneurship, there’s a lot of energy and that's what makes you get up in the morning, and like my wife says, I’m less of a thinker than a doer. I like to do things, so there’s no better avenue than entrepreneurship. Can you describe your entrepreneurial journey in three words? Extremely busy, very interesting, very scary What’s the scariest part about being a climatetech entrepreneur? The scariest part is, ‘what if the team doesn’t feel the same way tomorrow?’ I’m not worried about the market, because it’s clear, the market is there, but I want the team to be equally passionate and what if tomorrow we wake up and start to see a lot of disconnect in the team? That’s the scary part. To keep everyone motivated in the team – that’s our biggest asset by far – I cannot overstate this. The team has to stick together. Family is a cliche, but it’s a common vision, common mission that the team has to always feel, to always want to stay ahead of the curve by asking the most critical and even unpleasant questions – this is the motivation I want to see everyday in my team. How do you create that team spirit? We dislike the idea that there’s a value statement – because no one reads them – and the values may change over time. What we think is there’s one value that doesn’t change and that is a sense of care. Care for each other, care for the people with whom you spend 85% of your waking time with. And that care automatically translates into care for your customer. If you care for the customer and stand by them when they need help the most, that’s when you create lifelong loyalty. And you can’t write it on the wall, so someone reads it and says; ‘I’ll be caring, I’ll be caring, I’ll be caring.’ It has to be your natural self, so he or she sees that care happening in the company all the time. In the face of climate chaos, what gives you hope for the future? I give a lot of credit to the youth of today. You have Greta Thunberg and she has inspired a whole generation of youth. They don't have the data points, but they just get it with the snap of a finger, that this is not sustainable, this is not how they want to live. That’s the movement that is happening in front of the line. The second credit goes to the community of scientists that have been working tirelessly to prove beyond shadow of doubt that climate change is happening and we should do something about it. If you could teleport yourself into your future, where would you be? The company Skyfri would still be creating a lot of value as one of the most trusted and dependable in the internet enabled space. We will try to win the solar world and we’ll play

    50 min

  2. 05/24/2024

    How Homaio is cracking open lucrative EU ETS investing

    The Green Techpreneur (GT) is here to #SparkTheTransition to a world where people, planet and profit align. We are a springboard platform for climate tech startups: we offer an investor/startup marketplace to help you raise funds and a magazine/podcast to share innovation and insight – by founders for founders. Join our network of over 5,200 climate tech entrepreneurs, investors, and sustainability warriors who are moving the needle on climate change. He thought it was the perfect asset. It grew by double digits over the last ten years, it’s regulated, trustworthy and phenomenally successful as a CO2 buster: the market and its mechanisms have helped drive an approximately 47% decrease in the EU’s industrial participants’ emissions since 2005. Serial tech entrepreneur Valentin Lautier had been browsing the front page of the Financial Times a few years ago, when a picture of the upwards curve of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme’s (ETS) carbon allowance price caught his eye – at the time it was priced at €20, it's since shot up to about €70. “I was thinking, how do I buy this stuff? Because it's going to continue to go up, and if I buy some, I actually help the price to increase because I’m confiscating some of the supply - and then I realise that I can’t.”  It was this barrier to investment in the EU ETS that drove the French entrepreneur, who had been searching for his next venture – one that would make the proverbial ‘dent in the universe’ – to create investment platform Homaio.  Fast-forward a few years and his company is unlocking the market for retail investors. The platform is in its infancy, but Homaio has already wooed clients from around the world—from Europe to Brazil, the United States to Singapore. Homaio is now sitting on a stash of 10,000 European carbon allowances, each one granting the right to emit one tonne of CO2. That’s 10,000 tonnes of CO2 permits taken off the market: the beauty of investing in the EU ETS is that it ‘confiscates’ emission allowances from the market, forcing prices up and thus creating the impetus for faster industrial decarbonisation. Homaio is betting big that this will become a superstar asset class: “investors are chasing investments that offer returns, are trustworthy, easy to grasp, backed by solid evidence, and measurable. When I search for those qualities, EU ETS is the only thing that fits the bill,” says Lautier. Kicking off in 2005, the Emissions Trading Scheme was designed to put the brakes on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, industrial factories and aviation in the EU. It works by setting a ‘cap’ on the number of emission allowances. Companies can receive, buy, or trade these allowances within this cap, which shrinks every year, pushing companies to cut their emissions as their carbon ‘budget’ tightens. This scheme has a massive reach, covering about half of the EU’s industrial emissions. It applies across all EU Member States, the European Free Trade Association countries, and Northern Ireland for electricity generation. Around 15,000 industrial players in Europe are required to hold allowances equal to their emissions and must return them at the year’s end. Valentin brings 15 years experience as a tech entrepreneur to the table and doesn’t shy away from discussing the realities of green techpreneurship. When asked about how he’d describe his journey with Homaio so far, he says it’s been enthralling and exhilarating, but the word that really springs to mind is “embattled – everything is a fight.” He remains