Hope Dose

Latest Episodes:

Floodbase: Bessie Schwarz Mar 21, 2023

Show notes

Fellow Climate Warriors, welcome to another episode of Climate Tech Cocktails.

In this episode, we’re grabbing a drink with Bessie Schwarz, co-founder and CEO of Floodbase (Formally known as Cloud to Street)…

“Floodbase has pioneered the field of satellite flood tracking, with our science appearing on the cover of Nature in 2021. Our Flood Intelligence Platform has enabled the United Nations and several national governments to improve flood disaster response. We are now powering a new type of flood insurance to help flood-vulnerable communities around the world access financial support and adapt in the face of increasing climate disasters.”

📻 Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Google Podcasts, Audacy and Substack👉

We’re grateful to have you with us, fighting the good fight with a cool beverage in hand.

⚡️ New to CTC? Sign up here!👉

📲 Follow us on Twitter 👉

📝 Show Notes Below👇

🎧 New podcast episode:

“We have realized that there are so many solutions that we have now and it’s a matter of investing in them that is the actual barrier to us adapting to climate change. Meaning, meeting the need with the money required at the time.”

- Bessie Schwarz, founder and CEO of Floodbase.

Find Bessie on LinkedIn, and check out Floodbase’s website here.

🍺 What we drank during the episode: Calidad Beer (Matt) and Threes Brewing Beer 🍺(Bessie).

Enjoy the show!

📻 Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Google Podcasts, Audacy and Substack👉

Interested in sponsoring?

Please reach out to m@climatetechcocktails.com

Companies/Startups mentioned during the show:

🌊Floodbase

🌊Yale University

🌊Threes Brewing

🌊Calidad Beer

🌊African Risk Capacity

🌊Near Space Labs

🌊Raincoat

🌊Aclima

People/places/things mentioned during the show:

🧠Dr. Beth Tellman

🧠Adaptation

🧠Atmospheric Rivers

🧠Parametric Insurance

🧠Mexico City

🧠FEMA

🧠COP 27

🧠Barbados

🧠Bridgetown Initiative

🧠Minister Mia Mottley

🧠The World Bank

🧠Nigeria Floods

🧠Marty Schneider

🧠Rema Matevosyan

📚The Ministry for the Future - Kim Stanley Robinson

📚Gilead - Marilynne Robinson

📚Walking with the Wind - John Lewis

-TIMESTAMPS-

[00:00] Intro

[01:38] Drink of the Show

[03:20] Bessie going to Mexico

[05:03] Where is Bessie from

[05:45] Hawt dawg not a hawt dawg

[06:16] Time at Yale

[07:15] Met co-founder (Dr. Beth Tellman)

[07:57] Working on adaptation

[10:07] 2 things to shift society

[11:31] Investments in adaptation

[13:03] Adaptation is hopeful

[15:05] Invest in what we have

[16:25] Experience working in developing countries

[18:12] Original funding

[20:23] What was learned from early work

[23:40] Parametric insurance

[26:02] African risk capacity

[27:36] What happens when prices increase

[32:20] Understanding flood insurance

[35:31] Barbados and Mia Mottley

[38:24] Understanding the loans

[42:52] What happened in Nigeria

[45:07] Source of Bessie’s drive

[49:07] Marty Schneider and Bessie’s mom

[54:28] 5 to 10 year vision

[58:25] Financial impact

[01:03:03] Rapid fire questions

[01:04:19] Book recommendations

[01:07:15] Loved startups and founders

[01:09:35] Final thoughts

[01:11:32] END

Vibrant Planet: Allison Wolff Mar 07, 2023

Show notes

Fellow Climate Warriors, welcome to another episode of Climate Tech Cocktails.

In this episode, we’re grabbing a drink with Allison Wolff, co-founder and CEO of Vibrant Planet.

“Vibrant Planet harnesses data-driven science and cloud-based technology to help make communities and ecosystems more resilient in the face of climate change. Our goal is to help planners, and policymakers save lives, avoid trillions of dollars in infrastructure loss, and restore the ability of natural systems to store carbon, deliver clean water, and support biodiversity, local economies, and recreational habits.”

