Sustainable Times - Profit Meets Purpose

Most drinks brands take ten years to reach profitability. Foreva Farmers is on track to do it in two — and without raising a penny of external capital. In this episode of Profit Meets Purpose, host Harvey Knight talks to the Layton brothers, founders of Foreva Farmers and winners of the Sustainable Times RISE Awards 2025 Consumer Product Category. The Laytons have built something rare: a verticall...

Six years of continuous algae cultivation. Zero crop failures. A world first. In this episode of the Sustainable Times Podcast, we sit down with HutanBio CEO Manshu Agarwal and Founder & Chief Scientific Officer Dr John Archer — the Cambridge-based biotech quietly building one of the most credible answers to the hard-to-abate fuel problem. Where ExxonMobil walked away from algae biofuel and co...

On this episode of the  Sustainable Times Podcast , we’re joined by  Mater-AI  founders  Dr. Nickel Blankevoort ,  Dr. Chelsea Williams , and  Gatleen Bhambra  to discuss how AI-driven materials discovery could transform clean energy and thermal management. Mater-AI is building novel thermoelectric materials designed for greater efficiency and new applications in power generation and solid-state c...

Host:  Stuart Hall, Managing Director, Sustainable Media Group Guest:  Robin Grenfell Cowan, High-Net-Worth Investor Episode Overview In the first episode of the Sustainable Times Investor Series, Stuart sits down with HNW investor  Robin Grenfell Cowan  to explore how early-stage investment decisions are really made in private markets. Robin has backed multiple pre-seed and seed-stage companies a...

“When you change who invests, you change what gets built.” This week on Profit Meets Purpose Claire Tange, Co-Founder of Joanna Invests, discusses the community of female investors and founders she has built since 2022. Claire saw the problem of gender inequality first-hand while working in both investment banking and startups. “We need to be smarter with our money,” she says. “Once we have it, we...

"Resilience through intelligence." On this week’s Profit Meets Purpose, Sustainable Times explores how artificial intelligence is reshaping business resilience. Daisy Moll speaks with Karan Chopra, Co-founder of Earthena AI, and Kevin Vranes, Chief Product Officer at Worldly, about how AI is helping companies manage risk, improve efficiency, and uncover opportunity in an age defined by c...

“Imagine a Guinness X Gucci leather jacket!” This week on Profit Meets Purpose, TJ Mitchell, Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of ARDA Biomaterials, explains how they are turning beer waste into a scalable, plastic-free leather alternative. After completing a PhD in supramolecular chemistry at Oxford, Mitchell joined the startup accelerator Entrepreneur First, where he met his co-founder Bre...

“I call it the Cinderella of solar” This week on Profit Meets Purpose, Daisy Moll sits down with Christophe Williams, Founder and CEO of Naked Energy, to explore why solar thermal is the forgotten Cinderella in the clean energy story… Williams doesn’t come from the typical engineering mould. Before launching his clean tech venture, he led award-winning ad campaigns for Sony, Microsoft and BMW — ev...

“ E-waste is the world’s fastest-growing waste stream.” Entrepreneur Asad Hamir is tackling the growing e-waste crisis with his fourth venture Klyk, a circular IT company helping SMEs cut costs, extend the life of technology, and unlock the hidden value in discarded devices. Asad explains how Klyk’s model replaces new purchases with refurbished ones, manages those assets in life, and then collects...

On this week’s episode of Profit Meets Purpose , we are joined by Matthew Journee, CEO of Levistor. He shares how a capital-light scaling model and breakthrough “shatterproof” flywheel technology could reshape the future of energy storage. “Energy storage is one of the cornerstone technologies we need for electrification. The difference between when we generate power and when we use it is now beco...

This week on Profit Meets Purpose, Alexandra French, CEO of Xampla, explains how a Cambridge spin-out is utilising 15 years of research into plant proteins to create plastic alternatives. Their Moro technology is a plastic-free coating that works like plastic during use, then breaks down naturally once it’s no longer needed. Xampla’s technology has a range of other uses from vitamins to dishwasher...

Anthony, co-founder and CEO of SeedLegals, joins Profit Meets Purpose for a candid look at how founders raise, build, and scale. He isn’t a lawyer—he previously led the development of BBC iPlayer and has built multiple startups—and that outsider perspective has helped him see both the product and the customer’s needs more clearly. SeedLegals streamlines legal documentation so founders can focus on...