motivated by a love for innovation, the environment, and a determination to not follow the path of least resistance: “I think what we’re doing is extremely hard and extremely new,” says Valentin. “The idea of doing the right thing, even if it’s hard, is really something that – live or die – I want Homaio to convey. We’re trying to build a different path. We’re a little bit uncompromising. There’s beauty and value in doing things right…I hope it makes a difference to those we touch.” Can you explain what the EU ETS (Emissions Trading Scheme) is? The EU ETS is a compliance carbon market, trading a certain number of carbon allowances every year at a monetary value fixed by the EU. The supply, or number of allowances, decreases every year and the price subsequently goes up. So the market has a standardised trading unit. The primary market is the initial purchase of the physical asset and the secondary market is where players trade derivatives amongst themselves. One of the cornerstones of its success is that industrial parties are legally obliged to participate. It’s not the only market of its kind, nor is it the first. A great example of this kind of market is the US Sulphur Market, started by the US government in the 1990s. The aim was to drastically reduce sulphur emissions which were causing extreme acid rain in the US, and it proved successful over just ten years. Now, there are around 40 such jurisdiction/government-led schemes with a standardised trading unit, but Europe is presently the largest and most sophisticated. The EU only issues a fixed amount of allowances and this decreases every year: there’s always a need, but the supply is decreasing, so we get a politically driven price increase. The EU’s aim? To incentivise decarbonisation rather than offset. The price point of the allowances creates a fork in the road – do companies invest in the carbon allowances or invest in solutions and reduce their dependency? Why do emissions trading schemes in general have such a bad reputation for greenwashing? The reason for the negativity and scepticism around emissions trading schemes is because there are also voluntary carbon markets – thousands of them, with voluntary participation and various non-standardised units. This generates a lot of the controversies around the lack of opacity, lack of standards and lack of proven results. The voluntary markets are small, though, amounting to around $2 billion in value, or around 500 times smaller than the European market. What practical steps did you take to unlock access to EU ETS investing? We had to work with the regulation to open access to the underlying assets, via the EU Energy exchange and the Intercontinental exchange. Both of these exchanges trading physical assets and derivative contracts. Once access was gained, we had to wrap these assets. You need to encapsulate them in a financial instrument that can be distributed to general investors, in our case this is bonds, backed by the physical allowances we hold in custody accounts. We’re targeting smaller retail investors – not because it’s the best business – but because we believe they’re the most concerned by climate change and also by political participation in these markets. What does the process look like if you want to invest via Homaio? You simply sign up to Homaio online and subscribe to our investment product. We need some details – your basic KYC process – and then you can invest from around €1000*. Depending on the amount you hold, you could have a minimum holding period that’s as little as six months. But Homaio views this as a mid-long term investment. Of course, no return is guaranteed; there’s risk and you might also experience a loss, but we expect approximately a 12% - 18% increase per year over the next five years. This is backed by the fact that the member states have an interest in the increasing price of these assets, because they make money from them. What lessons did you take from previous entrepreneurial experience that you’re bringing to Homaio? Over time I’ve lost things and learned things. I’ve lost naivete. In my first venture, I had a very simplistic view of the world which helped me throw myself at challenges or obstacles because I didn't realise their size. And I've lost that – I kind of miss the 20-year-old me that was a little bit crazy. But I’ve gained a deeper understanding of who I am and of what I need. Knowing myself a bit better through experience is something that is important to me. Another key learning has been knowing how I work with others and what I need from a team. I think I’ve become a much better recruiter over the years. Team is everything. Your team has to fit with your personality. So, as an entrepreneur, you need great lucidity around what you need to succeed and what types of personalities you need. That takes time. What is your advice for other entrepreneurs in this space? I’ve had a lot of successes and a lot of failures and I’m still here. A lot of new entrepreneurs are afraid of risk. I find that strange – nothing will or can happen to you physically. The worst case scenario is that everything you’re trying to build crashes and you’ve learned a lot. You live to fight another day. Living through the entrepreneurial cycle of highs and lows gives you perspective and toughens your skin. You can only get this with experience, there’s no shortcut. You have to take the long route if you’re not piggybacking on already established ideas and mechanisms. Everyone’s trying to do things the way that ‘works’ without questioning whether there’s a way to do it better. There are a lot of times where I have to accept that I’m going against the consensus. There are other times where I’m happy to compromise and accept a conventional approach. As an entrepreneur you're always bombarded with contradictory advice or opinions and you need to know when to hold your ground and when to say ‘okay, I'm probably wrong there’. Having intuitive knowledge of which battle you’re facing is super important because you could be fighting the wrong battle for a very long time and then just hit a wall. Do you have any daily rituals that keep you going? I would love to say that I wake up at 4.30 a.m. and meditate, but I don’t. What keeps me going isn't

