Forget Fan Mail, Fan Text Us! 💬Today, we are talking to Toby Ferenczi from Granular Energy.In this electrifying (ha!) episode, we finally tracked down the elusive Toby Ferenczi, a man who juggles startups like they're hot potatoes. ⚡️Toby educ

#186 Electric Flight, Commercializing Hardware, Sustainable Aviation, Working at NASA, & More w/ Kevin Noertker (Ampaire)

11 days ago 54m 27s

Forget Fan Mail, Fan Text Us! 💬Kevin Noertker is the Co-Founder and CEO of Ampaire, a developer of Hybrid Aviation Propulsion Systems to Decarbonize Air Travel Today.Currently they are scaling up their tech. Their tech is proven to reduce fuel

#185 Green Hydrogen, Landing Customers, Electrolyzers, Building in Wisconsin, & More w/ Chad Mason (Advanced Ionics)

16 days ago 55m 50s

Forget Fan Mail, Fan Text Us! 💬Chad Mason is the CEO and Founder of Advanced Ionics, a company that has designed a revolutionary electrolyzer. They did this by designing their technology from scratch.They are currently scaling up this innovati

#184 Plastic Replacement, Natural Fibers, Drop-In Materials, Toll Mills & More w/ Jesse Henry (Heartland Industries)

20 days ago 1h

Forget Fan Mail, Fan Text Us! 💬Jesse Henry is the CEO and Founder of Heartland Industries, a company that produces drop-in pellets made of hemp fiber. These pellets are used as an additive to plastics. They reduce the weight and cost of the pr

#183 Smart Cities, Climate FinTech, Urban Tech, VC Fundamentals, & More w/ Rahul Parekh (2150)

23 days ago 50m 30s

Forget Fan Mail, Fan Text Us! 💬Rahul broke down the nitty-gritty of how 2150 built (no pun intended) a leading ClimateTech VC fund focused on decarbonizing the built environment. We talked investing, fund modeling, learning from general VC, Fi

#182 Voluntary Carbon Markets, Investing in 100+ CDR Startups, Hard-to-Abate Sectors, & More w/ Marian Krueger (remove)

29 days ago 45m 28s

Forget Fan Mail, Fan Text Us! 💬Marian Krueger comes to us with his experience investing in 120+ early stage CDR startups, and broke down what we should look for and what’s worth watching in the years ahead.He’s a leading expert in CDR having i

#181 Hot Rocks, From EPA to Apple, Paths to Commercialization, The CapEx > OpEx Model, & More w/ Arvin Ganesan (Fourth Power)

May 25th, 2024 55m 16s

Forget Fan Mail, Fan Text Us! 💬Today, we speak with Arvin Ganesan, an ex-Obama-Admin EPA and ex-Apple Energy Procurement executive. His career is fascinating, from finance to Policy to Energy Tech CEO. He offers us a lot of insight into their

#180 Tough Tech, Scaling DeepTech, MIT's Ecosystem, Political Durability of IRA, & More w/ Michael Kearney (Engine Ventures)

May 21st, 2024 57m 13s

Forget Fan Mail, Fan Text Us! 💬Michael Kearney started off this podcast defending the political durability of the IRA…and he had us convinced. If that doesn’t have you hooked, I don’t know what will! Building for deeptech founders is HARD…like

#179 Industrial Decarb, ROI-Oriented Sales, GHG Accounting, Marketplaces x Recommender Systems, & More w/ Saleh ElHattab (Gravity)

May 18th, 2024 42m 1s

Forget Fan Mail, Fan Text Us! 💬There are a few key things Climate Entrepreneurs should know. This guest brought up a bunch of them. It is incredible to see how successful they are in a crowded space. Today, he shared with us many of the things

#178 Investing in Water, IRA's Missing Link, Long Sales-Cycles, Network Compounding, & More w/ Tom Ferguson (Burnt Island Ventures)

May 15th, 2024 1h 7m

Forget Fan Mail, Fan Text Us! 💬What do you get when you put Chris Rock, Timothée Chalamet, Greta Thunberg, & Marc Andreessen together? -- You get Tom Ferguson! The King of Water VC!(Warning! Tom is hilarious, so cancel your comedy cellar ticke

#177 Climate Resilience, Bridging FAANG to ClimateTech, Cloud Computing with Geospatial Data, & More w/ Allison Wolff (Vibrant Planet)

May 9th, 2024 51m 15s

Forget Fan Mail, Fan Text Us! 💬Allison Wolff | Vibrant Planet Vibrant Planet is basically bringing the tech knowledge from the early FAANG days and applying that to land tender and wildfire resistance. Their platform is a prioritization system

#176 Green Premium & the Price of No Action, Partner w/ Big Oil?, EV Demand, & More w/ Shaun Abrahamson, Part II (Third Sphere)

May 6th, 2024 1h

Forget Fan Mail, Fan Text Us! 💬Recently, the MCJ Podcast experienced huge backlash for having Big Oil players on the show. This prompted us to bring back a past guest, Shaun Abrahamson from Third Sphere.----🌎 Want the full PodLetter? Go to ou

#175 Micromobility, Software Best Practices, Creative Business Models, Seasonality & More w/ Chinmay Malaviya & Charlie Depman (Ridepanda)

