#476 Stop Pitching Tech, Start Selling Outcomes: Josh Dorfman’s Advice for Climate Founders

Episode 476

[00:00:00] 

Mehmet: Hello and welcome back to a new present of the CTO Show with Mead today. I'm very pleased joining me, Josh Dorfman. He's the CEO and host of Supercool Josh, as I was telling you before we started the recording, the way I love to do it is I keep it to my guests [00:01:00] to give us, you know, the full story, you know, the, the, the history.

So tell me a little bit more, you know, what you've been up to and, uh, what brought you to, to start the Supercool. So the floor is yours. 

Josh: Oh, well thank you so much, man. But it's, uh, really great to have a chance to, to speak with you. So I have been a sustainability climate focused entrepreneur for over 20 years.

The quick story of how that came about in the early nineties, I was in China. Uh, thinking about a career in State Department, maybe CIA, I just felt if I went to China, something cool would happen. Something cool did happen, but it was a little different. I ended up working for a company called Kryptonite Bike Locks.

At the time, you know, the strongest bike lock in the world kryptonite, stronger than Superman. And I was working in factories thinking about a, you know, a very exciting opportunity. A billion people in China riding bicycles at the time. Everybody had a bicycle. But over the course of a couple years, you could start to see all the [00:02:00] infrastructure coming in for bridges, tunnels, highways, all this automobile infrastructure, and.

Probably at some point in my second year, I actually do remember the moment we were opening a, a factory in southern China and I was partnering with the, the, or traveling with the, the Chinese owner of the factory, that executives from from crypto had flown over from America and we got to this parking lot.

We were gonna go into this restaurant and consummate the deal by toasting in snake blood and a little bit of what's called gio. Basically like Chinese like. Like, almost like grain alcohol. And that's how we were gonna get the deal done. But before we went in, we were in the parking lot and this Chinese businessman said to me, Josh, look, my Mercedes is the biggest Mercedes here in this parking lot amongst all these Mercedes of all of these Southern Chinese businessmen, uh, people from Hong Kong who had businesses also in southern China.

And in that moment I thought, wow, I don't know anything about. Climate change or global warming, but there will be a billion [00:03:00] cars in this country because you know all the infrastructure I mentioned and I thought, wow, these guys want exactly what we want. More, bigger, better, increased quality of life. That was really a trigger for me to kind of the, sort of the environmental epiphany where eventually I came back to the States, I went and got my MBA, went through the.com boom and bust, you know, around the year 2000, but eventually made my way to, to sustainability and climate because I couldn't.

I couldn't dismiss what I'd seen in China. Uh, there's kind of a long journey from there to, to where I get to today, but essentially Supercool. The business I'm running today is a, is a media company focused on climate solutions that are real proven beyond the lab, beyond pilot stage, commercial, commercial, well in market.

Scaling up and really demonstrating that you can cut carbon, boost profits, increase quality of life, and, and really grow these wonderful businesses at the same time. So we covered those kinds of solutions. We also [00:04:00] look at what cities are doing. We talked to Maris, but generally that's the scope. There's a new low carbon economy emerging.

We like to cover it. We think it's underway, but underrepresented. And so we dive into that. 

Mehmet: Great. And, uh, you know, thank you for sharing that, uh, story also Josh, with, with me and the audience. Uh, I would say so from, you know, like kind of media and also like, uh. You know, e-commerce kind of, right. So, because you did like a few things before I was researching, so you did something called the lazy environmentalists, right?

So, uh, and of course with, with what you do today, so what's the common, you know, threat across all these ventures that you did? And like, did that affect? 'cause when we talk about environment and when we talk about like sustainability, the first thing that comes to mind is impact, right? So, uh. Has, you know, the definition of the word impact changed over the years, you know, from when you started doing this until today with, uh, Supercool.[00:05:00] 

Josh: Well, it certainly changed in the market of ideas or the marketplace of ideas, but it hasn't changed for me what I came to realize in 2004. And so my journey, like many entrepreneurs and just simply many people, was, is not linear, hasn't been linear. I went into a, uh, I got my MBA, like I mentioned, went through the the.com thing, worked for a tech startup in la.

I then had a little stint writing screenplays. I then went into a PhD program in political science at George Washington University. Thinking about politics, China and the environment realized about a semester in that that was a big mistake for the way my brain works. And then I started my first company, which was a modern design.

Sustain became a modern design, sustainable furnishings and furniture company. Really focused on the design piece, trying to sell into customers around, Hey, this is beautiful, beautiful furniture, high quality, contemporary, modern design. It happens to be sustainable. But that was really the key. And that's been the, the through line for me through everything I've done.

[00:06:00] Uh, you mentioned the lazy environmentalist, which I'm happy to talk about too, but the, the point of view that I've always strived for was identifying. Solutions, whether they're business to consumer or business to business, where the mindset is, would you want this Even if you didn't care about the climate crisis, even if you didn't believe climate change is real, would this solution still appeal to you?

Mehmet: So, right. So one, you know, when we talk about, uh, anything related to, to climate technology, right? So, uh, and you know, I had the luck to, to see, you know, great, uh, innovators in, in this industry. Um, but today you are doing it from more a, let's call it like powerful media platform, right? So. What do you think the biggest mistake, you know, founders make when they try [00:07:00] to tell the world about, you know, what they are trying to do?

Like, what's, what's the number one mistake they always do? Because climate tech is not like any other thing. Like, you know, in traditional startup. I would say set up like you have a problem and you know, you focus on the problem and then you talk about the solution. You, you talk about the market size, blah, blah, blah.

