Business for Good Podcast

As a young man, GW Chew saw his family dying early of lifestyle-related diseases, and he thought maybe he could do something about it. With a last name like that—yes, "Chew" is his real last name—maybe GW was destined to become a chef—that's exactly what he did. Because of his interest in Seventh Day Adventism, GW gradually became Chef Chew by experimenting with Seventh Day Adventist recipes, ultimately leading him down the path of opening up his own restaurant and now to being a plant-based meat manufacturer. His company—Something Better Foods—is already selling six different plant-based meats to school districts and some Whole Foods Market locations. As you'll hear in this interview from Chef Chew, unlike most plant-based meat, he doesn't rely on extrusion of plant protein isolates, but rather uses a layer-ization process he pioneered using whole soybeans to make his brand of alt-meat called Better Chew. As Chef Chew says, "it looks like chicken; it tastes like chicken; but it ain't chicken!" In this conversation we talk about Chef Chew's life path, his alternative financing strategies for Something Better Foods, where he's been and where he intends to take the company. Discussed in this episode Chef Chew went through the ICA Fund accelerator program. He recommends watching Live to 100 on Netflix. He loves the book Start with Why by Simon Sinek. He started with the Country Life Cookbook, which you can get for $2 on Amazon! Both Paul and Chef Chew love Butler's Soy Curls Our past episodes (51 and 108) with Plant Based On a Budget's Toni Okamoto More about Chef GW Chew GW Chew, aka Chef Chew, is the Founder & CEO of Something Better Foods Inc. and has been a vegan food inventor/restaurateur for over 15 years. Adopted at birth into a family with the last name "Chew," Chef Chew believes that he was born with a mission and purpose to change lives for the better, one chew at a time. Chef Chew grew up in the "country" amongst a family of very heavy meat eaters and noticed over time that a lot of different diseases, from diabetes to cancer, plagued the members of his family. He later discovered that many of those same diseases have been linked to poor diet and overconsumption of animal meat products. Inspired to begin living a healthy lifestyle, Chef Chew switched to a plant-based diet in 2001 and started experimenting with creating vegan food products in 2004. He painstakingly invented the Better Chew proteins in his mom's kitchen and has perfected the textures and taste over the past 15 years. As part of his mission to democratize the access of healthy food, Chef Chew most recently created the Better Chew Box to deliver healthy and affordable plant-based protein solutions directly to your community!

Did you know that nearly half of all pregnancies in America are unintended? And that percentage skyrockets when we're talking about teen pregnancies, more than three-quarters of which are unintended. While teen pregnancies and teen births are thankfully at an all-time low in the US, we're still behind countries like the UK and Canada in this regard. A big reason teen pregnancies have fallen so dramatically in recent decades is simply that it's much easier to have access to contraceptives. But as evidenced by nations like the UK and Canada, there's still more work we Americans can do. After all, it's easy for men to get condoms everywhere, but not nearly as easy for women to get birth control. Females who have babies as teenagers are more likely to stay or fall into poverty, attain lower levels of education, have more health problems, and generally have worse life outcomes for the mother and child. I should note that I happen to be married to someone who defied these odds and turned out just fine despite being the product of teen pregnancy, but still, the statistics speak volumes. And in a world with eight billion of us and counting, it goes without saying that it'd be preferable if the only new people joining us were both intended and wanted by their parents. A big barrier toward that end is that if women want to go on birth control, typically they require a prescription from a doctor, which is of course a hurdle, especially for teens. That's a hurdle that Cadence OTC is working to overcome, and we've got their CEO Samantha Miller on the show to talk all about it. (Side note unrelated to this episode: Samantha's is also a plant-based foods advocate and is affiliated with the Good Food Institute!) Cadence has raised $35 million in venture capital over the past six years to bring to market over-the-counter (OTC) birth control pills for females, both in the form of OTC birth control pills and OTC morning after pills. As you can imagine, this is important work no matter what, but especially in light of the