    54 min

  3. 05/10/2024

    This Recycling Climate Tech is Bringing Circularity to America's Food Chain Nationwide

    The Green Techpreneur (GT) is here to #SparkTheTransition to a world where people, planet and profit align. We are a springboard platform for climate tech startups: we offer an investor/startup marketplace to help you raise funds and a magazine/podcast to share innovation and insight – by founders for founders. Join our network of over 5,200 climate tech entrepreneurs, investors, and sustainability warriors who are moving the needle on climate change. You might think that working in waste-reduction, in a world that seems to be just keeping its head above the tidal wave of waste, would be a little thankless. But Todd Mathes, CEO of one of the US’ largest landfill-diversion firms, Denali, says he’s “more hopeful than fearful.” It’s a refreshing outlook – especially given the sector his company works with and food waste trends that show signs of a worsening wastage crisis. Denali specialises in landfill-diversion and repurposing solutions. The company operates across the US to take waste streams that typically go to landfills – spoiled produce and food damaged in transit, food waste, dead plant matter and even expired condiments still in packaging and food-soiled wrappers – and converts these into useful products that go back into the food and agriculture sector. The solids are turned into green compost, animal feed, soil and much more. Liquid products, like residuals in water from cleaning or used cooking oil, can be repurposed into fertilisers or biodiesel. Many of their solutions go right back into the industries that produced them to reduce the input costs for food manufacturers and producers. These circular solutions couldn’t be more urgently needed. Estimates suggest that the US wastes 38–40% of its food produced annually – that’s equivalent to 130 billion meals by some estimates, or over $400 billion worth of food, straight into landfills. That’s a huge financial waste, waste of space, and a great shame, given the amount of families living in food poverty in the US alone, some 17 million households in 2022 according to the US Department of Agriculture. The food waste epidemic is a global issue: the EU generates over 58 million tonnes of food waste each year according to the European Commission, while approximately 9.5 million tonnes of food waste are generated in the UK every single year. These facts should have us all hand-wringing as the cost of living crisis throws more families into food poverty. Financial waste and poverty aside, it’s also pretty damming for the climate. Research shows that approximately 8% of global (human-induced) greenhouse gas emissions arise from food waste as its rotting. So how can we produce affordable good food, stop the astronomical waste, and use earth’s land and water resources sustainably? Todd has been in the food waste business for a long time and sees plenty of reasons for hope – Denali has been around since 2013, but he was also part of its predecessor, Terrarenewal, which was founded in the 1990s. In this time, he’s seen companies go from arbitrarily and superficially keeping score of waste, to actually starting to take meaningful action. He says there are a lot of young leaders in the space, and nowadays you “see large organisations embracing sustainability requirements and actually using sustainability as part of their decision-making process” – something that was probably unimaginable in the 90s. The CEO says it’s “the excitement to work with the professionals I work with every day” that gets him out of bed in the morning. “It’s not hard to get up and work with the people I work with; I’m inspired by the excitement they have around our business. He jumpstarts his day with a cup of coffee…”and I drink that watching Squawk Box on CNBC (US pre-morning news and talk show). The only other thing I do on a daily basis is take time out for myself to get in an afternoon workout every day.” It’s certainly refreshing to hear CEOs talking about time for themselves – oft undervalued in the business rat race. “Every day I come to work with a plan…just about every day it gets derailed. But that keeps my work exciting,” says Todd. “We are part of an infrastructure that’s needed to keep the people who feed the world up and running – I think that’s really important and exciting. We want to make sure the world is fed and it’s done so in a sustainable way.” What are some of Denali’s biggest achievements? Denali recycled more than 2.6 billion pounds of food waste in under two years, working in partnership with over 10,500 grocers, including big names like Walmart and Kroger, as well as smaller food delivery services, like HelloFresh. We also partner with cities, hospitality providers and even the Super Bowl. The firm recycles more than 10 billion pounds of organic materials each year in addition to food (wastewater, sludge, plants, etc). The fertiliser produced replaces a commercial fertiliser that would normally be derived from raw materials. Many of the dry goods, fruits and vegetables that Denali collects and processes are converted into very nutritious animal feed – that’s a really important part of the circular economy. The compost is bagged and sold back into retail outlets…We are a happy participant in how society is evolving and becoming more responsible. What are Denali’s origins and how did you evolve? This company grew from a small company called Terrarenewal and that company started addressing specific needs for processes where companies have to clean their water prior to discharging back to a municipality or into the environment and in doing so they would create this nutrient-rich slurry that we would take, test, and repurpose as a fertiliser for farmers. There were some very passionate entrepreneurs that started that business and that led into handling other organic waste streams. What was pivotal to getting to where you are today? There was tremendous vision from my predecessor. He had a big vision to compile different solutions to organic waste and bring them together as one network. He went out to find acquisition targets that fit that model for landfill diversion – he worked very hard to do that and it’s his vision that we’re continuing on today. What are the main challenges your business faces? We have a lot of competition from businesses offering similar services but not identical offers. So we have to compare ourselves to those solutions and convince customers that we have the better solution. This is an emerging market and there are lots of ideas out there, and lots of companies out there, but we are out there telling our story every day and we believe it makes a difference. The acquisitions that we made to fit into our wider network - that comes with great change for those smaller entrepreneurs who were out there in local markets and that can be difficult. But once you see those entrepreneurs embrace the things we’re doing, it’s exciting to see the change and how they can evolve. What trends do you see emerging in the food waste sector? I see impetus at all levels primarily to reduce the waste. People are saying, let’s prevent waste food in the system and that’s good. So, over time we will continue to grow and develop solutions but I think we’ll [at Denali] have reduced raw material in our systems. But when you get into the mass-production of food, you’re not going to fully eliminate waste. There will always be byproducts and waste products in the system, and we’ll continue to use those. We believe waste should not be wasted. I also think re-use options will change with new technologies that are coming all the time – we’ve got our ear to the ground in that regard. Other trends include improvements in anaerobic digestion, increased fertiliser value, and new market products for organic waste. We’ve been doing this a long time but the space itself is starting to emerge into a new era. How did you persuade over 10,500 major grocers – and many more partners besides – to buy into this particular circularity concept? We did a good job of understanding their needs and what their goals were, so we could develop solutions that actually make sense not just from a sustainability perspective; they have to make sense financially too. If it’s too expensive, they won’t use the solution. I can’t emphasise enough how important it is to provide good, value-adding service – always be at the service of your customer and provide robust feedback about what’s happening with their waste. It’s really all about good relationships. We’re getting better at it everyday, and the better we get, the better our relationship with our retail customers. What are your top tips for other climate entrepreneurs? Vision: Have a big vision for the future of your business. Don’t think small, think big. Be thinking, ‘I can do this today, but what can I create tomorrow?’ Persistence: you have to be persistent in pursuing that vision. You have to serve your customers well, provide value back to them. I cannot emphasise enough the importance of offering your customers superior service and give them a true value proposition. What’s your favourite quote? My favourite quote is from Einstein “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” I apply this by thinking, ‘how do I learn from yesterday to improve on tomorrow?’ My life philosophy is connected to this, I don’t like to look back, I like to be thinking ahead and forward. Learn and then move forwards. I call it ‘looking through the windshield, not the rearview.’ What have you learnt from role models? When I was younger, it was definitely my grandfather. He was a farmer in Kansas and a very wise man, I learnt a lot from him. My college coach – Ethan Reed – was very influential in my mindset. A lot of my collage teammates are also in leadership role