Right? So, so when it comes to communicating a venture like this, what people should avoid doing as a mistake when communicating with the outside world, 

Josh: you, yeah, you raised a very good point. The. Tech in general, I think has a problem. And I've seen this working with, uh, a number of tech founders. Uh, years ago I was the managing director of a, of an angel investor network, uh, based in, uh, Asheville, North Carolina, and seeing a lot of, in seeing a lot of startups pitch, being a, you know, being around a bunch of startups, either mine or others I worked for too.

Tech companies actually I think [00:08:00] have a problem or tech services because they talk about the tech. That's fine for early adopters, but once you start getting beyond your early adopters, tech doesn't really move the needle in terms of what customers are look are looking for. Um, climate tech has two challenges.

Founders talk about the tech and founders talk about the climate, and customers may care about both of those things, but it's not what gets them to become a customer. The key is to talk about. Outcomes. Talk about results. Uh, I'll give you an example. We talked to the CEO of a company recently. Uh, Sam Ramad, the CEO of Brainbox ai.

A Brainbox AI got started about five or six years ago. It's an AI powered solution that cuts the energy used by HVAC systems in big buildings by up to 25%, reduces carbon emissions [00:09:00] in big buildings by up to 40%. That's massive, right? Because most of the energy that's going into a commercial building, whether it's a warehouse or an office, high rise goes for heating and cooling.

And so they've developed this incredible AI solution that can tell you with 96% accuracy, who's going to be on an office floor in assurance space in six hours. Six hours from now. Mm-hmm. So what that means is you can gradually either raise the temperature or lower the temperature. You don't have to spike it when everybody's in the space.

You can actually start to use more energy when the grid has more renewables on the grid. You can use more energy when energy's cheaper, right? Because the price will fluctuate throughout the day. And so that's ai. Now, if you go to a, if you go to the owner of a building and say, Hey, I have this AI solution for your building.

Let me tell you about my ai. No, no. Office manager, no, no. You know, plant facility manager, no. CEO wakes up saying like, man, you know what I really need? I really need some more [00:10:00] AI in my building. Right. No, it's people, but people do think if I could cut my cost, if I could control my cost, if I could get more transparency into where either, you know, machines may be, um, in need of service or if there's predictive maintenance capabilities where I could actually be proactive.

And take action to make sure my facility runs smoothly, and that's all powered by ai. Awesome. Let's talk about that. And so I think really the, the biggest communication opportunity and the biggest mistake is talking either about the tech and certainly talking about climate, right? Everybody loves to talk about climate.

Once the tech's working and you're saving money, or you're enabling all the business outcomes and results you want, then everyone's like, oh yeah, the tech lemme, or the climate, lemme tell you about how much good we're doing for the climate, but no one buys because of that. At least if you're trying to get into the biggest markets and build the biggest companies on the planet.

Mehmet: Right. So, so I think this approach also because you mentioned about the, the people who are like skeptic sometimes about climate change or like, you know, the global warming. [00:11:00] So decoupling the narrative from just a climate impact towards something which like cost saving. Uh. I don't know, like even maybe sometimes, um, saving time.

Not only money, time, money, any, anything like it's resource, uh, perspective. I like this approach because, you know, like now you remove the bias of someone who might not be buying your story of, you know, like, yeah, there's global warming that we need to fight or like, let's see. Say the climate is changing and we need to, to, uh, to do something about it, Andra, and of course putting in the mix.

And thank you for mentioning ai because I know, like, uh, and I always tell people, just putting the word AI in, in, in, you know, your narrative, actually sometimes it might complicate. Things rather than, um, you know, making it like look Supercool, right? So, or something like fancy. [00:12:00] So just all what you need, you need, just as you mentioned, to tackle someone's problem, which is mainly if you are selling to a business, you need to see if you can reduce their cost.

You can, you know, increase their revenue, decrease their risks, right? So this is what business people talk and you need to just do that. And it that. Yeah, in, in a good way when you can, uh, translate these ones into some numbers that you can show. And here where I think also, you know, um, so, so what I understand from you, uh, Josh, like it's what works here is data, right?

It's not like the emotions. It's not the cultural narratives that. You know, especially when we talk to, to people who are skeptic, like from your experience, like is it always the data or maybe sometime also we need to, to work on the emotions and maybe some narratives that we bring, we need to bring into the picture.

Josh: That that's a, a, a terrific point. Mimic what, what triggers for me? So. Almost two decades ago in 2006, I did, I started [00:13:00] this, this media company called The Lazy Environmentalist, and which was a kind of, if a shoe, if the shoe fits kind of media brand. It came about because my first employee on her last day working for me with my, uh, modern, uh, design, uh, sustainable furniture company, her last day working for me out the door.

She was like, Hey, you're not my boss anymore, and I need to tell you something that's been on my mind for. You know, the two years I've been working for you, uh, you're a terrible environmentalist. You're selling all this eco-friendly stuff you made from recycled materials, what have you, but you're always in the shower, you're barely recycling.

It was, it was a startup. We were working outta my apartment and you're a giant hypocrite and I don't understand you because it's just doesn't make any sense to me. And so. This was 2000. It's probably late 2004, 2005. So I, I wrote a blog entry, a little blog post on my site, called it the Lacing Environmentalist.

I was like, look, here's the thing. I really care about the planet. I feel we're in this climate crisis. I'm trying to do my part, but I also really love long showers. I do my best thing in the shower. I know I'm [00:14:00] using a lot of water. I know I'm using a lot of energy to heat that water. So what I would love is for the industry to come up with a fantastic low flow shower head.