📻 Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Google Podcasts, Audacy and Substack👉

We’re grateful to have you with us, fighting the good fight with a cool beverage in hand.

⚡️ New to CTC? Sign up here!👉

📲 Follow us on Twitter 👉

📝 Show Notes Below👇

🎧 New podcast episode:

“We play out the Lorax, right? We literally cut every tree in North America; we deforest it like we’re deforesting the Amazon right now to build towns and railroads and mines.”

Allison Wolff, founder, and CEO of Vibrant Planet.

Find Allison on LinkedIn, and check out Vibrant Planet’s website here.

🥃 What we drank during the episode: Tequila hot toddy (Matt) and tequila hot toddy ☕(Allison).

Enjoy the show!

📻 Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Google Podcasts, Audacy and Substack👉

Interested in sponsoring?

Please reach out to m@climatetechcocktails.com

Companies/Startups mentioned during the show:

🌲Vibrant Planet

🌲Casamigos

🌲George Clooney

🌲Netflix

🌲MTV - TRL (Total Request Live)

🌲Blockbuster

🌲Hollywood Video

🌲Amazon Web Services

🌲SYPartners

🌲McKinsey & Company

🌲eBay

🌲Google Green

🌲Facebook

🌲Open Compute

🌲Formerly known as Renewable Energy Buyers Alliance

🌲The Nature Conservancy

🌲Funga

🌲Dendra

People/places/things mentioned during the show:

🧠CDs/DVDs 💿

🧠Carson Daly

🧠Reed Hastings

🧠Neil Hunt

🧠Alexia Kelly

🧠Netflix Net-Zero + Nature

🧠Keith Yamashita

🧠Bill McDonough

🧠Cradle to Cradle

🧠Anthony Ravitz

🧠Bill Weil

🧠Bob Inglis

🧠Katherine HeyHoe

🧠Paul Hawken - Drawdown

🧠Amanda Ravenhill

🧠Truckee Tahoe

🧠Senator Feinstein

🧠California Fires

🧠California Forest Observatory

🧠Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation

🧠Salo Sciences

🧠Gretchen Daily

🧠Planet

🧠Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station

🧠Native Americans Forest Management

🧠COP 15

🧠The Dixie Fire

🧠The Bureau of Land Management

🧠Julia Butterfly Hill

📚Cradle to Cradle - William McDonough

📚The Weather Makers - Tim Flannery

📚Braiding Sweetgrass - Robin Wall Kimmerer

📚The Sixth Extinction - Elizabeth Kolbert

-TIMESTAMPS-

[00:00] Intro

[02:10] Drink of the Show

[05:02] Allison’s time at Netflix

[09:00] “Green” the global supply chain

[11:45] SYPartners

[13:51] Allison going on her own and takes on eBay

[15:34] Google Green

[18:30] What Worked

[19:40] Bob Inglis - progressives and conservatives on science

[21:15] Katherine Hey Hoe (Faith and Science)

[23:43] Allison’s upbringing and love of nature

[25:21] Paul Hawken and Drawdown

[27:41] Matt’s introduction to Drawdown

[28:36] Trail Running, bears, and mountain lions

[31:10] Truckee Tahoe

[32:43] Allison process, forming Vibrant Planet

[34:55] California Forest Observatory

[40:54] What can we do to protect forests

[42:24] Native Americans and forest management

[45:20] The value of ecosystem services

[46:18] What it takes to restore forests

[49:19] The Dixie Fire

[51:55] Collaborations to deal with fires

[55:44] Clarifying the use of Allison’s tool

[59:00] Matt gets controversial

[01:02:44] Co2 of California wildfires

[01:05:37] How to unlock billions of dollars

[01:08:55] The insurance play to invest in forest resilience

[01:10:00] Having a teenage daughter and running a startup

[01:12:14] Book recommendations

[01:14:47] Loved startups and founders

[01:16:33] Final Thoughts

[01:18:47] END

Shiok Meats: Sandhya Sriram Feb 14, 2023

Show notes

🌊🍤 Shrimp, Stem Cells, Star Trek 🚀 Orange Juice 🍊 and more!