    32 min

  4. 09/29/2023

    Colombia's largest coffee company is disrupting supply chains to put fairness first

    A warm welcome to the 40 new subscribers who have joined since the last edition!  If you haven’t subscribed, sign up below to join a network of over 2,850 climate tech entrepreneurs and investors. The Green Techpreneur (GT) is a comprehensive platform with a marketplace and magazine to help your climate startup raise funds and gain the actionable insight you need to make your mark on the planet. Investors take note!! We have a fantastic opportunity for you below to make money while making a real difference in empowering Sustainable Finance, Trade, Energy, Money & Community. Find out more below. In tough-to-disrupt industries, going for size and scale can sometimes be the only way to truly rewrite norms and shake up supply chains that are at odds with people and planet. This was the realisation that green techpreneur Boris Wullner Garces, CEO at Green Coffee Company (GCC) – Colombia’s largest producer of Arabica coffee – came to in 2021 when he set out on a scale up journey: “value share is very important for us: everything we do, we are not only doing for us as a company, we are also doing it for the coffee growers. We’re getting away from intermediaries and going directly to the consumer so we can pay a better price to farmers. But to do this, you have to have scale.” Despite the coffee sector acting on sustainability initiatives, commercial practices still often exploit farmers with only 10% of coffee’s total value staying in the countries of origin. The coffee market is largely steeped in a power imbalance where coffee farmers are disempowered by intermediaries who control access to buyers and take the majority share of profits, while the coffee farmers are often left struggling to pay for education and healthcare. “If you can buy green coffee at $1.09 per pound, and the roasters are selling you a bag of roasted coffee in the U.S. at $12.99 in the supermarket and it is only 12 ounces, who’s getting the money? Not the growers and they’re the ones doing everything,” says Boris. In six short years since it’s founding in 2017, Columbia-based Green Coffee Company has not just grown into one of the largest coffee producers in the world, it has been on a fast-track growth journey to cut out intermediaries, disrupt, reshape, own and green every aspect of its supply chain. “We’re thinking completely outside of the box: we are being disruptive at every step of the chain, from the nursery to the dry and wet milling to the roasting. We’re reducing our operating costs all across the chain….we’re attacking all the old parts of the chain that normally are not tackled by growers. Today, GCC has more than 12.5 million coffee trees. Its size and scale gives it the bandwidth to successfully disrupt an often exploitative industry and its proving that the green economy is also better for business. It implements cost-saving, cutting-edge technologies to green its supply chain and is a circular economy pioneer, adding new product lines by repurposing coffee cherry waste to produce ethanol (used in gin/vodka) and cascava flour. “The company generates something very important in the agricultural sector: a mirror effect,” explains Marcela Urueña, Colombian government chief advisor for coffee affairs. "I see them as an 'anchor producer' that sets the coffee business dynamics in the area …from delivering information about technologies to centralising purchases of fertilisers to get better prices for all producers around the region, sharing these economic benefits with all the small producers and coffee farmers around GCC. It is a truthful generator of enriched social networks that should lead to social and economic stability in the region where it is located." GCC has already raised a total of $65 million of equity, and is currently seeking $65 million of institutional debt capital to execute expansion plans. By 2026, the company projects it will be in a position to launch a U.S. IPO exit. Here’s a look at what it took to scale up and transform supply chains to put social and climate justice into the heart of your next brew. How did you first get involved with GCC? I'm a biological systems engineer. I've always been involved with agriculture. I spent over a decade working in the Colombian flower business, primarily in sales and marketing. Following that, I led Invest in Bogota, a startup incubator focused on bringing international business to the region. Before joining GCC, I held a position at a university as the Vice Dean for Biological Systems Engineering. I also took on consultancy roles and helped the Colombian palm oil industry improve their sustainability efforts. When I was invited to join GCC in 2020, we talked extensively about the transformative changes they envisioned for the industry, I thought, ‘this is what I've been waiting for.’ We discussed the goal of becoming a highly profitable yet inclusive company. It seemed like the only way to change the culture in Colombia and provide growers with a sustainable income. These past 3.5 years with the company have been nothing short of amazing. We've accomplished so much. How are you disrupting norms in coffee production? We own the entire supply chain, the roasting, milling, byproduct and harvesting processes and then we go direct to consumers into mass market supermarkets in the U.S. and around the world. We've been completely reimagining our approach to production. When we first embarked on this journey, the wet mills in the coffee industry felt like a trip back in time to the 1910s and 1920s. Today, we have state-of-the-art mills, fully optimised with cutting-edge technology. This transformation ensures not only profitability but also consistency, which we've incorporated into every step of our supply chain. We're disrupting the nursery process, we're disrupting wet milling, and we're even disrupting dry milling. Sophisticated processing machinery in GCC’s wet mills recycles water so it uses just 0.3 liters of water per pound of green coffee compared to 20 liters per pound used in traditional processes. We reuse coffee waste to create new product lines We take a close look at every point where waste is generated and explore ways to turn that waste into an additional industrial benefit or reduce its environmental impact. To produce one kilogram of coffee, you typically need five kilograms of cherries. Out of these five kilograms, approximately 2.5 kilos are considered waste or Cherry Cascara. We ferment and press the Cherry Cascara to extract cherry juice, which is rich in sugars. Through fermentation, we produce pure neutral ethanol. This ethanol will be available for commercial use next year, potentially in the form of spirits like vodka or gin. We also use the cascara to produce baking flour. We’re exploring using the waste from our fermentation process; drying the waste material and subjecting it to a pyrolysis system, which would allow us to create biochar and generate energy. Worker benefits 100% of our workers are formally employed with benefits and health insurance and they only work five days a week, 40 hours - not 7 days a week like all other growers in the area. Cutting out intermediaries Our journey began with internal sales to exporters in Colombia. Later, we expanded our reach by selling directly to U.S. importers. Last year, we introduced our green coffee brand to the European market, started a pilot programme to sell our specialty coffee brand online, and we're making steps to offer white-label products in the U.S.. We now have complete control of the supply chain and expect to sell millions of pounds of roasted coffee by year-end. What’s ahead for your supply chain expansion plans? We're diligently working on the necessary preparations to sell roasted coffee in the US: including hiring a sales representative, establishing a delivery structure, and ensuring we have all the right resources in place to sell directly to supermarkets. We're taking a deliberate and careful approach to prevent any disruptions in our relationships. Building and maintaining strong relationships, especially with supermarkets, is crucial. We want to ensure that when we establish these relationships, we have a seamless supply of products without any hiccups. Our strategy involves careful planning, relationship building, and steady growth as we continue to expand our presence in the coffee market. What has been the hardest part of the innovation journey? In Colombia, coffee growers are not accustomed to using a centralised wet milling facility. Instead, each producer has their own small, technologically dated wet mill, resulting in low efficiency. Convincing them to sell their cherries to a central facility to improve traceability, consistency, and quality was initially challenging because they weren't prepared for such a change. It took two years of training and teaching. This process has involved a complex cultural shift, as we needed to explain our approach and change how we communicate information to these growers. Changing established cultural practices has been a challenging aspect of this endeavour, but it's ultimately proving successful. Change requires audacity What drives me and our team is determination, particularly when it comes to leveraging technology and adopting a circular economy approach. As a biological systems engineer, I have a knack for identifying ways to transform one thing into another. When I spot opportunities, I act swiftly, but it requires a strong sense of determination. Our company culture thrives on constantly seeking ways to improve and disrupt the norm. What does the future hold? We weigh in on the cost of an investment, but if we see a compelling opportunity, such as the distillery project, where we're investing $8 million, it's a no-brainer investment because we anticipate recovering our investment in less than two years. For us, it's about seizing these opportunities and moving

    26 min

  5. 07/28/2023

    How to scale a niche product into a mainstream market while navigating being business and life partners