Supreme Court decision ending federal protections for abortion rights, greater and easier access to contraceptives is something all of us should be able to support. In fact, just this year, in 2023, the FDA for the first time approved an OTC birth control pills for women. Impressively, Cadence just inked a deal with Lil Drug Store Products, which services 180,000 retail locations, including convenience stores, to start carrying Cadence's Morning After pill starting in January 2024. Not only will this pill be OTC, but it will be half the price of the leading Morning After pill. As Samantha points out, it's imperative that we make it as easy, cheap, and convenient for women to control their reproductive destiny, which is exactly what Cadence OTC is working to do. Discussed in this episode Our past episodes on family planning with Your Choice Therapeutics (male contraceptives), Dr. Escar Guarin (World Vasectomy Day), and Family Empowerment Media (family planning in the developing world). Pew Reserarch Center says US teen birth rates are falling thanks to greater access to contraceptive care. Samantha recommends reading The Birth of the Pill and listening to How I Built This More about Samantha Miller Samantha serves as co-Founder and CEO of Cadence OTC, on a mission to increase over-the-counter (OTC) access to safe, effective, affordable contraceptives. She is a small pharma executive leader with more than two decades of experience in strategic partnering, product and technology acquisitions, commercial planning, supply chain, regulatory management, and corporate financing. Samantha started her career as a scientist, and quickly found her passion for building new companies. She has deep entrepreneurial experience having served as chief business officer for pharma start-ups InCarda Therapeutics and Dance Biopharm. She also led business development for mid-market ventures Theravance, Nektar, and Onyx, and values her early training at P&G Pharmaceuticals. She has negotiated and closed more than 50 licensing & partnering agreements with a total aggregate deal value of over $3 billion, and she has led more than fifteen equity financing rounds with total funds raised >$300 million. Samantha holds a BS in biochemistry from the University of California, San Diego, an MSc in microbiology & immunology and an MBA from the University of Rochester.

Every time you take a step, you're creating energy. Sadly, that energy isn't captured and used to power your daily life. But what if it could be? That's exactly what Pavegen is doing. What started as a guy tinkering in his room to make tiles that generate electricity when depressed is now a multimillion dollar startup with flooring installations in more than 30 countries. As you'll hear in this interview with Pavegen CEO Laurence Kemball-Cook, after much trial and error, he invented a light-generating tile which he clandestinely installed in downtown London in the middle of the night to see what would happen. The video he posted online went viral, and the next thing he knew he had a half-million dollar purchase order from a major shopping mall company. That set Laurence off to the races, sometimes quite literally with installations for runners, and now he's overseeing a team of 40 seeking to mass-produce energy-creating tiles for sidewalks, roads, dancefloors, football fields, and more all around the world. And unlike some other types of clean energy, this technology doesn't depend on the sun shining or the wind blowing, but rather just people (or vehicles) passing over. Pavegen's now launched a crowdfunding campaign to fuel its future growth, as it works to create its vision for a more sustainable energy future, literally one step at a time. Discussed in this episode Video promo for Pavegen's crowdfunding campaign TechCrunch video on Pavegen's technology Yahoo Finance on Pavegen Laurence recommends reading The Lean Startup Laurence also recommends the How I Built This episode with Ring founder Jamie Siminoff Laurence is enthused by waterless toilets, like those that Bill Gates is pioneering (more on his partnership with Samsung here) More about Laurence Kemball-Cook Laurence Kemball-Cook is the award-winning founder and CEO of Pavegen Systems, an innovative clean technology company. Pavegen is a flooring technology that instantly converts kinetic energy from footsteps into renewable off-grid energy. This technology has been used across the world and installed in over 150 projects in more than 30 countries. Laurence has partnered with figures such as solar entrpreneur and artist Akon, football legend Pele and will.i.am to promote his clean-tech vision. He has also worked with some of the world's largest companies including Shell, Adidas, Heathrow and Europe's largest shopping centre, Westfield.

