The Plucky Bamboo Podcast

Most direct air capture companies sell carbon credits. Soletair Power sells building owners a lower energy bill. Petri Laakso is CEO of Soletair Power, a Finnish company that builds CO2 capture into building ventilation. Buildings already move huge volumes of air to deal with the CO2 people breathe out. Soletair captures it there, and in hot, humid cities like Singapore the system saves more venti...

In 2022, Meadow had data showing consumers would pay a premium for sustainable packaging. They would. Just not for sustainability. Victor is a co-founder of Meadow, which turns the aluminium beverage can into a refill cartridge for reusable dispensers. It works with shampoo, sprays, pours and products nobody expected. Aluminium is one of the few packaging materials that truly circulates: a can is...

Most energy companies buy their customers with ad spend. Public Grid fixed a task everyone hates instead: setting up your electricity account. Joe Robbins is co-founder and COO of Public Grid. When residents move in, Public Grid sets up their electricity account in about 3 minutes, then moves them onto programs that lower their bill and their emissions. The utilities keep the grid running. Public...

Michael Newton spent 15 years at Nike watching startups pitch new materials and fail. Now he's the one pitching. Michael is CEO of Qorium, which grows real leather from cow cells in weeks instead of the 2 years it takes to raise a cow. Qorium doesn't call it a leather alternative. It's leather, made in precise uniform sheets that cut waste, and priced to compete in the top third of a 1...

Most founders scale by hiring layers of management. Stenver Jerkku is trying to build a billion dollar company without ever building any. Stenver is the founder of Soldera, infrastructure for global energy compliance, helping corporates and utilities navigate one of the most fragmented, old-school markets in the world. He's a serial entrepreneur who founded Soldera the same month GPT-3.5 launc...

Nobody designs a product for a material made out of potato peels. Sophie Tuviahu is CEO of Bioplasmar, which makes biodegradable materials from green waste. Before this, she worked in commercial roles at UBQ Materials. When she joined Bioplasmar, the company was selling biodegradable plant pots direct to the horticultural market, a low-end, price-sensitive category where a product costing 2 to 4 t...

Most founders protect what's working. Tom Wilford burned his own company down while it was still growing. Tom is the founder and CEO of Ella, an AI agent for sustainability data, carbon reporting and B Corp certification. For 4 years he ran Future Proof, a working ESG software platform, before deciding at a team retreat in Prague to tear it down and rebuild it from nothing as an AI-native agen...

Great science doesn't guarantee a market. Nick Sandland spent years finding that out for other people, before he bet his own career on it. In this episode of The Plucky Bamboo Podcast, Nick Sandland, the commercial lead at Algenesis Labs, talks about what it actually takes to turn deep material science into a business. Algenesis was founded by three UC San Diego professors with a genuinely nov...

Most founders chase the biggest possible market. Angelo Amicarelli chased the smallest one he could own completely. In this episode of The Plucky Bamboo Podcast, Angelo Amicarelli, co-founder of FinApp, talks about building a category of one. FinApp uses cosmic ray neutron detection, technology that started as university research into homeland security, to measure water in soil, snow, and crops. T...

Bioplastics have existed for over 30 years. After three decades of government grants, investor capital, and charismatic founders, the industry still hasn't produced a genuinely profitable company. Alexander Blum, founder of Applied Bioplastics, is trying to be the first. In this episode, Alex breaks down why an industry the world needs has struggled to make money: the gap between scientific le...

Climate tech has a communication problem. And it's slowing down the entire industry. Akhila Kosaraju, co-founder of What If Design, works with deep tech climate companies on design, messaging, and product experience. She's seen brilliant founders with world-changing technology lose deals, confuse buyers, and waste months of development - all because of how they present their work. In this...

Climate action without measurement is guesswork. In this episode, Gilad Regev explains how Kora is building real-time carbon tracking tools to turn employee behavior into measurable decarbonization. We explore the gap between intention and action - and why most companies still treat sustainability as a reporting function instead of a strategic lever. We discuss: Why carbon data must be real-time t...

Sustainability isn’t sustainable without revenue. In this episode, Helen Zhang shares how she’s building Coffee Elf -a company transforming commercial coffee waste into bio-based materials and cosmetic ingredients. What started as a kitchen experiment is now evolving into a circular system spanning industrial sourcing, processing, and downstream partnerships. We discuss: Why climate founders must...

