Business for Good Podcast

You've heard the folklore time and again: a group of young idealists starts a company in their garage with dreams of one day changing the world. In the case of Fenix International, they too started in a garage, but this garage happened to be in Uganda, and those idealists happened to be a group of ex-Apple engineers. The problem they were trying to solve: Lots of rural Africans just don't have access to safe, clean energy. As a result, they either burn kerosene or local trees, both of which are polluting and create real hazards in the home, or they simply live in the dark when the sunsets. Well, these engineers wanted to be a source of light for such families, literally. Their goal: create the cheapest possible solar panels and energy storage that could be affixed to roofs, often made of thatch, and help power homes that are too far away from any grid. They called their company Fenix International, and Lyndsay Holley Handler, employee #1, would be their CEO. As you'll hear in the interview, Fenix got right to work, raising capital and inventing low-cost solar panels that help transform the lives of their new owners. Not only do test scores for kids improve in homes with the solar panels (since they can study at night), but local entrepreneurs like tailors can receive more income by staying open later. There's also evidence that these solar panels are helping advance gender equality and even lowering birth rates. With a profitable business model that's tangibly improving the lives of rural Africans and employing 1,100 people, Fenix solar panels are now sitting atop hundreds of thousands of homes in six countries, benefiting three million people. Not too shabby for a company that began in a garage in 2009. The startup went through series A and B financings before more recently getting acquired by a larger energy company, allowing for some cofounder exits. This was recorded in October 2019, just a couple days after Lyndsay stepped down as CEO of Fenix. With such an impressive track record behind her, what will Lyndsay do next? Well, as the head of the Ugandan Ultimate Frisbee Association, maybe she'll have a little more time to play. But then, she's got new business plans to keep making a difference. Listen to the interview to hear her story! Mentioned in this episode Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose by Tony Hsieh

You know the story: there's a bright college student who drops out of an Ivy League school to embark upon an entrepreneurial journey, founding his own company and building it into a major success along the way. No, we're not talking about Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates here. Instead, we're talking about Tom Szaky, an immigrant whose family fled Hungary after the Chernobyl disaster, eventually sending him to Princeton, where he dropped out to launch his startup called TerraCycle. Their goal, as the company touts, is to make "recycling the unrecyclable not only feasible but desirable and profitable!" The basic idea is to take trash that no else is going to recycle and find ways to profitably reuse or recycle it. While Tom founded TerraCycle as a teenager, the company is now partnered on such trash repurposing projects with major brands like Coke, Pepsi, Proctor & Gamble, and more. As a result, TerraCycle now has more than 300 staff and brings in nearly $50 million in annual revenue. Hear their story in this latest episode! Mentioned in this episode HBO's Chernobyl series Natural Capitalism by Paul Hawken The Future of Packaging by Tom Szaky Birds using cigarette butts to line their nests to prevent mites TerraCycle's Loop program

Many of the people running plant-based and clean meat companies are vegetarians themselves who often have come out of the animal protection or environmental communities. Not Rody Hawkins. The man who brought you Oscar Mayer's Lunchables and other notable products such as Slim Jim is now hoping you'll buy his soy-based meats. After spending 30 years in the meat industry, Rody co-founded and is the CEO of Improved Nature. You might not have heard as much about Rody's food tech start-up as some of the more well-publicized names in the field, but he's already raised millions of dollars and is selling in the US and abroad. In this episode, listen to the unlikely story of a meat man who's now on a mission to efficiently feed the world with plants. Discussed in this episode Improved Nature web site Rody offered his email: Rody.Hawkins@improvednature.com Perky Jerky using Improved Nature plant protein Dr. Michael Greger on why soy helps prevent cancer Famed sci-fi writer Arthur C. Clark Books that have influenced Rody How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie I Am by Matt Fry

For a lot of people, when they walk by someone who's homeless, their inclination may be to look the other way. One day for Jasmine Crowe, however, she not only didn't look the other way; she saw a profitable business opportunity in helping connect the hungry with perfectly good food the rest of us are throwing away. Sound like a pipedream? Well, today many major food users, including the NFL, the Atlanta airport, and Netflix pay the startup Jasmine founded to take their unsold food and deliver it to the hungry. And it turns out, thanks to federal tax law, it's profitable not only for Jasmine's company, but for those corporations paying to have their unwanted food go to the homeless, too. So far, Jasmine's company Goodr has diverted more than two million pounds of food from landfills and into the stomachs of the homeless—all profitably. In this episode, we talk with Jasmine about her business model and how it's helping the hungry while protecting the planet at the same time. Resources discussed in this episode: Jasmine's company: Goodr Jasmine's TEDx talk: Hunger is not a question of scarcity Jasmine on NBC Nightly News: A "do-goodr" who rescues and delivers food to the hungry Jasmine on Oprah's Super Soul: Everyone Deserves A Meal Books that have influenced Jasmine: Good to Great and Blue Ocean Strategy