That has great pressure, lets me enjoy my shower, but cut my impact because I want to do right by the environment. I care about the environment, but I'm also set in my ways. I'm lazy and I need convenience. I'm a lazy environmentalist, but as luck had had it, a internet radio producer read my blog. There just weren't that many blogs probably two decades ago, and eventually that made its way to Sirius Satellite Radio where I, I had the show, and when we got to Sirius, I felt that, okay, the, the objective was to make sustainability appealing, right?

How are we gonna do that? How are we gonna talk about, you know, overcome these hurdles of inconvenience or cost or perception? So that was the bar. And I and I, so I went out and I found this guy, plasma boy, John Whalen, who was a drag car racer out in Portland, Oregon. And what was special [00:15:00] about John was that he had taken a 1972 Dotson 1200, a tiny little car.

He had borrowed a bunch of batteries from the, a forklift in his warehouse and shoved them in the back of this, uh, 1972 Dotson, souped it up, had some, you know, had a friend who was an engineer, went out to the, the Portland International Speedway and started blowing the doors off of muscle Cars. Camaros.

Corvettes. So he get 'em on the show and, and the first thing he says is, Josh, you wouldn't believe it. The other day I was at the track, or the other night I was at the track and I blew the doors off a Corvette. I went up to the guy after and I said, how do you feel about the fact that I just kicked your butt on with a car running on American made energy?

And I was like, wow, John, that's amazing. How'd you do it? He's like, how'd I do it? 800 pounds of torque, zero to 60 and under three seconds, he's like, dude, this thing is a rocket ship. And you can see the videos online. It's like, it's amazing to see it. There's a whole, he's, he's kind of this legend now. [00:16:00] And what was so interesting for our, our little environmental radio show on series, this like little, like tucked away corner of the radio sphere, our phones lit up, lit up like they'd never, you know, had never happened before.

And the people calling in were not environmentalists. They were commercial truck drivers in their, you know, their big rigs. They're rolling around the highways of, of America. And the conversation they were having with John was like, how do I get this for my pickup? How do I get this for my muscle car? How do I convert to electric?

Because they loved the con, the conversation around speed, power, patriotism. Self-reliance, all of that registered for them. It wasn't about, wow, this is an environmental solution that I'm so in love with. And so that was a seminal moment for me. I mean, that really crystallized this view of, if you can frame what you're doing, I.

In terms of emotional appeal really resonate with what people care most about on the most obvious merits of an electric car, right? Everybody knows you get in a Tesla or [00:17:00] some other car and you press the accelerator, right? That's a different experience and, and you can capture that emotional resonance.

You can also move markets and you can also, you know, build, bring partners and customers and stakeholders to you. 

Mehmet: Josh, just, just a question that came to my mind now. Is it something really hard to do, not only for climate tech across the board, because you know, when you are like describing this immediately, I don't know why.

What came to my mind is like any startup founder, when they try and go in front of investors, so the they, they follow a very, I would say. Like static workflow, you know? Yeah. So they try of course to, to put some storytelling, but I don't see much people put that effort. I. To do something which you described just now, what do you think?

Like people, [00:18:00] they, they lack, you know, um, I would say kind of creativity to come up with something like this? Or is it like, because someone just told them, Hey, if you want to raise for your startup from, from a VC or an investor, you just need to follow this playbook and, and you, you'll be fine. Now what you just described is, you know, talking even, and by the way, this is you, you were talking about like.

How to get people who are like the truck drivers to adopt a technology. Right. Which is, if you think about from outside, it's, it's not possible. 'cause these guys, they like gas, you know, they're peddling on the gas and and so on. And, and yeah, they were excited about like converting. Now I'm thinking about this when I positioned this.

Both from, uh, a, I would say customer or prospect positioning perspective and funding perspective, because to me, you're doing the same thing. So either you're trying to sell your solution for someone who gonna use it, or you're gonna sell your idea to someone who gonna fund it. And in my [00:19:00] eyes, both are the same.

So why we don't see this, uh, across the board, Josh and you, you've, you've done like fundraising multiple times. You, you've been invested yourself also as well. 

Josh: It's a great question. I, I do think there are tenets that, um, you know, prescriptions and frameworks that exist online that, that, that founders are trained in, that do, that are more about, okay, what's the numbers, what's the, what's, what's the tam, you know, what's the total addressable market?

You know, all, all of that is important. I, I have a couple of perspectives on this. Before I started Supercool, I co-founded a company called Planted with two incredible engineers from SpaceX, and we all assembled in North Carolina and we had this. It seemed like a crazy idea four years later we're we're executing on it, but we had this idea [00:20:00] that if we could identify something that grew faster than trees, right?

Trees are known for their ability to pull carbon down from the atmosphere. Mm-hmm. Right? That's how they grow. If we could find something that grew faster than trees, we didn't know what it would be. Hemp was our starting point, but that was just a starting point. We were going to go explore. If we could do that and we could replace the reason why trees are cut down, at least in America, which is mostly for home building, right?

For building materials. Yeah. If we had something that could replace building materials and then we could go build a factory. That was electric powered, no smoke stack. So we could turn whatever this was like, whatever, you know, trees get turned into plywood, trees get turned into the material that's replaced plywood largely in whole building, which is called oriented Strandboard, OSB.

It's basically just like chipped, you know, trees that are chipped down or lumber and then kind of compressed and glued together. It's cheaper, but still structural. If we could find a way to do that. Build a factory that has no smoke stack, then maybe we can figure out a way to pull carbon faster than trees, car from the atmosphere [00:21:00] and turn it into materials that are useful, durable to sequester that carbon away in, uh, new, new homes.

So we start pitching that to investors, and this is, there's a climate story here, but there's also this. Insanely captivating story of we're gonna go something that grows faster than, like, it's faster than trees. We're gonna turn into building materials and we're gonna lock away in homes. And people are like, wait, what?