    A warm welcome to the 60 new subscribers who have joined since the last edition! If you haven’t subscribed yet, sign up below to join a network of 2,730 climate tech entrepreneurs and investors. The Green Techpreneur (GT) will provide you with the actionable insight and connections you need to make your mark on the planet with your business! In this Green Techpreneur episode, I spoke to the Co-founders of Gimme Seaweed to share how their journey of infusing passion, love, and a personal touch - connecting with customers as you would with friends and family - became keys to growing a household name brand that’s both delicious, nutritious and good for the planet. “I’ll never forget that feeling I had, in the early morning, it was 6 a.m., I was 35 and at the farmers market and feeling like I was in charge of my life and about to go on this very refreshing journey. And that became Annie Chun’s and the start of all that transpired. It was based on really wanting to be myself and sharing the love and experience that I have. Based on this, I always make sure to connect with myself, who I am, and what I have learned.” Annie Chun is the pioneer of an organic seaweed US snack brand, Gimme Seaweed, that has shifted what was a niche product into the mainstream market. She immigrated from Korea as a young woman in 1976 - but it was in selling homemade produce at a farmers market in 1991 that she found her North Star as a green techpreneur. At the time, she would never have imagined that her humble outdoor market beginnings would lead to building a household brand name. So how did she beat the odds to build an exceptional business from the ground up? “You're not really calculating, I'm going to put that into the US market, I did it truly as a friend, as a neighbour, one by one. And by doing so, I learnt a lot about what American culture is, how they connect, what they like. It just came to me naturally through that experience, and I think that's the base of our reach to our market and our buyers.” Along the way, she met her husband and co-founder, Steve Broad. They launched Gimme Seaweed in 2012, where Annie brings her Korean roots to the US with the introduction of seaweed as a snack. Together, they created the world’s first USDA Certified Organic, non-GMO Project Verified seaweed snacks. “I couldn't have built the business by myself,” says Chun. “It was almost like that was the path we had to walk together.” Seaweed is the underrated story of our time – it’s the ultimate regenerative crop – and along with shellfish, it’s one of the few farmed foods with a net positive environmental impact.  In a world of water scarcity, it provides valuable nutrition without use of freshwater, and if farmed organically, it helps keep the oceans clean and fights climate change. Seaweed farms sequester carbon and improve water quality: one ton of seaweed can sequester over 1 ton of CO2 annually – a stark contrast to the heavy toll traditional agriculture takes on the environment. But it’s also a commercial success story: since 2018 the seaweed category has grown by 63% with strong double-digit growth YOY. Today, Gimme is on track to double its business sales since 2021 and deliver 40% year on year growth. It’s the #1 organic seaweed brand leading the way in online channel sales with a 60% category share on Amazon and can be found at major US and Canadian retailers including Wholefoods, Kroger, Publix, Target, Safeway, Sprouts and HEB.  What sustainability practices does Gimme Seaweed employ? Annie: Our commitment to sustainability starts in the ocean, Gimme was the first US company to offer organic, non-GMO seaweed.  We worked closely with seaweed farmers in South Korea and in close cooperation with the Korean National Federation of Fisheries Cooperatives to develop the standard for organic, non-GMO seaweed that is widely used today by the industry. It was a lot of work for us to coordinate between the Korean Control Union and the USDA and then to find a supplier – because organic wasn't in the vocabulary in Korea, nor non-GMO, and it took a lot of time. In recognition for helping transform the seaweed industry we received a Supplier of the Year Award for Organic Commitment from Whole Foods Market. We use 250 tons of dried seaweed a year which requires 2,500 tons of wet seaweed, this absorbs 4,265 tons of CO2 per year. How were you able to take a niche product and introduce it in a mainstream market? Steve: Understand what you have as a product and understand where the consumer is and what they're seeking and how you bring that together. * What helped us was starting at the farmers market and directly speaking to the consumer as opposed to just looking at a data story and then figuring out what needs to happen. * Then you create the brand with the values you embody to create that consumer love that's really where the magic happens.  * We built a brand that was more mainstream than the seaweed market had previously been. Annie: It's been a great journey. Finding myself, connecting with people, and sharing my passion and love. The customers teach me a lot as well. It's just a cycle of learning. Where there key moments that were pivotal to your success? Steve: It took luck meets hard work opportunities to get it going. Annie: When we first started, I was the creator, and Steve was a business partner. I was also the salesperson making cold calls. There are times when it is very challenging to persuade the buyer even if you know you're doing the right thing. You get a lot of rejections and then you run into someone who just helps you right there. If I didn’t walk this path, I would not have had the break.  You encounter a lot of rejection and failure, but it’s not failure, because you just get up and keep walking that path again and again – it may take you four or five years, but then the door opens for you. Here's what I learned: no matter what happens, you need to walk on that path, then you will have a break, and failure is not a bad thing because you make your situation much better from that learning. How do you navigate being both business and life partners? Annie: It's essential to have a common goal. You almost have to be one person even if you're two separate people. You have to ask if beyond marriage and beyond business, just as individuals, ‘can we walk this path together if we have a common goal?’ It certainly hasn't been easy but we've known each other for 35 years now, we have two beautiful grown up kids – young adults - and two businesses. So one can only imagine lots of ups and downs and tears and sweat but it's important to see that light at the end of the tunnel, and that is the goal that you have, and then we can just walk the path together. And we're actually best friends, we think alike.         Steve: It’s certainly love and mutual respect and we also have complementary skills, it’s bringing these things together where the genesis happens. What do you love most about what you do? Annie: Seeing people enjoy the product is a blessing. It’s also amazing to see the wide range of ethnicities that enjoy the seaweed and how it makes a difference in bringing healthy nutrition into American diets – especially for children. What advice would you give to other green techpreneurs? Steve: Make sure you're in touch with what the actual economics are of what you're trying to do and ask, ‘what's that market going to look like?’ It's easy to jump in and then all of a sudden you're spending money and then you don’t have an understanding of what the future is, where you're trying to be, or what you need to accomplish.  That economic/financial piece is always tricky. Also knowing what kind of capital you bring in and how it might support you or not after you put in so much hard work to get to a certain place. Have the answers, but without trying to constrain yourself, because you know what the answer is, if you don’t get started. How would you describe your journey in 3 words? Steve: Amazing, challenging, rewarding Annie: Dream, visualise, work hard What’s your mantra or life philosophy? Steve: Work hard, respect others, listen and learn constantly. Appreciate others, from your suppliers to your employees to your customers. Annie: In the past seven years or so, through my journey, I had to learn to be patient and try to take the higher road. Do you have any daily rituals that keep you grounded? Annie: I normally play with my dog – she makes me run around and throw balls on her walk. I try to walk every day and I remind myself ‘I’m good in this moment’, and I just focus on this moment and on now. ……………...if Annie and Steve could teleport themselves into the future and be anywhere, doing anything, they’d be in Italy or Hawaii; “we’d have a difficult time choosing one or the other,” says Annie, “I’d learn to cook, learn to surf, learn to paint. I love how warm and hospitable people are, I’d love to share that and learn about their cultures and I’d love to explore…we haven’t gone to New Zealand or Australia yet.” The proof is in the pudding: Thank you for reading and listening to The Green Techpreneur. Have a great weekend! 🥂 #SparkTheTransition, Marianne P.S. If you enjoy reading the GT, please share this article to help spread the word! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thegreentechpreneur.substack.com/subscribe