What does real scale look like in a sustainability business? For Mallika Reddy, founder of Cancelled Plans, it doesn’t mean producing more. It means producing differently. Mallika’s studio transforms industrial waste, from pharmaceutical packaging to billboard misprints, into high-value design pieces. But along the way, she’s had to confront some uncomfortable truths about growth, marketing, and w...

Clean heat is one of the biggest pieces of the climate puzzle - but it won’t scale unless it makes financial sense. In this episode of The Plucky Bamboo Podcast, I sat down with Jane Melia, Co-Founder and Chief Revenue Officer of Harvest Thermal, to explore what it really takes to bring climate hardware into the mainstream. Harvest combines heat pumps with thermal storage to deliver low-carbon hea...

Turning climate concern into meaningful action is one of the biggest challenges facing the sustainability movement today. In this episode of The Plucky Bamboo Podcast, I sat down with Brett Walter, founder & CEO of Climate Action Now, to explore how technology can mobilise individuals to drive systemic climate impact. After a career building scalable software in Silicon Valley, Brett launched...

Commercialising sustainable materials is one of the hardest and most misunderstood challenges in climate tech. In this episode of The Plucky Bamboo Podcast, I sat down with Marc McConnaughey, CEO of Biobond Adhesives, to unpack what it really takes to bring bio-based industrial products to market. Biobond is on a mission to replace petroleum-based chemicals in adhesives and coatings with plant-bas...

In this episode of The Plucky Bamboo Podcast, I sat down with Emilio Sassine, Founder & CEO of Cedrus, to talk about what it really takes to commercialise AI in the built environment. Cedrus is building a platform that helps real estate owners reduce emissions across building portfolios - using AI to replace static energy audits with dynamic, data-driven retrofit planning. But as Emilio shared...

In this episode of The Plucky Bamboo Podcast, I sat down with Josh Knauer, Co-Founder & CEO of ReSeed, to explore how environmental markets can work better for the farmers at the centre of them. Josh has spent his career building businesses at the intersection of technology, sustainability, and economic inclusion. Through ReSeed, he’s focused on a simple but powerful idea: If we want farmers t...

Building a sustainability business isn’t just about good intentions. It’s about the trade-offs you make when values, margins, and growth collide. In this episode of The Plucky Bamboo Podcast, I’m joined by Sara Baxter, Co-Founder and CEO of Paperclip. Sara shares what it’s really like to build a consumer sustainability brand under real commercial pressure - from absorbing higher material costs to...

In this episode of The Plucky Bamboo Podcast, Chris Jones sits down with Brad Stutzman, Founder and CEO of o3 Energy, to talk about what actually drives adoption in commercial renewable energy. Brad shares lessons from building o3 Energy across residential, commercial, and small utility-scale markets - including when to pivot, how to evaluate new offerings, and why many sustainability messages fai...

Growth in traditional industries doesn’t fail loudly. It slows quietly - when leaders stop building forward and start protecting what already exists. In this episode of The Plucky Bamboo Podcast, Chris Jones sits down with Titan Immel, Founder of Ag Hub Midwest, to talk about what scaling, sustainability, and leadership actually look like in agriculture - one of the most risk-sensitive industries...

In this episode of The Plucky Bamboo Podcast, I’m joined by Kyle C Grant-Talbot, founder of Oxwash (since acq. by Elis), to explore what it really takes to scale impact in an industrial sustainability business. Kyle shares the journey of building Oxwash from a PhD idea into a high-growth company decarbonizing one of the world’s most overlooked industries: industrial laundry. We talk openly about t...

Sustainability often comes down to what organisations decide to do with what they no longer need. In this episode of The Plucky Bamboo Podcast, Chris Jones is joined by Michael Amos, Managing Director of Waste to Wonder, to explore why reuse is so often missed in corporate decision-making. Michael has spent more than 20 years helping businesses redistribute redundant furniture and equipment to sch...

In this episode of The Plucky Bamboo Podcast, Chris Jones sits down with Scott Case, founder of Zettawatts, to talk about what real climate action looks like inside large organizations. Scott brings decades of experience as a founder and operator, from technology and public health to clean energy. Today, his work focuses on helping companies decarbonize electricity in ways that actually move the g...