In this episode, we’re grabbing a drink with Sandhya Sriram, co-founder and CEO of Shiok

Meats. Shiok Meats is the world’s first cultivated crustacean meat company, and Southeast Asia’s first

cultivated seafood company. “Shiok” is a local slang that means fantastic, delicious, and simply,

pleasure. Their mission is to bring delicious, sustainable, and healthy seafood to your table,

using our technology to grow meat from healthy cells instead of animals.

📻 Listen to the episode on

Spotify,Apple Podcasts,Amazon Music, Google Podcasts, Audacy and Substack👉

We’re grateful to have you with us, fighting the good fight with a cool beverage in hand.

⚡️ New to CTC? Sign up here!👉

📲 Follow us on Twitter 👉

📝Show Notes Below👇

🎧 New podcast episode:

“I always questioned, “why do people eat meat?”...
And then, I came to the conclusion that I shouldn’t answer the why, I should just answer, how do we do this?”

Sandhya Sriram, co-founder and CEO of Shiok Meats.

Find Sandhya on LinkedIn, and check out Shiok Meat’s website here.

🥃 What we drank during the episode: Decoy, Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa (Matt) and Orange Juice 🍊(Sandhya).

Enjoy the show!

Interested in sponsoring?

Please reach out to m@climatetechcocktails.com

Companies/Startups mentioned during the show:

🦐Shiok Meats

🦐Decoy Wines

🦐BevMo Liquor Stores

🦐Innovate 360

🦐Ants Innovate

🦐Avant Meats

🦐Wild Earth

🦐Phyx44

🦐Kind Earth Tech

People/places/things mentioned during the show:

🧠Napa Valley

🧠Chennai, India

🧠Marina Beach

🧠Gujarat, India

🧠Abu Dhabi

🧠Dubai

🧠Kuwait

🧠Singapore

🧠Bollywood

🧠Karan Johor

🧠Aamir Khan

🧠Koffee With Karan

🧠Mark Post

🧠St. John’s Island

🧠Ryan Bethencourt

🧠Hong Kong

🧠Ira Van Eelen

🧠Willem Van Eelen

📚Ikigai - Book (Francesc Miralles & Hector Garcia)

📚First 90 Days - Book (Michael D. Watkins)

📚Zero to One - Book (Blake Masters & Peter Thiel)

-TIMESTAMPS-

[00:00] Intro

[01:20] Drink of the Show

[03:30] About Sandhya’s upbringing

[06:25] Indian Movies

[08:01] Sandhya’s Entrepreneurial Drive

[09:37] When she met her husband

[10:40] School studies and experience

[12:35] Stem cells for aging and other applications

[14:56] Stem Cell 101 - What is a stem cell

[16:19] Cloning vs. Stem Cells

[17:21] Mid-life crisis - PHD to starting a business

[22:03] About Shiok Meats

[22:55] Seafood and the Asian diet

[23:49] Seafood supply and demand

[26:15] Farmed vs. Wild - What to look out for when buying seafood

[27:24] Carbon footprint of shrimp

[29:02] Price volatility of shrimp and crustaceans

[30:22] What are we feeding shrimp and crustaceans

[31:06] Inspiration to start Shiok Meats and being vegetarian

[34:46] Deciding which meat to produce

[36:06] First time extracting shrimp stem cells

[37:36] St. John’s Island

[41:27] Singapore expanding in food biotech

[43:09] Other food biotech companies

[43:56] Fundraising series A during Covid

[45:12] When will the product be available and Singapore’s 30/30 plan

[48:42] Singapore leading the way in cultivated meat regulations

[50:04] Shiok Meat’s special sauce

[51:19] The products and distribution

[53:00] Market comparison to electric vehicles and scaling up

[53:55] Matt wants his own bioreactor

[54:54] Sandhya’s being an angel investor

[55:57] Loved startups and founders

[58:20] Book recommendations

[01:00:12] Final Thoughts

[01:02:49] END

Demex Group: Steve Bennett Jan 19, 2023

Show notes

Fellow Climate Warriors, welcome to another episode of Climate Tech Cocktails.