This week on Profit Meets Purpose George Thompson, founder and CEO of GT Wings, shares how their technology is sailing the shipping industry into a more sustainable future. As shipping braces for tougher climate rules, GT Wings is showing that compact, high-thrust wind tech can turn compliance into competitive advantage. The clean shipping boom has long been promised and is slow to arrive. But if...

“The biggest problem of our time is carbon dioxide. To remove it you need to create a product more valuable than the carbon itself.” On this week’s episode of Profit Meets Purpose , I’m joined by Harvey Hodd, serial entrepreneur and founder of RIVAN, a company that’s reimagining the future of fuels. Instead of drilling the earth, RIVAN is “mining the sky,” building synthetic fuels from captured ca...

“If every company takes even a small step, like 1%, that creates momentum for much bigger change.” On this week’s episode of Profit Meets Purpose , I’m joined by Kate Williams, CEO of 1% for the Planet . We dive into how businesses around the world are committing 1% of their revenues to environmental causes—and why that simple pledge has become such a powerful force for change. Kate shares the evo...

"We are a small company with an absolutely Goliath product." I’m joined by Bob Long, Executive Chairman of O-Hx, and an engineer with over 50 years’ experience in applied thermodynamics. In 2017, Bob set out to solve what he calls “the holy grail of the renewable energy industry”, thermal energy storage. The result is the Energy Vault: a high-density thermal battery that can store and rapidly rele...

“We looked beyond our own supply chain to explore how we could drive behaviour change across our community of millions.” In this episode of Profit Meets Purpose , we speak with Salah Said, Director of Sustainability at Klarna, the Swedish born, fintech giant. We explore how Klarna is looking beyond its own supply chain to consider the powerful role it can play in shaping the behaviour of its hundr...

“If we can park a kayak in a patch of seaweed… we could do that with floating wind turbines.” In this episode of Profit Meets Purpose , we dive deep, literally and figuratively, into a game-changing idea from Harland Evans, founder of Nature Based Limited. Nature Based Limited aims to address the high cost and vulnerability of floating wind turbines, which are expensive to maintain and often break...

“Risk is something you manage, it’s not something to fear. But women are often made to feel terrified of it.” In this episode of Profit Meets Purpose , Daisy Moll speaks with Sarah Turner, CEO of Angel Academe, and Tom Britton, co-founder of SyndicateRoom, about their new collaboration, the UK’s first EIS fund focused on female founders. The fund is built on data. Despite clear evidence that women...

“What we don’t do is tell you off for your behaviour. We’ll never do that because then people switch off.” I'm joined by Oli Cook, CEO and co-founder of ekko, the London-born fintech reimagining how we engage with climate responsibility, one transaction at a time. Ekko has identified a powerful consumer touchpoint: the moment of purchase. By integrating directly into payment systems, ekko allows u...

"Hire based on your current needs not your future customers" If you're a founder looking to grow your team, this episode of Profit Meets Purpose is for you. This week I’m joined by Cherry Swayne, founder of Above and Beyond , a recruitment firm that helps climate tech startups hire the right people at the right time. Cherry takes a thoughtful, strategic approach to recruitment, treating it not jus...

"We asked founders what they needed, then invited investors, marketers, and sales coaches who could help immediately.” Juliette Devillard is revolutionising the UK’s climate innovation scene through her initiative, Climate Connection, which focuses on creating meaningful spaces for climate professionals to connect, collaborate, and support each other. After relocating from the U.S. to London, Devi...

"If we can make nature an investable asset class then all of a sudden the big asset owners of this world can start to make a 2% allocation." In this week's episode I was joined by fellow geographer Robert Gardner. In this episode, he shares his unique journey from navigating hyperinflation in 1980s Argentina to reshaping the world of finance through environmental restoration. Drawing on childhood...

"If you are that ambitious generalist, that wants to actually do things and build quickly, then start-ups are for you" In today's episode of Profit Meets Purpose I was joined by Peter Wood from the Graduate Guide.  We spoke about all things working in the startup world, the doors it can open, the ambition it can spark, and the opportunity to work on something real, fast, and with influence. This o...

“Angel investing is not just for multi-millionaires” This episode of Profit Meets Purpose features Emma Mee, Head of Membership and Marketing at Green Angel Ventures, the UK’s largest angel syndicate focused exclusively on climate tech. With a background that spans corporate sustainability, venture building, and climate innovation, Emma brings a grounded yet urgent perspective on what it means to...