You probably already know why coral reefs are so important—after all, they're home to a quarter of all marine life. But do you know about seagrass? Seagrass not only provides habitat for aquatic wildlife, but it accounts for 10% of oceanic carbon storage, despite only taking up less than one percent of the seafloor. It also produces oxygen, cleans the ocean, protects against coastal erosion and more. Sadly, humanity is destroying both coral reefs and seagrass forests, with oceanic warming and acidification taking a major toll, along with pollution and fishing. Because of us, the world's already lost half of all corals and a third of all seagrass just in the past few decades. But what if humanity could be as effective at growing reefs and seagrass as we are at destroying them? Proving that is the goal of Reefgen, a startup pioneering not SaaS (software as a service) business model, but rather RaaS (robots as a service) business model. Reefgen has invented robots that can navigate marine environments with precision and plant baby grass and corals at rates that are orders of magnitude faster than a human could. And there's a business in this RaaS model. Not only are companies that want to pay for eco-offsets willing to pay to robotically plant new reefs and grassbeds, but so do companies that economically depend on vibrant ocean ecosystems for their livelihoods. Reefgen CEO Chris Oakes, a marine biologist turned venture capitalist turned entrepreneur talks about the company's trajectory, its pilot trials in Hawaii, California, Indonesia, and Wales, and how it's going to scale in order to turn the tides for our planet. Discussed in this episode Our past episodes with Coral Vita (coral restoration) and Drone Seed (forest restoration). BBC on Reefgen's seagrass work in Wales. ReefGen was birthed from Good Machines Studio. Reefgen's pending patent application Chefs using seagrass for rice! Chris recommends reading Why Startups Fail and Getting Things Done. More about Chris Oakes Christopher Oakes is a marine biologist who specializes in deep-tech product commercialization and corporate development. Oakes holds a B.A. and M.A. in Biology from Occidental College. Oakes has dedicated his career to molecular tools and diagnostics, robotics, sustainable aquaculture and venture building. As CEO of Reefgen, he is setting the company's vision around mechanizing nearshore planting operations and strategic direction to meet the scale of ecosystem restoration market needs in the face of climate change. During his time at Occidental, Chris worked with the Vantuna Research Group focusing on life history studies of nearshore marine fishes, marine environmental monitoring, time series analysis and spatial modeling. He also developed laboratory procedures and analytical techniques for morphology studies of gastropods. Former companies and roles include: COO Sustainable Ocean Alliance, VP Product and Market Development NovoNutrients, Development Manager Liquid Robotics, Regional Manager Laboratory Corporation of America, and Director of Strategic Alliances and Venture Portfolio at Deep Science Ventures. Chris is also a long-time board member and R&D chair at the non-profit Marine Applied Research and Exploration (MARE).

Maxime Sigouin was on the verge of homelessness, surviving on free meals from his local food bank. After getting laid off from work and having only about $30 in his bank account, Maxime struggled to figure out how he could afford to survive, let alone try to help his partner as she endured her own mentally and financially taxing fight with cancer. The answer, it turned out, was helping others. A vegan athlete, Maxime knew the secrets of how to lose fat and gain muscle, and he figured he could create a business to sell that coveted information to others. As you'll hear in this interview, Maxime made more than $10,000 that first month of being a virtual food and fitness coach, and has since grown his company, Fit Vegan Coaching, into a seven-figure company, acquiring competitors along the way. Today, Maxime has helped more than 1,000 people improve their lives through healthy plant-based eating, all while massively improving his own financial wellbeing at the same time. In this conversation, we talk about Maxime's journey, and he even gives free advice on how I can get a six pack. Enjoy! Discussed in this episode Fit Vegan Coaching has free 14-day trial Maxime was highly influenced by watching Forks Over Knives Maxime works with vegan bodybuilder Brian Turner Maxime wants to see more whole food plant-based meal delivery services like Whole Harvest Our past episodes with influencers Toni Okamoto (Plant-Based on a Budget) and Colleen Patrick-Goudreau (Joyful Vegan) More about Maxime Sigouin Maxime Sigouin is a highly accomplished fitness coach, entrepreneur, and athlete. He is the founder of Fit Vegan Coaching, a company dedicated to helping individuals adopt a healthier lifestyle through plant-based nutrition and exercise. With over 10 years of experience in the fitness industry, Maxime has helped over 650 vegans successfully transition