What are you doing? How are you doing that? It's like, well, I got two guys from SpaceX. So we have, we have an advantage. And of course, the SpaceX brand carries a, you know, a lot of, uh, you know, a lot of sway with investors, but. We did talk about climate, but really we had this opportunity to kind of romance investors also, just with what we were attempting to do, just on the technical challenge of what we're trying to do, right?

We're gonna stand up our own, we're gonna become a, a vertically integrated company. We're gonna stand up our own agricultural supply chain. We're gonna build a first of its kind production technology, never before built. And once we do all that, we're gonna win on [00:22:00] cost. We're gonna win on performance, right?

Quality, and we're gonna win this market. Do you want it now? Even still, if you go pitch a hundred investors, 98 are going to say no. Good luck. Mm-hmm. That's just the, that's just the nature of investing. But my point is, when we were pitching, we were telling story, right? We could talk about Tam, we could talk about market size.

We could talk about our, our margins. We were telling stories, but we were telling two stories. We were telling the story of the, the, this. Thing we wanted to put into the world, right? This, this new material that we were gonna create, this new system, there is an, and we were telling a climate story and then we were talking about the numbers, and that had a lot of resonance.

I actually found that climate had the least amount of resonance in our ability to raise capital, even though investors were excited about it. At the same time, when we came out of that seed round, we raised a couple million dollars. We were fortunate this was the end. [00:23:00] End of 2021. So early 2022, we connected to the team from DR Horton.

Dear Horton's, the largest home builder in America, one in every seven homes in America is built by Dear Horton. They are the behemoth, and they came to visit us in dur North Carolina in our tiny little prototype shop. Dirt sheet not spending any money on it. And uh, my Wada and Nathan, the guys I started the company with, Christian, our first employee, had built this little press that could now build like 18 by 24 inch sheets.

And we had moved away from hemp toward a grass. Similar to Bamboo that we had found through the North Carolina Department of Agriculture. And so we built a press to kind of, we figured out how to kind of strip the grass or get down to the, the fiber, keep the, retain the strength, press it with a, a small press.

Uh, and you know, we had a mixer so we could mix all this stuff. And we had this little kind of, you know, assembly setup. The guys from Dr. Horton show it, show up, they're major executives. We're sitting there pitching them, and [00:24:00] they see these, these little machines working. 20 minutes later, we hand them aboard.

Now, this was during the recession when they couldn't get materials from the largest suppliers on the planet who they worked with. And they're looking at each other and like, we can't get materials. And these guys just figured this out in 20 minutes and they're holding this warm board. Right? And now it's small, but they're imagining building a house and what crystallized for them and what one of them said to me, because we've now partnered, and just to fast forward it in six months ago, in the fall of 2024, we got an order from Dear Horton for for 10 million panels.

That's. That's about 90,000 single family homes worth of panels. It's a, we've come a long way very quickly, but one of the things their, their head of purchasing said is like, you know, we care about cost, we care about supply. Of course, we're the biggest home builder, basically on the planet, but I'm not happy about the fact that we're cutting down trees.

But that doesn't make me happy that we gotta cut down all these trees to build, go build a house. That's not something I want to do. Mm-hmm. If you're [00:25:00] giving me an alternative that fits all my other business objectives. I'm into this. Right? And, and if this is gonna solve other problems like moisture, which is a problem that what the, the, the, the current solution has today, the Bos they use today.

I'm really into this and I love the fact that we're not cutting down trees. So all of it does go together. And I do think that that often we, we, we do hold back. If I could say one more thing on this, just last week I was in new, I was in, uh, the New York area and we were talking with a, a large investment fund.

Uh, that invests in, in resource in energy efficiency, distributed energy, $2 billion plus fund growth stage fund. Now they're going out to raise capital from their limited partners. And the partner of the fund who we were talking to was very clear and he said, look, like I. We of course need to go. We think this is an incredible business opportunity.

Our LPs think this is a business opportunity, but all of our LPs, all of the, all of the, the big [00:26:00] investors who put lots of hundreds of million dollars into us also wanna understand impact, right? Mm-hmm. They need to understand how is their money doing good. So we lean into that too. And so I think in a lot of investors understand.

I think early stage startup founders are a little, maybe a little bit too cautious. The challenge is to lean into your story, even if it's climate in a way that is compelling and not moralizing and preachy, right? Because it's not like, like, we should do this. We must do this because that immediately turns, you know, most people off, investors included.

Mehmet: I. Yeah, just, just quick one here, how much do you think yourself working, uh, uh, you know, in, in the media, I mean, and being a host right now, do you think this, uh, have, you know, impacted I. How you can come up with these stories. Like, uh, maybe an advice [00:27:00] also for, for fellow uh, founders in that space. Is there something they can do to, to learn about how to do this the right way?

I. 

Josh: Yeah. Um, I, I have to think about it. How, how would you learn how to tell story better? Well, it's hard, you know. No, me, it's a very good point. I mean, I mentioned early on in my career after, you know, before I, I got into sustainability, I did this brief stint. I, I explored being a screenwriter. I was living in Los Angeles and I took, there's actually a book called Story written by a very famous kind of screenwriting.

Doctor, you know, who kind of helps on a bunch of screenplays. I think he's written screenplays. Robert McKee and Robert McKee. I think even at the time, he was probably in his sixties, maybe seventies, still had this three day, 10 hour a day seminar where he is on stage talking about story. And when you're writing screenplays, you, you have one [00:28:00] page is about one minute of screen time, right?