In this episode, we’re grabbing a drink with Steve Bennett, co-founder, and chief climate officer of the Demex Group - the first company to offer comprehensive solutions for assessing and transferring climate risks at scale.

Demex uses modeling to evaluate weather risk and helps clients transfer that risk to maintain their resilience.

Steve’s background as a weather person at The Weather Channel and then Scripps Institution of Oceanography led to founding his first software firm, EarthRisk Technologies.

Continuing his mission to bridge the gap between weather volatility and business operations, Steve joined founder Ed Byrns in creating the Demex Group to meet the ever-increasing need of businesses to understand and guard against catastrophic and damaging weather events.

📻 Listen to the episode onSpotify,Apple Podcasts,Amazon Music, Google Podcasts, Audacy and Substack👉

We’re grateful to have you with us, fighting the good fight with a cool beverage in hand.

⚡️ New to CTC? Sign up here!👉

📲 Follow us on Twitter 👉

📝Show Notes Below👇

🎧 New podcast episode:

Steve Bennett, co-founder, and chief climate officer of the Demex Group

“We link the weather in an area to the economic impact. The core of our technology is really about pricing the risk using a climate appraisal; we look at what parts of a client’s business are affected by weather by working with first-party data, determining the relevant weather characteristics, running a baseline scenario and a climate scenario, and comparing cost. This allows us to price the risk, producing a premium for an insurance policy that will protect the customer.”

- Steve Bennett on the special sauce that Demex offers its clients

Find Steve on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephendbennett

And his company’s site: https://thedemexgroup.com

🥃 What we drank during the episode: SeaFall Chardonnay, 2017 Sonoma (me) and a Midnight Manhattan (Steve).

Enjoy the show!

📻 Listen to the episode on Spotify,Apple Podcasts,Amazon Music, Google Podcasts, Audacy, and Substack👉

Interested in sponsoring?

Please reach out to m@climatetechcocktails.com

Companies/Startups mentioned during the show:

🌪️Demex

🌪️Scripps

🌪️Castello Di Amorosa

🌪️EarthRisk Technologies

🌪️NOAA’s Billion Dollar Weather Event Research

🌪️NRON

🌪️Citadel

🌪️WORAM New York

🌪️DHL

🌪️Everstream Analytics

🌪️San Diego Gas and Electric

🌪️Ten Percent Happier

🌪️Basecamp

🌪️Verisk Analytics

🌪️Branch Insurance

🌪️ StormPulse

🌪️RiskPulse

People/places/things mentioned during the show:

🧠Sonoma

🧠Midnight Manhattan

🧠Climate Change’s Effect on Wine

🧠Duke University Energy Center

🧠Yellowstone’s Weather Event

🧠Insurance Weather Limitations and State Interventions

🧠National Flood Insurance Program

🧠Colorado River Deadpool Possibility

🧠Hoover Dam

🧠Lake Mead

🧠Lake Powel

🧠MegaDrought

🧠Las Vegas and Los Angeles Water Supply Vulnerabilities

🧠Alfalfa Crop in California Valley

🧠Yangtze River Drought in China

🧠Europe’s Drought

🧠Climate Migration

🧠Wet Bulb

🧠Corn Sweat in Illinois

🧠Hurricane Bob

🧠Jeff Skilling

🧠Tom Skilling

🧠Ken Griffin

🧠Bermuda

🧠Ed Byrns

🧠The Cold Event in Texas

🧠Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath

🧠You Play to Win the Game by Herm Edwards

🧠Ten Percent Happier by Dan Harris

🧠Steve Lekas from Verisk Analytics

🧠Out of Beta Podcast

🧠Matt Wensing

-TIMESTAMPS-

[0:00] Intro

[1:01] Drink of the Show

[6:12] A Little about Wine and A Little about Raleigh

[8:30] Catastrophic and Costly Weather

[14:14] Home Insurance and Climate

[18:49] The Colorado River

[24:54] My Paris Heat Wave Story

[28:14] What is Climate Migration

[36:08] Climate Pioneers, Let’s Head to Vermont

[37:28] Steve’s Weather Expertise and Career

[53:03] The Entrepreneurial Evolution

[61:50] How Demex Meets a Growing Need

[65:51] How Weather Models Work

[72:44] Demex’s Special Sauce

[74:32] 3 Books

[80:40] 3 Start-ups

[84:23] Final Thoughts and Conclusion

Holiday Throwback: LanzaTech: Jennifer Holmgren Dec 22, 2022

Show notes

👩‍✈️Jennifer Holmgren, CEO of LanzaTechon the premise of LanzaTech:

“What we need to come to is a world where there is no such thing as waste. Where waste is feedstock or the way you make everything else.”

Jennifer has over 20 years of experience in the energy sector including a proven track record in the development and commercialization of fuels and chemicals technologies. Prior to LanzaTech, Jennifer was VP and General Manager of the Renewable Energy and Chemicals business unit at UOP LLC, a Honeywell Company. Under her management, UOP technology became instrumental in producing nearly all of the initial fuels used by commercial airlines and the military for testing and certification of alternative aviation fuel. Today, under Jennifer’s guidance, LanzaTech is working towards deploying carbon capture and reuse facilities globally to make fuels and chemicals from waste carbon.

🥃 What we drank during the episode: scotch and whiskey, what else?

Enjoy the show!

Eco Wave Power: Inna Braverman Dec 06, 2022

Show notes

Inna Braverman, co-founder and CEO of Eco Wave Power:

“Offshore, the waves don’t move in one direction. Your equipment can get hit by waves that are 20 meters in height. Near the shore, there’s a phenomenon called wave run-up where they actually build near the shore, and they’re all heading in one direction. The sector should start where it’s simple, and move from there.” - Inna Braverman, explaining why shore waves are the simpler clean energy solution.

🇺🇦 Born in Ukraine, Inna was given a second chance at life after the Chernobyl explosion nearly cost her everything. Her family moved to Israel when she was young, and she was raised in a small town called Akko. She studied political science and English literature at Haifa University and soon began working as an interpreter at an energy firm.

She began to research the viability of wave energy as a clean energy solution and met her co-founder David Leb. They launched Eco Wave Power in 2011.

Eco Wave Power installed its first grid-connected wave energy array in Gibraltar, then secured a project’s pipeline of 254 megawatts. It’s now growing and going strong.

Find Inna on LinkedIn

On Twitter: @InnaBraverman

And her company on Twitter: @EcoWavePower

🥃 What we drank during the episode: white wine (Inna) and a 9 a.m. Mojito (me).

Enjoy the show!

Thanksgiving Flashback: Air Company--Greg Constantine Nov 23, 2022

Show notes

Episode Notes

Greg Constantine, Co-founder and CEO of Air Company on the importance of reaching hearts and minds to combat the climate crisis:

“Imagination is everything. It’s what moves the world forward.” -Greg Constantine, Co-founder and CEO of Air Company

@Greg Constantine, Co-founder and CEO of @Air Company, Air company’s priority is to utilize as much CO2 as possible to slow the momentum of climate change, using consumer goods in the near term as an educational tool to show the world what is possible.

Since launching Air Company, Constantine and his team have won awards from NASA, The United Nations and XPRIZE. Air Company was named one of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Products (2019) and Most Innovative Companies (2020), and was named one of TIME Magazine’s Best Inventions of 2020. Constantine’s patent product design has won the highest design awards from Dieline and the Pentawards, and in 2019, Constantine was personally named The Spirits Business’ Young Achiever of the Year. He brings expertise in the arts with an undergraduate degree from The University of Sydney and a wealth of business acumen from the Executive program at Harvard Business School.