to a healthier way of living and has become a respected leader in the health and wellness community.In addition to his coaching and business ventures, Maxime is a highly accomplished athlete. He has competed in Ironman and Spartan races, as well as cycling events to raise money for cancer research.These achievements demonstrate his dedication to living a healthy and active lifestyle, and inspire others to do the same. Maxime's passion for fitness and commitment to promoting a vegan lifestyle have earned him a reputation as a leading voice in the health and wellness industry. He offers a range of services through Fit Vegan Coaching, including one-on-one coaching, online courses, and community support, to help individuals reach their fitness goals. He also owns several fitness businesses that offer comprehensive health and wellness programs, including nutrition and exercise, to help people live their best lives.With a mission to help 1 million people by 2050, Maxime is dedicated to spreading the message of plant-based nutrition and exercise as the key to leading a healthy and fulfilling lif

Did you know that nearly 10 percent of all CO2 emissions come from the creation of cement alone? That's more than from all aviation! We rarely think about cement despite the fact that our society would literally collapse without it. Roads, bridges, buildings, and more all depend on this material that's so ubiquitous we barely even notice it. In fact, concrete is by far the heaviest part of humanity's footprint on the planet, and today all the materials we've built with it are heavier than the weight of all living beings on the earth. In other words, the carbon intensity of cement production is a big deal. In this episode, we talk with Sublime Systems co-founder Leah Ellis about her effort to decarbonize cement production for which she's already raised $50 million. As you'll hear, rather than heating up limestone to hellish temperatures to make cement—the currently dominant method—Sublime harnesses the power of electro-chemistry to convert calcium-bearing rocks into cement at room temperature, thereby slashing emissions. Already Sublime has built a $10 million pilot plant demonstrating the viability of its technology and it plans to make its commercial debut within 2023. Next step: build a full scale commercial factory that can really start making the dent in the climate crisis that Leah is seeking to make. Discussed in this episode The Romans were pretty good at making cement! Sublime Systems raised a $40 million Series A round in 2023 Patent applications from Sublime Systems CNBC on Leah's work with Sublime Systems More about Leah Ellis Leah Ellis is the CEO and co-founder of Sublime Systems, a company that aims to revolutionize cement production through its breakthrough low-carbon process. With a pilot plant in Somerville, Massachusetts capable of producing 100 tons of decarbonized cement annually, Sublime recently secured a $40 million series A funding to drive growth. Leah and her co-founder, Yet-Ming Chiang, developed the technology while she was an NSERC/Banting Postdoctoral Fellow at the MIT Department of Materials Science and Engineering. Leah holds a PhD in chemistry from Dalhousie University, where she worked with Professor Jeff Dahn on lithium-ion battery optimization in partnership with 3M and Tesla. Leah was named among MIT Technology Review's 35 Innovators under 35 and is among the World Economic Forum's Technology Pioneers.

Nearly all startups fail. Often even founders with a successful exit under their belts have stories of entrepreneurial strikeouts prior to or after their home run. But every once in while there's a founder who seems to have the Midas touch who just keeps winning. No, I'm not talking here about Elon Musk. Rather, I'm talking about Yves Potvin. The classically trained chef pioneered the plant-based meat movement, founding Yves Veggie Cuisine in the 1980s, which was acquired for $35 million by natural foods giant Hain Celestial. One successful exit is rare, but Yves went on to then found Gardein, which brought alt-meat to even higher heights and was eventually acquired by Pinnacle Foods for $175 million. Rather than resting on his laurels and retiring into the Alt-Meat Hall of Fame (which if it existed he'd certainly be in it!), today Yves is betting that entrepreneurial lightning will strike a third time. He's just launched a new brand called Konscious Foods which aims to bring fish-free seafood to the masses, starting with sushi and other Japanese delights. Rather than relying on extruded plant protein isolates—the core of Gardein's products, along with most other alt-meats—Konscious is using whole vegetables like tomatoes, carrots, eggplant, and konjac as its core seafood replacers. But Konscious' frozen sushi, poke bowls, and onigiri don't taste like vegetable rolls. Rather, since Konscious acquired the IP of the defunct alt-seafood company Ocean Hugger Foods, the vegetables are prepared in such a way as to give the feel and taste of products like tuna, crab, and so on. Already they're in Sprouts and