And you have to convey in a very succinct amount of space and language. Emotion, a visual, right? You have to, to create some, you have to move a narrative with not a lot of words. That's really good training actually, for being, for, for telling story. So, story by Robert McKee is a, is a good resource, I think, for founders.

How do you get good at storytelling? I, I th I guess what, what come, what comes to mind is. To try to connect in a way and then practice it of what I know, again, I'm gonna say like a Simon Cynic thing or what's the why, right? Yeah. Start with the why, but Right, but, but, but to try to try to understand, right.

Or try to practice telling others what's so important about this to you. Beyond, we're gonna make a ton of money, which is awesome, right? Like that is the point as [00:29:00] well. But you could do, there's a lot of ways to go make a lot of money. So why is this the way, right? And, and if you lean into that, your purpose, right?

And it doesn't have to be it, it doesn't have to be my purpose. And it could be, it could be anything, right? But if like you lean into that emotion and you can convey with conviction why this is so important to you. Especially for engineers, for tech founders who just don't necessarily. Aren't, aren't inclined to, to, to think that way.

That's helpful. That's helpful To meet other, other investors who may not actually be engineers and, you know, hardcore finance tech, you know, they, they may have more of that, um, you know, softer side that they're looking for. That I, I would really try to lean into that. What is that? Why, when, when I've heard it, when I've heard a lot of startup founders pitch who are engineers, they want to tell me about the product.

They don't even want to tell me about the business, right? They just wanna tell me about the product and it's like, whoa. You're not building a product, right? You're building a [00:30:00] business. Right. Why are you building this larger business? And, and, you know, and try to lean in there. 

Mehmet: Absolutely. And you know, again, as you said Josh, there's nothing wrong of saying, yeah.

One of my goals, not purpose, uh, is to get money. Nothing wrong with this, but there must be something that pushed you to go and, you know. Put all your time, effort, and, you know, build a team just to, to do what you're doing. It cannot be money only. Of course, it's important. And I always tell people there's nothing wrong of saying yeah.

Like, uh, you know, if, if I can like, uh, uh, build a wealth about, uh, you know, from, from what I'm building, that's fine. But remember why you're doing it. Because if you don't, and again, as you mentioned, it's like Simon Sinek thing, but it's real, you know, it's, it's, it's actually real and you know. When I try to study, you know, as much as I can in different sectors or verticals, I always find, you know, there's kind of [00:31:00] a purpose behind why someone extremely succeeded in, in what they were doing versus people who were like, you know, average, I would say, or maybe they.

All the lights were on them at some stage, and then all of a sudden they disappeared because, you know, I'm always also a big believer that it's not about you do it, you succeed and then you disappear because this is also not good, right? So, uh, you need to, to to, to appear always and, you know, to stay genuine to the original purpose that, you know, pushed you to start what you're doing.

Now, you mentioned something also interesting, Josh, about the investors and how even the LPs are, you know, getting interested in, in, in this now. If I want to compare, I'm not, to be very frank with you, like I have very small knowledge about the climate tech space from investment perspective. I know like usually it's, it, the investors are like less in that space because it's not like that [00:32:00] one that you have the quick wins and you get the high IRR very fast, you know, so this is something that can take some time.

It's, it's like. Even like usually the deep tech space is like that, but especially climate tech is, is something that takes time. So, but have you seen, like people have more, you know, willingness to be in that space just for the purpose of impact? Like if you compare maybe to, I don't know, five, 10 years ago, maybe even more 20 years ago, are we seeing more people willing for the weight, just for the sake of the impact that, you know, this technology might, might leave.

Josh: No, I think that what, what investors are seeing in it, and it's, it's moving in waves right now, but I think what investors are are seeing is investors who want to put money into clean tech or climate tech are looking [00:33:00] at global capital flows. Right. In 2024. Mm-hmm. 2024, $2 trillion was invested into clean energy pri and actually primarily solar and battery storage, but also wind, nuclear, you name it.

Across the board, 16% of that, which is still a huge number, $300 billion plus was in the United States, right? Mm-hmm. Now, 2025, we've got some policy headwinds, right? We have a new administration, they've got different priorities. Climate is. Not one of their priorities, especially in the way that it was in, in the previous, in the Biden administration.

Okay, that's a challenge. But America again was 16% of a $2 trillion number, right? That's China, that's Europe, that's elsewhere around the world. So investors who are, who are looking, you know, of course you're looking short term and long term, but where you see the markets moving over time. And by the way, by the way, a trillion dollars was invested in fossil fuels.

So, so twice as much [00:34:00] went into clean energy. Investors who are looking at that and looking at the global landscape, seeing inevitability. These are the biggest markets, this is the future, this is where this is going. Right. That's not changing. The, the, the long-term trend's not changing. The challenges are, especially for like take a company like Planted and for companies that are trying to introduce new technologies, and if they are, like you said, kind of hard tech, right?

They don't necessarily have those, those three to five year exit window opportunities and the margin structure is going to be, it's not software, right? It's not 80% plus software margins necessarily. Margins could still be great. You might be able to build a bigger moat, right? You might be able to build something that actually has greater competitive advantage once you get there.

It does take a different, I think, risk profile, and that's from an investor who's willing to say, I have a 10 year horizon. Right? I'm, I'm actually, I really do have a tenure. Years ago when I was running this angel investor group, the, the prevailing wisdom this was a decade ago was like, oh yeah, it's 10 years to [00:35:00] exit.

Right? If you're, if you're seven to 10 years, somehow, you know, sometimes people think, no, it's got that, that should really be three to five years, and if we're not there in five years, there's frustration. But I think that there. Yeah, I think in, in the climate investment space, you do see huge funds. You do see more and more early stage investors who are committed, but you've also seen a lot that have left, right?