    26 min

  6. 06/23/2023

    How to Communicate & Build Community on Social Media

    A warm welcome to the 50 new subscribers who have joined since the last edition! If you haven’t subscribed yet, sign up below to join a network of 2,600 climate tech entrepreneurs and investors. The Green Techpreneur (GT) will provide you with the actionable insight and connections you need to make your mark on the planet with your business! If you’re a climate tech startup raising funds, we can connect you with a global investor database of 2,000+ proven climate tech investors. Learn more here and contact us today! In this Green Techpreneur edition I spoke to Going Green Media to share their insight on how to effectively communicate your climate innovation with the world and gain customers and loyal followers! For climate tech businesses that want to connect with consumers and inspire action, creating compelling stories online is a crucial marketing tool. Going Green Media is a growing media platform that does just that. Founded by a creative duo –Ben Brown and Ciara Doyle – the project boasts over 200,000 Instagram followers and creates inspiring films that showcase innovative green projects around the world. Like many Green Techpreneurs, Ben founded the business out of a frustration with the status quo: “I was a student of architecture and getting really frustrated with lecturers talking about modernist designs with no sustainability credentials. So I bought a second hand camera and travelled to locations to film sustainable building projects, in the hope it would encourage the lecturers on his architecture course to teach the principles of environmentally-friendly construction.” Little did he know the initiative would change the course of his life – “it became a viral hit on Youtube, and I realised it wasn’t just the architecture space that needs to get up to speed on environmental innovation, it’s the whole world.” Ciara joined Going Green Media in 2020, and the brand has since steadily grown, working alongside organisations as varied as the WWF, Mastercard and The Olympics. “We film green projects that inspire action,” says Ciara, “we go visit climate tech projects and allow them to tell their story. We translate often very high-tech projects and make the average person understand them and get excited about them.” Winning followers and fans online is especially important for climate tech startups that want to connect with Gen Z and Millennials: according to a 2021 survey by the Pew Research Center, this demographic is far more likely to care about environmental issues than previous generations. They’re also more likely to engage with sustainability content on social media: some 56% of Gen Z reported seeing at least two posts on climate action during their weekly scrolling, with 45% of respondents in that age group engaging with the content. Ben and Ciara share what it takes to communicate effectively and build community in a virtual world. What are the goals of Going Green Media? Ciara: Our tagline is: ‘We film green projects that inspire action’. We are fortunate enough to find incredible green solutions from around the world, whether it’s an organisation or an individual who has come up with a solution to a big climate problem and help them tell their story using video. The second part of our business model is to inspire people to take action for the environment in their own lives and get involved in their community in any way they can. Ben: We feel like a lot of the climate news out there is so negative. That’s why all the content we produce is hopeful and inspiring. And that’s why we feel we’ve been able to have this success so fast, because people want to see content that makes them feel hopeful and like a better solution is possible. What’s a project you’ve worked on that stands out? Ciara: One big moment was back in early 2021. We went to visit a small greentech startup called NotPLA. They were making plastic alternatives from seaweed. It was a really small team at the time. They were in a little office but they were so knowledgeable. Fast forward to the end of 2022, they won the Earthshot prize, which granted them a million pounds toward their project. It’s those incredible startup transformations and journeys that are so amazing, and we hope we played a part in that. What are your tips on creating content and growing online? Make your content personable and accessible Ben: The most successful climate tech startup stories that we’ve seen have made their content personable and accessible. So, taking a wider perspective and looking at ‘what is the problem we’re trying to solve? And then relaying that by breaking it down for people, making it easy to understand, so it’s not in this complex language. Connect your service or product to an individual person Ciara: Put a person behind [your product] and say: ‘this is how I use it in my daily life’, or, ‘this is what it’s done for me’. Make that connection to how the product benefits the individual. Collaborate as much as possible Ciara: I think collaboration is undervalued. If you have a niche, find someone else who is doing something similar. That collaboration obviously isn’t only good for reaching new audiences and reaching new people, but also puts you in touch with more like minded people. Ben: People in this space tend to be so welcoming; everybody’s working towards the same goal. We all want to make the biggest impact possible: reach out to other companies, influencers or content creators that are in these niches and collaborate on content and cross-promotion. Passion and enthusiasm matter more than perfection Ben: The first videos I created connected with people, I didn’t have the production quality, but they saw the enthusiasm was there. People connect with passion more than perfection in content. Make the algorithm work for you Ben: Follow the trends that are happening on social media. The algorithms are constantly changing, so you have to make them work for you. If you’ve been posting images for a long time and you’ve not seen it working, stop and change that. Reels on Instagram are just blowing up for both creators and businesses right now. Build community through consistency and mutual engagement Ben: Make sure you’re active on your stories – share the real aspects of your life to build connection and community. Ciara: Building a community around your brand is so important, whether you’re an individual or a huge team. Engage with your followers, if they comment, respond, start a conversation. What’s the biggest mistake you see startups making on social media? Ben: The biggest mistake is making things too complex in explaining your topics, or not putting a person behind a story. Ciara: Keeping it simple is the most important thing. As a creator, or as a business on social media, you have to create the type of content that you yourself would want to see or that you would want to take action from. Do you have a mantra or life philosophy you follow? Ben: Leave the earth better than you found it. Ciara: We don’t need ten perfect, sustainable people doing absolutely everything they can for the planet. We need millions and millions, and billions of people living sustainably but imperfectly. We’re human, we’re imperfect. It’s about having that little voice in the back of your head pushing you to be a little bit more conscious in your day-to-day life that makes such a difference long-term. What daily rituals keep you grounded? Ciara: We fortunately have a park in our neighbourhood. At the end of a really long day, even if we have a million things that we have to do, we take 15 minutes to go outside. We have a favourite bench that we like to sit on. So we’ll go back to the bench, just breathe a little bit and then come back to it. What does the future hold? Ben: I’d love to get into documentary filmmaking and long form content, maybe getting into Netflix and the biggest streaming services. Ciara: Our dream is to be that point of reference for people, if they’re having a bad day, or they’re feeling really weighed down by not just the climate crisis, but the news in general. We’d love to be a place where they can get some inspiration and feel hopeful again. 💥 Find out how you can stand out to attract enquiries & investors… For details visit...becomemorevisible and book a call. Check out these pre-vetted startups seeking investment INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITY – From The Green Techpreneur Marketplace Greentech Innovators has already secured $10 million in phase II funding, they are now asking for 750,000 Euros in convertible loan note to match grant funding of 750,000 and a tax grant of 19%. PRODUCT: We use food waste to produce a growth media used for fermentation for production of micro-algae high in omega-3 oil and protein that can substitute fish oil. We act as a service provider for waste companies and charge a gate fee for the raw-material we use. Learn more here. Ourobio is a synthetic biology and circular economy company. We're using fermentation to turn agricultural byproducts into low-footprint biodegradable plastic resins and colorants. We are currently looking for partners interested in adopting more sustainable materials and waste management practices and investors for our current and future round(s). Please check out our site and reach out if you are interested in learning more! Further reading: Failure is not Failure, but being Foolhardy can be Your Downfall The Green Techpreneur is Partnering with Climate Marketplace to help Climate Startups Fundraise Follow the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. If you enjoy reading the GT, please share this article to help spread the word! Thank you for reading and listening to The Green Techpreneur. Have a great weekend! 🥂 #SparkTheTransition, Marianne This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thegre

    28 min

  7. 03/24/2023

    The $9.5 trillion market opportunity: how INOVUES is transforming energy-efficiency in real estate