Apr 30th, 2024 49m 31s

Forget Fan Mail, Fan Text Us! 💬Somil chats with Chinmay Malaviya and Charlie Depman, CEO and CTO of Ridepanda, expanding access and usage of e-bikes, e-scooters, and micro mobility through employer sponsored subscriptions.Chinmay and Charlie b

#174 Hardware Playbook, Science in VC, DeepTech Success Stories, Environmental-Based Returns, & More w/ Jessica Burley (Planet A)

Apr 28th, 2024 54m 54s

Forget Fan Mail, Fan Text Us! 💬What if Investors Only Made Money if they *actually* helped save the planet? Welp... folks, we have the show for you because that's exactly what Planet A is doing. Somil and Silas speak with Jessica Burley, a Ber

🚨 SPECIAL EP: #173 Breaking Down GGRF and $20B into ClimateTech w/ Franz Hochstrasser (Raise Green, S2 Strategies)

Apr 24th, 2024 33m 27s

Forget Fan Mail, Fan Text Us! 💬The Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF) is a generational government program deploying $27B into clean energy projects across the US. But what is the bill really?Franz Hochstrasser is an expert in financing proj

#172 AI x Production, Learning from Tesla, Transitioning to Iron, Battery Technology & More w/ Vivas Kumar (Mitra Chem)

Apr 22nd, 2024 51m 38s

Forget Fan Mail, Fan Text Us! 💬Somil chats with Vivas Kumar, CEO of Mitra Chem, the first lithium-ion battery materials manufacturer focused on shortening the lab-to-production timeline by over 90%, addressing the largest barrier to innovatio

#171 Regenerative Farming, Carbon Credits, Smallholders, Global Protocols & More w/ Josh Knauer (ReSeed)

Apr 18th, 2024 59m

Forget Fan Mail, Fan Text Us! 💬In this episode, Somil chats with Josh Knauer, CEO of ReSeed, bringing carbon credits directly from farmers to the market.They focus on the oldest form of carbon capture – vegetation. They support farmers in taki

#170 Computer Vision x AgTech, Precision Spraying, Herbicide Usage, & More w/ Tom Gauthier (AgTechLogic)

Apr 15th, 2024 50m 7s

Forget Fan Mail, Fan Text Us! 💬Each year, about 1 billion pounds of chemicals are sprayed on crops in the US alone - globally, that number is around 5.6 billion. Our guest today is AgTechLogic, and they are solving this problem.They do this by

#169 Urban Mining, Solar Panel Lifespan, End of Life Engineering, & More w/ Adam Saghei (WeRecycleSolar)

Apr 3rd, 2024 53m 10s

Forget Fan Mail, Fan Text Us! 💬Are you curious about what happens to solar panels when they are no longer usable? Maybe your crazy uncle's statements from last Thanksgiving about how solar doesn't work are still echoing.Well, look no further.

#168 Advice for Project Finance, AI x Climate, CleanTech 1.0, Late Stage Investing, & More w/ Mike Jackson (Earthshot Ventures)

Mar 31st, 2024 52m 43s

Forget Fan Mail, Fan Text Us! 💬In this episode, I sit down with Mike Jackson, Managing Partner at Earthshot Ventures. Earthshot Ventures calls themselves carbon generalists and invest from Seed to Series B. They mainly invest in software and “

#167 Urban Charging, Electrifying Cities, Pilots & Partnerships, & More w/ Tiya Gordon (It's Electric)

Mar 26th, 2024 50m 59s

Forget Fan Mail, Fan Text Us! 💬In this episode, we actually have a bit of a flashback for you – I sit down to chat with Tiya Gordon, co-founder and COO of It’s Electric, creating curbside EV charging specifically built for cities. Before I eve

#166 Hybrids & EVs, Alternative Fuels, Technology Maturity, Diverse Teams & More w/ Logan Grizzel (MUUS Climate Partners)

Mar 22nd, 2024 1h 6m

Forget Fan Mail, Fan Text Us! 💬In this episode, Somil chats with Logan Grizzel, partner at MUUS Climate Partners, the climate tech venture capital arm of MUUS & Co. investing at the convergence of decarbonization and technological innovation.T

#165 Iterating Hardware, Productizing Solar Procurement, Efficiency Mindset, & More w/ Mike Hall (Anza)

Mar 19th, 2024 52m 13s

Forget Fan Mail, Fan Text Us! 💬What happens when successful CleanTech 1.0 founders step up to the plate again? Anza happens and it's magical. Today, Somil & Silas are interviewing Mike Hall, a Co-Founder of Anza, a company they spun out of Bor

#164 Net-Zero Cement, Surviving the Startup Valley-of-Death, Timing a Pivot, & More w/ Ryan Gilliam (Fortera)

Mar 14th, 2024 51m 48s

Forget Fan Mail, Fan Text Us! 💬In this episode, Silas and Somil chat with Ryan Gilliam, CEO of Fortera, a company focused on paving the way to zero CO2 cement backed by leading investors including Khosla Ventures and Temasek. What makes Forter

#163 Rockefeller’s $1B for Climate, Nature-Based Solutions, Philanthropic Capital, & More w/ Thomas Belazis (Rockefeller Foundation)

Mar 11th, 2024 52m 41s

Forget Fan Mail, Fan Text Us! 💬Today, we are speaking with a representative of the legendary Rockefeller Foundation. For those unaware, this foundation is one of the oldest well-organized institutions of its type and has been responsible for a