Just as like, or they've changed their language. They said, Hey, it's not climate tag, it's resilience. It's something else. Because now we have a new administration. We have to, my view is that if I were a startup founder and I were, and I mean I am a startup founder. If I'm building my next planted. I'm looking at these VCs and which ones are changing their language and which ones are, you know, I'm less inclined as a startup founder to wanna go to the VC that's suddenly taking climate change off their homepage, whereas they were talking about it, you know, just six months ago.

Because I know I'm building something that's gonna take 10 years. I don't want to VC who's [00:36:00] going to maybe be outspoken, maybe not, maybe a little bit less committed to me. Maybe not so willing to, to follow up in my next funding round if something changes just in the, in the culture, even though the, the economic opportunity is still strong, right.

I'm looking for consistency and I think that it's a, it's, it is a challenging marketplace. It's, it's, there's pros and cons, people coming in, people exiting, and it's, as a startup founder, it's, it's still, it's tricky to navigate. There's no, there's no, you know, just silver bullet in how you get it done.

Mehmet: Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, from my humble experience, again, I'm not the expert in that domain for sure. But what I, you know, listen, or, and I read some reports sometimes, uh, especially that domain clean tech or climate tech, whatever you want to call it. So now there are like some outside of the US and I'm speaking about like, um, at least here in the Middle East where I, where I am living now.

So there are like some CVCs like corporate [00:37:00] VCs who, who are like trying to, to. Inject some money there. Um, even maybe some of the audience outside of the region, even in the region, they would be surprised that some of the oil and gas companies, they spawned out some VC arms just to go after, like how we can even make the fossil oil like more clean, right?

So, so we have like couple of examples here. Also, what I have seen is, um, usually like, uh. What you call them, the sovereign funds, right. So, so the, the big sovereign funds here, like, uh, in the UE or Saudi in Norway, like they, they try also sometimes to, to, to inject money there. Um, but. I spoke to a couple of founders in that space.

Not much honestly. Yeah, usually fundraising is hard, but it's one of the hardest one, um, to, to be in. Like, I'm not saying this to scare people. Like if you are up to something, as you said Josh, before indeed, you know, uh, you'll [00:38:00] succeed. You will leave impact one thing which. You cover also every company, which is it's, they are scaling currently.

So scaling means, you know, they have set up a proper go-to market strategy. From your experience, George, like what are like some of the, I would say things that are done differently from, you mentioned software. Of course when we talk software, SaaS, the GTM, you know, there are like a playbook. Agree with it or not, but there is kind of, you know, processes that we do in climate tech in Cleantech.

What's the GTM motive here? Like what, what, what, what, define a good GTM strategy for these companies so they can scale.

Josh: There's probably a, a couple things come to mind. But I think from, from my experience with Planted, I mentioned, you know, aligning with, with Dear Horton, um, as kind of a, a strategic corporate for us. I think very often with first [00:39:00] of its kind technology. Finding kind of that corporate VC or that corporate partner who's and who can also be that corporate partner on the commercialization side, who can help you through those early stages.

You can do your pilots together with, with Dear Horton. For us with planted. I. A couple of years ago, you know, we built our, our first four foot by eight foot panel, right? Structural, and we got it certified from a, a lab in Wisconsin and we built a, a roof on a, a new single family home with Dear Hor in Durham, North Carolina.

And that was a huge proof point for us, right? This now is on a, right. So we, we, we get, we get to go through these proof points with a, a corporate customer who then. Has enough confidence in us three and a half years into this journey to place an order that transforms our business and gives the market confidence and does a whole host of things for us.

Because if you're doing building materials, it, it applies in other industries [00:40:00] as well, and you're building a home. There's a lot of risk there, right? It's a new material. Going into that, what happens three years from now if the thing has a, a challenge, right? Well, we now have a, a corporate partner, a public company who's saying.

We're doing this, we are, we are giving the, the validation here and the credibility, which enables planted to go do other stuff. I've seen with a company we just spoke to called Cyclic Materials. Cyclic Materials is a Canadian company. They just opened or they just announced their, their next scale factory will be in Arizona.

They're the only company in the world that's figured out how to recycle rare earth magnets. Then just pull the rare earth elements out of those magnets. Now, now, rare earth magnets are in every powerful electric motor on the planet. So that's an electric vehicle. That's an MRI machine. That's a hard disc drive in a in a data center.

You don't get those things without rare earth magnets. That creates an opportunity for cyclic materials. When you look at their cap table, it's also their, you know, it's a lot [00:41:00] of their early customers. It's BMW, it's Jaguar, it's Microsoft, it's Amazon. They just had a very successful, in fact, they extended their series B over, uh, just over the last, well, through April to bring Amazon onto their cap table is gonna be a big customer.

So that corporate route for, for early customers is, is. For, for early stage founders and businesses to get through that kind of mm-hmm. The, the trough of despair or whatever you want to call those early stage is, is crucial. The other thing that I would say, we talked to this incredibly dynamic CEO Raton who runs a climate tech unicorn.

Uh, so one, $1.3 billion valuation last time they raised, which was over a year ago, called Zoom, ZUM, zoom. Is fixing the school bus system in America. The experience a child has on a school bus today in America is the same experience that child's grandparents had last century. The tech. The tech, and, [00:42:00] and what that means is that.

Nobody knows where the school bus is before the child gets on. When the child gets on, right? It's, I mean, it's, you know, it's, it's paper, it's walkie talkies, it's chalk on on. It's ridiculous to think in the 21st century. Zoom comes in and says, look, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna bring some AI enabled software, we're going to bring some tracking you administrator, you're gonna know where the school buses are.