    A warm welcome to the 112 new subscribers who have joined since the last edition! If you’re reading this and haven’t subscribed, sign up below to join a high-value network of 2,300 climate tech entrepreneurs, industry leaders and investors. The Green Techpreneur (GT) will provide you with the tools, resources and connections you need to make your mark on the planet with your climate tech business! Every other week, I interview extraordinary climate tech entrepreneurs, investors and sustainability experts to share practical advice on how to build, grow, and thrive. Follow the GT podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. As an architect from Syria, Anas da Kassas, Founder and CEO of INOVUES, has come a long way. His journey into green techpreneurship took him from Damascus to Dubai where he worked in architectural facade engineering and manufacturing before moving to Boston to get a Master’s degree in architecture.  Along the way, Anas caught the entrepreneurial bug. He wanted to create scaleable solutions for buildings that could help tackle the climate crisis: “the problem for me was that you invest several years in every project, but it's a one-off prototype. You go to the next project and you face the same challenges again. He was staring out the window of his apartment, brainstorming ideas that could have a big impact, when the window itself became his source of inspiration: “I thought, ‘what if there was a way to transform these windows into smart systems without having to remove or replace anything at all? I was thinking about ideas from my multidisciplinary experience in architecture and facade engineering.” That was the day INOVUES –  innovative views – was born. Anas’ idea has since grown into a multiple-award winning startup that has already participated in several accelerators including Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy and is ready to take on a global $9.5 trillion market opportunity for more energy-efficient buildings.  It's the only patented solution in its class that can transform building facades with the latest energy-saving and smart glass innovations without rebuilding or replacing any parts. INOVUES retrofits a second window pane to existing windows using adhesive structural material, creating a 10x cost reduction compared to existing methods, and reducing energy inefficiency of buildings by up to 40%. And with the push of the energy crisis and inflation putting pressure on energy costs and the strong pull of incentives from the US’ Inflation Reduction Act or the European Green Deal’s energy efficiency directive which requires EU countries to collectively reduce energy consumption by 9% by 2030. Anas is bringing a right place, right time, solution to conquer a real estate retrofit market that’s largely untapped. How does your solution work? We don't use mechanical fasteners in our system, we rely on structural glazing materials. The system integrates with the existing facade and does not require drilling or altering anything. It's a very clean and easy installation process, we can add a window to create double pane windows. We use 70% fewer materials compared to existing methods and prefabricate the system off-site so installation costs are cut by up to 80%, reducing the total cost of window upgrades buy up to 10 times. We’re pushing the boundaries of facade engineering on many aspects…transparent photovoltaic or dynamic tinting or vacuum insulated glass. All of these now can be available for existing buildings at a fraction of the usual cost. There’s no disruption, and no need to replace anything.  How big is the market opportunity? Experts estimate that about 40% of all US buildings still have single pane windows and a lot more have low performing double pane windows, so 70% of existing building stock is in need of an upgrade. Globally, there are estimates that this is a $9.5 trillion market opportunity. The potential impact on the climate and carbon reduction is huge because windows account for up to 40% of the energy loss in buildings. Through our installations, we're reducing carbon emissions by 100 tonnes annually, and the potential impact, at scale, is close to half a giga tonne to a giga tonne of reduced emissions. These efficiencies means we can disrupt the built environment which has been painfully slow to retrofit ageing infrastructure in commercial real estate. INOVUES has already installed upgrades for leading industry players like Saint-Gobain, 3M and the University of Minnesota. 2022 was our breakout year. We finished some major pilots and got $50 million of potential projects in our pipeline. What were the make or break moments you faced in getting started? I had quite my job in Boston and moved to Houston so spend 1 year doing my architectural Master thesis on the INOVUES idea. That got me a year to devote full-time to it, but I was not making any money. We moved in with family to cut costs to almost nothing. But after a year, I told my wife: ‘if by the end of the next month, we don't secure any funding, I'll stop and put this on the back burner and find a job.’ At that point, I was ready to give up, although it's not part of my personality or nature to do that, but it was too challenging to continue alone without any sort of funding. My wife was fully supportive of this, it made me able to push through these tough moments. She acted as my co-founder in the early days, she was the primary person I would talk to about any challenges or pain points. The first 2-3 years was purely R&D on a shoestring budget There was literally blood, sweat and tears at almost every step of the process of the R&D phase. It was on a very, very tight budget, almost bootstrapping. There where moments where you spend a year or more of work then know that everything could fall apart because the next few tests are very important. And if I failed in the test, I didn’t have the money to repeat the tests. And that would’ve been a kill switch to the entire thing. Imagine devoting time, resources and everything you have for two years, and then there's this key test that you're waiting for. And if it passes and succeeds, we're moving forward, if not, I’m going back to finding a job in the industry and starting over. There were a lot of these moments. How did you first secure funding? Being a foreigner who came to the US, I didn't have the network here. My English is much better now than it was a few years ago, but imagine trying to explain what you're trying to do as a foreigner asking people to trust you and give you money. It was very hard and we started small. I went through the Cleantech Open accelerator programme and one of the advisors wrote our first check and then more people followed him. He’s on our board of directors now and has invested five times. I tell him ‘you’re a true angel investor in the literal meaning of the word.’ Because without that first check, there would be no interview today. It was a $50,000 check that enabled me to fund the next few months and build the first system and pass the first test and then get the funding from other angel investors. And then we won the International Award from Cleantech Open which gave us more validation. How do you keep your team engaged and focused on the mission as you grow? Transparency It's very important to keep everyone involved in everything that is happening in the company and tell them where we are, what kind of challenges we have and how everyone's role make a significant impact on the overall mission. Trust Trusting people to be leaders in their roles and giving them authority and ownership of what they're doing. What’s ahead for INOVUES? We're looking to raise a $10 million Series A in the next few months to scale up our team and operations so we can execute on multimillion dollar projects in our pipeline. We're excited about 2023 and 2024. What’s your mantra or life philosophy? I'm an eternal optimist. I believe in the Law of Attraction, so I'm always positive. I belief that with hard work and dedication anything is possible. What daily rituals help to keep you grounded? Meditation and exercise. These are very, very important to me on a daily basis. Without them, I wouldn't be able to push forward. Is there a mentor or role model who has been highly influential? My Dad was a true entrepreneur and I watched him push forward on new ideas and new solutions and new businesses throughout his life. And I worked with him in multiple phases, so I experienced exactly what it takes to bring ideas to fruition. If you could teleport yourself into the future and be anywhere, doing anything, where would you be and why? I want to leave an impact on the built environment world and have the resources to work on a few things related to my home country, improving education and improving the situation in Syria to make things better for future generations. Would you like to support the GT and place an ad? Consider becoming a GT Patreon for just $100 a year or $10 a month. Further Reading In case you missed it, check out these recent fascinating GT interviews… An Inside Look at How Flashfood Revolutionised the Grocery Shopping Industry Why Imperial College Launched a Climatetech Pre-accelerator How to Work With Sustainability Influencers And here’s one from my Forbes column: Going Global: 4 Considerations for European Climatetech Startups Seeking Media Coverage in the US Check out the latest climatetech jobs from our friends at Work in Green Thank you for reading and listening to The Green Techpreneur. Have a great weekend! 🥂 #SparkTheTransition This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thegreentechpreneur.substack.com/subscribe