Syzygy Plasmonics: Trevor Best Nov 10, 2022

Show notes

🎧 New podcast episode:

Trevor Best, co-founder and CEO of Syzygy:

“Not only eliminating emissions but making energy low-cost is very important. So, the fact that we can use low-cost, renewable electricity, the fact that we can build our reactor out of aluminum, the fact that the hyper efficient lights result in a hyper-efficient reactor - all those are important factors so that we can make products at price parity with what’s out there today without producing emissions. And ultimately that’s the goal of the company.”

- Trevor Best explaining why Syzygy Plasmonics works.

Trevor was born and raised in Midland, Texas and attended Texas Tech, where he and his cofounder, Suman Khatiwada, would meet with professors after hours about photocatalysts and reactors. He then traveled to China to teach English, and headed back to work for Baker Hughes in Oklahoma.

Trevor landed back in Midland (where oil was discovered in 1923) and got to work on a chemical reactor that uses a photocatalyst built using nanotechnology that was invented at Rice University.

His startup is lowering cost and carbon emissions simultaneously, which puts him on the forefront of solving a major part of the energy crisis.

Find Trevor on LinkedIn

And on Twitter

View Syzygy’s Carbon Model here: https://carbonmodel.com

🥃 What we drank during the episode: Kaiyo “The Kuri” Whiskey

Enjoy the show!

Form Energy: Mateo Jaramillo Oct 11, 2022

Show notes

Mateo Jaramillo, co-founder and CEO of Form Energy, on the importance of long-term energy storage:

“Lithium Ion will continue to have a very important role to play, but there remains a key function which needs to be replaced on the grid, and that is a function that is currently being provided by coal and natural gas. That is the energy demand when you don’t have wind or solar. So, that’s the kind of moment we have to solve for from an energy storage perspective.”

- Mateo Jaramillo on Scalable Multi-Day Storage Solutions

Mateo Jaramillo earned his AB in Economics from Harvard, and then earned a Master’s in Theology from Yale Divinity School.

Realizing he was more into solving scientific problems than vocational ministry, Mateo became COO and part of the founding team at Gaia Power Technologies, an energy storage firm.

In 2009, Mateo joined Telsa and oversaw product lines, business model definition, global policy and business development.

Mateo then co-founded Form Energy, whose mission is grid decarbonization through multi-day storage.

I’m happy to say that Mateo also serves on the board for the American Clean Power Association, the leading federation of renewable energy companies, where they spend their time expediting the advancement of clean energy as the dominant power source in America.

🔎 Find Mateo here on LinkedIn

🔎 And find Form Energy on Twitter: @FormEnergyInc

What we drank during the episode:

🥃 Macurichos Mezcal (Mateo)

and

🥃 Yuu Baal Mezcal Anejo (Matt)

Enjoy the show!

Mzansi Meat: Brett Thompson Sep 26, 2022

Show notes

Brett Thompson, co-founder and CEO of Mzansi Meat, on effective solutions in food systems:

“I think there needs to be a bouquet of solutions. I don’t think plant-based is the only solution; I don’t think unprocessed, regenerative farming, any of those things alone are solutions - rather I think you need to add a hell of a lot of things to it. And I think cultivated meat adds to that, because there’s not one silver bullet. People want to eat meat, and this provides an opportunity… It’s about how we innovate and improve that process.”

Brett and co-founder Tasneem Karodia started the cultivated meat industry in Africa by establishing the first company of its kind on the continent. They introduce a more efficient, sustainable and ethical means of creating animal protein products, and have started with beef. Their methods contribute to long-term food security for many, and their harm-free, biology-driven approach is already inspiring other companies to venture into production in the region, sparking a needed industry, and a climate-friendly change.

Find Brett on Twitter and Instagram: @BrettVThompson

Find Mzansi on twitter: @MzansiMeatCo

… and on LinkedIn

🥃 What we drank during the episode: Diemersdal Estate Red Pinotage (Brett), and Kahlua with Coffee (Matt)

Enjoy the show!