Parents, you're gonna know where your child is and parents, if your kid's not going to school today, just open the app and, and, and notify the app, and then we'll reroute the school bus. So nobody has to wait. And, and the school bus can go faster. And by the way, we're gonna take all this data on where school bus routes and we're gonna optimize it because what we're really trying to get to is electrification.

What we're really trying to do is electrify your school buses. So they did this with Oakland, California. They went to the city. This is the first district in a school, big city. To get to a hundred, a hundred percent electric vehicles for their school buses has huge benefits for the health of communities.

No [00:43:00] diesel. Yeah. Going through this, right. For the students, uh, it's less stressful. It's less, it's less noisy. Uh, the way they get there is they through their software. They optimized the fleet and the routes so that Oakland, which had 136 school buses only needed to buy 74 electric buses to actually deliver the same experience.

That's how much efficiency they brought through their software, and now they go electric. Right? But the way they sell in was they were very, very effective at getting student, uh, these, these transportation administrators inside effectively, almost like government type, like agencies, school districts mm-hmm.

To change the RFP. So it was more than just cost. It was all these other benefits that Zoom could bring. So their go to market was really about conveying all the value that they could to get an RFP changed that they then could win because it was almost more tailored to what, what they could [00:44:00] deliver on and their competition couldn't.

So there's no one way, but you have to be, if you bring that much value. And then you can actually, your go to market is like, we're gonna bring so much value that you're actually gonna change the RFP and that's gonna be then be our advantage. 'cause we're the only one who can meet it. Now there's a lot of, you know, you have to be very, very clever and very innovative and have a killer product, but that's also a huge unlock if you can get there.

Mehmet: Secure, I would say, uh, strategic partnerships, uh, early, um, before, you know, yeah. So, so this will give you a, a, a real advantage, I would say. I've seen this also in, um, health, health tech, I would say, especially if someone is trying to, to develop a new technology related to, to healthcare. So I've seen like the.

The companies that can do these kind of partnerships, like strategic partnerships, finding early customers, I think this is very important. Um, so they can go out and, you know, they can [00:45:00] scale. I'm not saying easy, but at least they would have an edge, uh, in the marketplace over like. The other companies that might be out there trying to, or someone trying to build and just waiting for someone to come to them and say, Hey, like we just find about you can, can you help us?

Like this is usually is not happening a lot. Now, something I want to ask you, Josh, and this is related to you've, you've, you've doing this media thing, so, and I want to shed light a little bit. How much is important for founders today? To build their personal branding also as well. Um, we've seen a lot happening, uh, outside, you know, especially on the social media.

From your experience, is it like something good to have or now it's like, have to have thing? 

Josh: I think you have to have it. And, and the reason why is that the, the markets are crowded, right? There's, if we see this a lot in. The, [00:46:00] the built environment, right? Maybe it's around property tech or whatever you want to, you know, however you wanna label that commercial tech, uh, commercial real estate.

And there's a lot of companies showing up with solutions that are unc, you know, similar, right? Maybe they're, they're different, but, but they're similar. Well, how do you break through? How do you rise above that sea of same to actually get the opportunity? There's no question that it, that belie that there's an opportunity for a founder to raise their profile and therefore raise the profile of their, their company.

And, and it's just human nature. And it goes back to me like when I started my first company, the this furniture company, which was called Vivi, like Live Life, Viva V, or we call it Avi. Right? And then that opportunity came to do a radio show. Uh, because I just was this like lazy environmentalist and I wrote a blog about it and someone was like, Hey, let's start.

Do you wanna turn this into radio show? [00:47:00] My initial reason was like, yeah, 'cause I have limited marketing budget and I want to get out there more, but my mental model was Richard Branson, right? Who started Virgin, right? And Richard Branson would do things like he would skydive, right? He would do crazy things to get attention because if he could get attention, he could then pivot that spotlight to his companies.

Right. And I still, and right, and I think when you are resource constrained as every startup is, and even if you have a lot of cash, you should still be really, really, you know, um, careful about how you're spending your money, using your ability to go grab that spotlight for your company. It shines on you, but it's not about you.

It's about you. Like pulling attention to your company is just massive. That hasn't changed. I feel like that's timeless. That's universal. Steve Jobs did the same thing. You know, there's this lineage of CEOs you can look to who really understood how to leverage media and leverage their own personality [00:48:00] to, to, you know, to further their companies.

It's so important and, and, and probably even more important today, like we said, because there's so much noise in the market. 

Mehmet: Right. Yeah. So I, I think you mentioned, uh, Richard Branson and, and Steve Jobs, like, I think especially Richard Branson with, with what he did with the Virgin companies. You know, like, uh, you, I think, you know, people might write books about, you know, all the crazy stuff he did and you know, the different approaches he used like.

Yeah. So, and sometime you need to be controversial. Like you need to, to be the awkward guy, you need to just to grab that attention. And people, sometime I think they feel like, oh, if I do this, I would get like negative reviews or like, maybe people would, uh, would have like bad impression about me. To me, I, I think like we should try, like, it doesn't, it doesn't hurt because what I've seen, you know.

[00:49:00] Today, you know, like I've seen a lot of people who, who still say, no, no, no, I, I'm shy. I don't want to be, you know, under the spots and say guy like, listen, like who can I find about you if, if, if you don't show your face? Right? Um, and, and I say like, look, someone else who might have something less war than what you are building, someone who's not.

Even 10% of what you're doing. But because they're doing, you know, the media space rightly so, people, they know them, they don't know you, and you don't want to lose business because of this. So it's debatable still people like, you know. Not taking it seriously, but I think this is moving forward. 'cause you mentioned something fundamental, Josh, is, it's like it's a noisy world.

