West Africa's entrepreneurship and tech success: Meghan McCormick
Release Date: 11/18/2018
Greening the Built Environment; Anneli Tostar, Tangible Materials
The Seeds
Tangible's mission is to decarbonize buildings. Their software tool helps identify, manage, and track sustainable building materials. Co-founder, Anneli Tostar, walks us through her unexpected journey from Harvard, to Sao Paolo, Sweden, London, and finally to San Francisco.
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The Grid of the Future: Matt Plante, President & Co-Founder of Voltus
The Seeds
Matt Plante is the president and co-founder of Voltus, a distributed energy resources platform whose mission is to usher in the energy transition. Voltus’s technology platform, VoltApp, connects any distributed energy resource, from energy efficiency to demand response, to any wholesale market in North America. In this episode, we discuss the electric grid of the future, the DER technology and policy to get us there, lessons learned from the Texas and California blackouts, and what makes Voltus special.
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The API for Controlling Homes and Buildings: Sy Bohy, Co-founder of Seam
The Seeds
Sy Bohy is the co-founder of Seam, a startup offering a device- and brand-agnostic API for developers to control homes and buildings. Seam’s IoT platform enables organizations to control building devices, like opening door locks, controlling thermostats, turning off lights, and more. Sy and his co-founder Dawn bring years of expertise from Nest and Sonder to progress the burgeoning building management industry.
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Last-mile connectivity in Africa: Harrison Leaf, CEO of SteamaCo
The Seeds
SteamaCo enables utilities to sell energy anywhere on the planet. Their data-efficient energy management system helps overcome cost and infrastructure barriers to underserved energy customers in 10 African countries. This episode covers why last-mile connectivity is such a challenge, how SteamaCo augments and automates preexisting smart metering and cloud technology, and three frameworks around limiting beliefs, procrastination, and motivation to succeed as an entrepreneur.
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Renewable Energy Access and Resilience in a Box: Angelo Campus
The Seeds
Angelo Campus is the founder of BoxPower, a startup offering small scale renewable microgrids in 20-ft shipping containers. They are expanding energy access to rural, often-low income, communities that are off-grid or recovering from a natural disaster. They also provide back-up power to critical infrastructures like hospitals in California that are experiencing more blackouts than ever before. Angelo started learning about solar PVs and battery systems as a kid when homeschooled and never looked back.
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A Conversation on Sustainable Biomaterials: Wendy Owens, Hexas
The Seeds
Wendy Owens is the founder and CEO of Hexas, a clean-tech startup producing and distributing sustainable, plant-based biomass. Wendy brings over a decade of materials and biotech experience to Hexas and shares insights on the future of sustainable construction and renewable energy sectors, her experience as a founder, and her philosophy for success.
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Marketing Your Climate Start-Up & Zero Waste Living: Bettina Grab
The Seeds
Bettina Grab, founder of Impact B2B, helps climate tech start-ups have a bigger, impact faster through growth and effective sales & marketing strategies. She is also a Zero Waste blogger, speaker & activist. We first discuss Bettina’s shift from corporate marketing to climate-marketing, why there is such a need for it today, and tips for founders. Next, we turn to zero waste living, what she has learned from living a plastic-free life, and some surprising facts about why recycling is really the last resor
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Climate Positive Building with Bamboo: Troy Carter, Rizome
The Seeds
Did you know that Bamboo Engineered Lumber is stronger, more fire-resistant, and more sustainable than wood, steel, and concrete?
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Climate Bonds and Mobilizing Capital for Change: Sean Kidney
The Seeds
Sean Kidney is the CEO of the Climate Bonds Initiative, an international NGO working to mobilize debt capital markets for climate solutions. The Climate Bonds Initiative works to create standards and transparency in the green bond market such as by creating a certification scheme, advising the EU, and working with China's central bank to grow green bonds. Sean discusses the climate crises from a holistic perspective, especially as relating to the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Investing, Impact, and Leading a Meaningful Life: Deb Kemper
The Seeds
Deb Kemper is an impact investor and experienced advisor with cross-cultural leadership. She is an angel investor in Golden Seeds Venture Group and the Clean Energy Venture Group and supports innovation in clean-tech, med-tech, and women’s empowerment.
info_outlineMeghan McCormick lives and breathes entrepreneurship. As the CEO and co-founder of OZÉ, she is combining her strong business background and passion for increasing financial opportunities in emerging markets. Meghan first co-founded Dare to Innovate, francophone Africa’s most active social business accelerator. The team then developed an OZÉ app to support the entrepreneurs they were working with, which then became a viable company of its own. On this episode, Meghan explains the pivotal service OZÉ, provides, hurdles they’ve had to surmount working across sectors, cultural and regional considerations for scaling up, and what motivates her to put in the long hours every day for this cause.