Should employers really make their employees wait two weeks to get paid? You may not think it's that important, but imagine if you had less than $400 in your bank account right now. You might start wondering why, in today's digital age, you have to wait 14 days to get paid for work you did two weeks ago. Well, our guest—a rocket scientist-turned fin-tech-entrepreneur—says there's no reason employees should have to wait. It's their money, Safwan Shah says, and they should have access to it on demand. And if they don't, the employer is essentially using the employee as a source of credit for itself, and at zero interest no less. In addition to founding his own payroll-type company to address this problem—which incidentally recently raised a $20 million Series B round—Safwan wrote a fascinating book on the topic. His company, PayActiv, is now in business with the likes of major employers like Walmart and Uber, helping to fulfil what Safwan calls his life's mission: to eliminate financial suffering of the neediest. In this episode, Safwan offers a history of why we have the two-week pay period in the first place, and even gets biblical on us, citing the thoughts of both Moses and Mohammed. Yes, it turns out they both prescribed that employers pay employees for their labor right away. So listen to Safwan drop some ancient and modern knowledge on using timely payroll to help the poorest among us. Discussed in this episode Safwan's book, It's About TIME: How Businesses Can Save the World (One Worker at a Time) Safwan's company, PayActiv

When Josh Tetrick in 2011 cofounded Hampton Creek, later renamed JUST, the idea of applying tech to food to solve public health and sustainability problems was just very far from many investors' and would-be entrepreneurs' minds. For Tetrick, however, there was an opportunity to create a profitable business that could address so many of the problems he was concerned about: food sustainability, climate change, public health, animal welfare, and more. Hampton Creek, pledging to compete with the egg, got off to a beginning most startups could only dream of. Major VCs pumped cash into the company. National sales followed. Fawning media attention ensued. The good times, however, weren't always so good. Soon they faced litigation from Unilever. The American Egg Board ran a clandestine campaign to try to undercut them. Negative media attention began hitting the company. There were federal investigations, which though they resulted in no finding of wrongdoing at all, still fueled more negative press attention. They lost customers and board members, even drawing headlines predicting the company's expiration date was up. Today, those who'd been betting against Tetrick and JUST appear to be the ones with plant-based egg on their faces. The company is flying high with stronger sales than ever before, even inking a deal with restaurant giant Tim Horton's to be the first major fast food chain to offer a plant-based egg breakfast option. Food Dive even named Tetrick its Executive of the Year in 2018, noting that the overcoming the hard times makes his work "all the more impressive." In this interview, Josh talks about how he tries to remain calm and resilient in the face of both success and adversity. He talks about why he doesn't believe the headlines about his own company, both when they're good and when they're bad, since neither may be right. And he talks about what types of companies he wants new food entrepreneurs to start. As you'll hear, Josh's thinking has evolved quite a lot in the eight years since JUST was founded, with him shifting from thinking he was competing against egg companies to realizing that they could be his best partners in bringing plant-based egg products to consumers worldwide. We also delve into Josh's thoughts on cultured meat and his famous prediction which never panned out about 2018 being the year that such slaughter-free animal meat would first get sold in the world. Will Josh run more full-page ads in the 2020 election like he did in the 2016 election? Find out in this 23rd episode of Business for Good!

There are few people who know more about climate change than Columbia University's Graciela Chichilnisky. Not only did she propose and design the carbon credits trading system under the Kyoto Protocol, she also was a lead author of the 2007 report from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that won the Nobel Prize. Not too shabby. Prof. Chichilnisky, however, isn't relying solely on the world's governments to solve our climate crisis. The double-PhD is the CEO of Global Thermostat, a startup that's raised $52 million so far to inexpensively suck CO2 out of the atmosphere. If she succeeds, we could quickly, as the name Global Thermostat implies, set the temperature of the planet, thereby perhaps averting a climate doomsday scenario that many experts warn is already unfolding. In this interview, we'll hear how the technology works, where it stands now, and how Prof. Chichilnisky responds to concerns raised by critics about her plan. Mentioned in this episode Carbon Negative video Washington Post profile on Global Thermostat Bill Gates touts Global Thermostat in MIT's Technology Review

Ryan Pandya and Perumal Gandhi were both in their early 20s when they were e-introduced to each other by another person they'd never meet in person either, Isha Datar. A series of online chats led to the idea of jointly creating a company that would put cows out to pasture by making real dairy proteins without the involvement of a single cow. Five years later and $60 million in venture capital raised, their start-up, Perfect Day, is poised to sell its first-ever product, and in this episode, Paul Shapiro gets to sample it in the company's Northern California HQ. Hear not only what Paul thought of the world's first-ever ice cream made with real whey protein that was grown without animals, but also the inspirational story of how these first-time entrepreneurs—still in their 20s!—started and grew their business to this point.

Have you ever wondered what makes the most successful inventors tick and whether you could develop more of those traits? That exactly what NYU business school professor Melissa Schilling thinks about all the time. And it's the subject of her riveting book, Quirky.

Paul Rice has devoted his life to trying to give the farmers who grow our food a fairer shake. That crusade has taken him from the coffee farms of Nicaragua to founding his own certification program for fair trade that now certifies a wide variety of products you probably buy all the time, from coffee and tea to sugar and even clothing.