Even Steve Jobs, like think about in the eighties he was saying it's a noisy job, like our nineties, it's a noisy, it's a noisy world. Right? So, um, you, you need to differentiate yourself and I think, yeah. Back to the storytelling, which, uh, we [00:50:00] discussed early. Uh, Josh, as we are coming almost to, to to end of this episode, just want to ask you still, I have two questions for you.

If you want to, you know, decide to, to invest in a company today, in, in the space, which you, you do, uh, what would be that crazy bold idea that would, you would never say no to it? 

Josh: Oh, okay. Um,

I would, I'm still very, very interested in carbon removal, so pulling carbon from the atmosphere. But what I'm not interested in, I. Is car pulling technology that pull carbon from the atmosphere and then rely on carbon credits for their business model. In other words, that some companies going to buy this carbon credit that you create to offset their own carbon footprint.

But it really, other [00:51:00] than that, there's, there is no utility. I don't get any. Mm-hmm. Actual, I'm not into that. Those, to me, and, and there's lots of 'em are funded. Billions of dollars flowing into it. Those still to me feel like glorified, you know, um, bluff non nonprofits, right? Like they're, they're not, uh, they're, but companies that figure out carbon removal and turn that into useful, durable products where there's real markets, that's very appealing to me.

And so if you can show how carbon actually is, the input or what for what your product is going to be. I think there's potentially endless opportunity for that because carbon is everywhere in the atmosphere, right? There's just too much of it there. It's this abundant, you know, it could almost be, if you figure out a low cost way to, to get it, um, that could be an incredible business opportunity, right?

Uh, 'cause it's really just like a waste, this waste material up in the atmosphere. And that solves a huge problem for climate. And I think you can still open very, very big markets. So those types of solutions [00:52:00] are, are always appealing to me. 

Mehmet: Right. Finally, like any final advice you want to leave the audience today?

Any call to action. Um, you want to, you know, anyone who listen or watch this episode today to take and of course, where people can, can find out more about you and about. Supercool. 

Josh: So, to the first part of that question, I will answer this again through my lens, thinking about climate and the momentum that exists today in the market.

What I see that's very exciting. When we're talking with CEOs of, of companies, we talk with CEOs of all demographics. A lot of the, the CEOs I mentioned, tu of Zoom, she started that company when she was 50. Sam Rori had a career as a private equity in private equity. It was a, in operations. He went and became the CEO of Brainbox ai.

I, you know, we've talked with a [00:53:00] company, um, called Rondo Energy that's figuring out how to do clean, to do batteries for industry that are run on clean energy and bricks. Right. Not lithium. Right. He only figured out how to do that because he spent a whole career not figuring out how to actually shift energy and clean in, in industry toward, in a clean way.

So my point is. There's a prevailing view in our culture and society that it will be the younger generations that will fix climate. It will fall to them and they'll do it. That's actually false. But what I see is entrepreneurs, executives, leaders at all stages of life who have scaled solutions. And so the advice I would leave is this is an opportunity, depending on what your skill sets are, there is nothing holding anybody back from participating in what I believe is the greatest business opportunity on the planet, and that is the transition.

To a low carbon economy. So that's my advice. Get involved. Whatever your [00:54:00] skill sets are, there is a place and whatever your experience is, it, there is value in it for Supercool. Uh, we're a podcast, we're a newsletter. We're, you know, our, our stuff shows up on, on YouTube, so it can all be found through.

Supercool. The, our website is get super. Cool. So that's a home for all of that as well. And then I am, as far as social, I'm primarily on LinkedIn. That's where I'm interacting the most. And so if any listener wants to, to find me and engage, uh, that would be great. Happy to do it. 

Mehmet: Great. Thank you so much, Josh.

So for the audience, you don't need to go and go back. Couple of seconds. I gonna put the links for you in the show notes. If you're listening on your favorite podcasting app, or if you're watching on YouTube, you'll find the links on, uh, on, on the description. Uh. One of the most engaging episodes I had recently.

Just, you know, a lot of insights from, from, from you. Uh, I learned a lot [00:55:00] myself and I'm sure also the audience would learn a lot from you. Also as well, we shed light on a lot of topics, which I think are beneficial people, especially for people who are interested in the climate, clean energy, uh, tech, and, uh, how they can go to market.

How to talk to investors, what's the, you know, what's going on in, in, in that space also as well. So I think you shed a lot of good insights and light on, on all these topics. So thank you very much again, George, for being here with me today. And this is how I add my episodes usually. This is for the audience.

Uh, guys, if you just discovered this podcast by luck. Thank you very much for passing by. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, so, give me a small favor, subscribe and share it with your friends and colleagues, and if you are one of the people who comes again and again, thank you for coming back. I really appreciate your support, all your, you know.

Uh, remarks all your, uh, questions you ask me, but the big thank you is because of all what you have done for the podcast, especially this year, [00:56:00] 2025, we achieved something. You know, I'm really super grateful for all the audience we are now. Trending or sitting in the top 200 Apple Podcast in the entrepreneurship and business category in multiple countries at the same time.

So I used to see it like once in a while in one country or two. So because of you, it's not because of me. This is happening. Also, we have been selected as one of the top hundred. Tech Startup podcast globally. Um, again, thank you so much for this. We've been selected as one of the top 40 business podcasts, listened in Dubai.

Again, this cannot happen by itself, but thank you for the audience. Thank you for your encouragement. Thank you for all you know, what you do for the CTO show and what I promise you is always to keep it up. Get awesome guests like Josh today, and meet you again very soon. Thank you. Bye-bye. 

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