    32 min

  8. 03/10/2023

    An Inside Look at how Flashfood Revolutionised the Grocery Shopping Industry

    A warm welcome to the 53 new subscribers who have joined since the last edition! If you’re reading this and haven’t subscribed, sign up below to join a high-value network of 2,200 climate tech entrepreneurs, industry leaders and investors. The Green Techpreneur (GT) will provide you with the tools, resources and connections you need to make your mark on the planet with your climate tech business! Every other week, I interview extraordinary climate tech entrepreneurs, investors and sustainability experts to share practical advice on how to build, grow, and thrive. Follow the GT podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Hello there 👋🏼 Before we launch into today’s episode, I wanted to share a couple of ways The Green Techpreneur can help you: We can help you with: * personalised support and coaching to help you prepare for and find investors * a website makeover/upgrade. Or a new website, if you need one. * amplifying and growing your LinkedIn presence – get a personalised and easy-to-implement strategy or buy our LinkedIn for Sustainability Leaders course here. * telling your founder story – nothing connects people more strongly to your business than hearing about where you came from! * place an ad on The GT website and newsletter by purchasing GT membership. * We’ve put together a checklist to help you assess if you’re investment-fit: GT Collaboration Opportunity We’re looking platform sponsors who want to get in front of the climatetech startup/investor ecosystem to collaborate on content and promotions over a 6-month period. It would suit a climate tech investor, accelerator, or a B2B climate tech business. Get in touch at: marianne@thegreentechpreneur.uk Flashfood is on Fast Company's annual list of the world's most Innovative Companies for 2023, coming in at first place for Social Good. The Canada-born startup tackles food waste with a digital marketplace and app that alerts consumers to discounted and near end-of-date food products. Customers can buy bargains directly through the app and then do a same-day pick up from a Flashfood designated store zone. Within 7 years since inception, the concept has spread to 1,600 stores across Canada and the US. Flashfood founder and CEO, Josh Domingues, had always wanted to tackle environmental issues; “you turn on the TV and there's just a different city under water or there’s a horrible storm. Whatever I was going to spend my time on through my working career, it was going to have to be something with the environment.”  But it was after he heard about an incident at his sister’s workplace that his journey as a Green Techpreneur began: “My sister was a chef, she called me after a catering event and said ‘I just threw out $4,000 worth of food.’ I started laughing; ‘Polly, you idiot. Why would you do that?’ She said, ‘oh, this feeling sucks, my boss was over my shoulder making me do it.’ “So I started reading about food waste and I learned that if international food waste were a country it'd be the third leading cause of greenhouse gas emissions behind the US and China. “That led me to talking to store managers in Toronto and I learnt they're throwing out fresh food that still has two or three days of shelf life because consumers won't buy it. The idea I had was if there's a way for the store to mark the price of the food down and send me a notification so I could see the deal on my phone, pay through my phone, and pick up from the store the same day – people would shop like that all the time.” As it turned out, Josh was right: as prices surge today, his idea has helped many thousands of people navigate the cost of living crisis. To date, saved shoppers over $150 million on grocery bills, and diverted over 65 million pounds of food from landfill. “We're still so early in our journey in terms of what we can accomplish, it's really humbling to think about,” says Josh. “I don't want to come off as if it was easy the whole time. This was basically impossible, this has been so hard to do at so many different levels. And even to be named in Fast Company’s list of most innovative companies…this was just an idea seven years ago and now looking at where we're at, it's just a wild journey.” How does the Flashfood app work? The Flashfood app shows which grocers in your area have partnered with the startup. It enables consumers to browse deals – directly from their phone – to save up to 50% off high-quality items nearing their best-by date, such as meats, dairy, seafood, produce, bakery items and more. When retailers partner with Flashfood, they enter into a revenue sharing agreement. How did you first market the app and gain early adopters? We offered free pizza to students We got our first set of users by organising an information session and offering free pizza to students. Sometimes the simplest marketing tactics can be the most effective, especially when you're just starting out. We leveraged local Facebook groups I leveraged local Facebook groups to promote the app. It was a great way to reach potential customers in our target market and establish a presence in the community. I went into hundreds of local Facebook groups and said “I'm Josh, we're building this company that's trying to solve food waste by partnering with your local store.” I had to keep changing the location on my Facebook to be accepted into the groups. That’s how we got lots of our early users. Apps can be a saturated market, what gave you the conviction that the idea can work? Prior to this, I was a management consultant and we did a project for a demolition company and all these companies were bidding $12 or $13 million to bring down a building. My company bid $3 million, got the job, and by the time they resold all the precious metals because there was so much copper in the walls, they made $20 or $22 million. That got me thinking there's value in waste. The value proposition is just so meaningful Anything that drives the customer into a grocery store is valuable for the grocery store, and on the backside, the customer can save 50% off groceries, I just thought that value prop on both ends is so obvious if you can get this to scale. We didn’t go into it thinking ‘we have to have so many downloads,’ it's just make this process simple and easy and valuable to the end-user and it should theoretically work and fortunately that's been the case.  What are your top tips for other Green Techpreneurs? Keep asking why your idea won’t work You have to be so bloody honest with yourself, especially in the early days. You have to come at it from the lens of ‘this thing's not going to work. I shouldn't do this.’ In the earliest days, we got people to poke holes in the business from so many different angles to make it better, and ultimately, the value prop stayed strong enough. Money has to flow to a stakeholder in a meaningful way for environmental companies to take off. It's unfortunate, but it's still capitalism, somebody really has to benefit financially. Refer back to your mission and vision daily Early in my journey, I thought mission statements were just fluff. Now we're at 100 people and the mission of the company is to reduce the environmental impact of food waste and feed families affordably. You need to refer back to these things daily, especially with remote working, for people to remember why we're doing what we're doing.  Authenticity and belonging brings people along for the journey When I sit down with grocery executives, I show them nobody cares more about this than we will on behalf of their company. When it's authentic and you want to make an impact, that comes through and people want to be a part of the journey, everybody wants to feel like they're belonging to something. What were the elements of luck that made the business work? Every time you hear about an entrepreneur speak about building a business, it often comes back to…’a few things just worked out in our favour’ and I believe in luck and that you have to work to build your own luck.  I got a chance introduction to a former executive at the biggest grocery chain in the country. That was just happenstance. I told her the exact same story I'd been telling everybody else for three years and she decided to give us a chance. We started with a three-store pilot and it turned into a massive opportunity to scale up the business and expand to 400 stores in just 5-6 months. It's a testament to the power of networking and being ready to execute on opportunities when they arise. If that introduction didn't come and that executive didn't take a chance on us, we would have never been talking today. Did you ever feel like giving up? Oh yes, like everyday. Every day in my life is the best day of my life and every day in my life is the worst day of my life and it's just based on what email comes in. You just have to be even keel at all times and never get too high, never get too low.  What’s kept me going is the knowledge that if we don’t pull this off, nobody will. I like seeing what our shoppers have said. One of our shoppers is a young mother with three kids. Her husband got laid off during COVID and she wrote us that without Flashfood she couldn't afford to feed her kids. For Christmas we were able to get her kids a whole bunch of candy stocking stuffers and they didn't expect to have anything, and their faces just lit up. What does the future hold? We have several innovations in the Flashfood app. The app is now accepting snap and EBT as a payment method, which are digitised food stamps in America. This is a significant development for the app's partners as it expands their customer base and makes it easier for people to access affordable food. Secondly, the app is ingesting data around dynamic pricing and progressive markdowns, which will help retailers understand what price points are most effective in different markets. This information w

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