Whole Foods (see their frozen sections), and you can even get sushi made at the Whole Foods sushi counter with their fish-free fish product. In this interview, Yves and I talk about his life, success, struggles along the way, and lessons he's learned during his multi-decade career seeking to replace animals in the food system with healthier, more humane, and more sustainable options. Discussed in this episode You can see Konscious' products here. Konscious Foods recently raised $26 million in venture capital. Konscious Foods acquired Ocean Hugger Foods' intellectual property. Yves previously founded both Yves Veggie Cuisine (acquired by Hain Celestial) and Gardein (acquired by Pinnacle, and now owned by ConAgra). Yves worked on Gardein with Tal Ronen, who later founded Crossroads Kitchen. Paul saw Quorn's vegan chicken sold at KFC UK at price parity with conventional chicken. Yves recommends reading Shoe Dog, Steve Jobs, and books by Brian Tracy. More about Yves Potvin Yves Potvin has dedicated his culinary career to creating healthy, tasty, convenient foods that can now be found in institutions across North America. In 2017, Yves bought Pacific Institute of Culinary Arts in Vancouver, and he is excited about training the next generation of chefs while infusing nutrition studies, sustainable practices and new technologies into the curriculum. Trained as a classical French chef, Yves successfully built two health-focused food companies. His first, Yves Veggie Cuisine, grew to become the largest refrigerated meat-alternative producer in North America. It was sold to the Hain Celestial Group in 2001. Yves then founded Garden Protein International in 2003 to create a meatless product line called Gardein, which redefined the plant protein category and became a game changer in this fast-growing segment. Gardein received many awards including Better Homes & Gardens' Best New Product Award 2014, Canadian Grand Prix Award (four years in a row), and the National Restaurant Association's 2014 Food and Beverage Innovation Award. Yves is now the founder and president of Konscious Foods, offering consumers with conscious and convenient plant-based seafood. Yves has been recognized for his career achievements, receiving the BC Food Processors Innovation Award in 2014, Mercy for Animals Innovative Business Award 2014, BC Export Award 2014 for Sustainability, and Canada's Top 40 under 40 Award from Financial Post magazine. Yves served on the UBC Faculty of Land and Food Systems Advisory Board from 2007-2018, and on the BC Ministry of Agriculture Board of Advisors.

A big part of what keeps you alive—among other things—is nitrogen. The plants you eat need it to grow, so for centuries farmers have been applying it to soil to make their acreage more productive. Prior to the 20th century, nitrogen fertilizer used to come from animal feces, blood, and bones—which is still common in organic agriculture today—but most row crops these days are fertilized with human-made nitrogen, produced by a high-energy reaction known as the Haber–Bosch process. (Or if you take Fritz Haber's view of things rather than Carl Bosch's, you might just call it the Haber process.) The creation of synthetic nitrogen is a big reason we can feed eight billion humans today, since it enables us to produce a lot more food from the same acre of land. But, there's much to be desired about how we fertilize crops today. Not only is it highly energy-intensive to fix nitrogen from the air and turn it into something bioavailable to plants, but the application of all that nitrogen also creates major runoff pollution and air emissions problems from our farms. But what if, instead of doing the hard work of turning nitrogen into ammonia ourselves, we could simply coax soil microbes to do it for us? That's what a startup founded in 2011 called Pivot Bio is doing. They've gene-edited microbes to restore their natural ability to convert atmospheric nitrogen and deliver it to crops by adhering to the roots of the plants. These nitrogen-fixing microbes are applied either in the furrow at planting or directly on the seed before planting, forging a symbiotic relationship that allows the plant to thrive with less synthetic nitrogen. And we've got Pivot Bio's president and chief operating officer Lisa Nunez Safarian on the show to talk all about it. Nitrogen, it turns out, is very big business, with the global fertilizer business nearly $200 billion in value. As you'll hear, Pivot Bio has raised a whopping $600 million-plus from venture investors with a valuation nearing $2 billion—or one percent of the entire global fertilizer industry. Lisa tells us in this conversation that Pivot's microbes were used on three million cropland acres in 2022, reducing the need for a huge amount of synthetic fertilizer, and generating about $50 million in 2022 revenue for Pivot Bio. Even if you don't know much about agriculture, I promise this conversation is a comprehensible and riveting one that showcases the potential for biotechnology to slow climate change, clean up the environment, and produce more food with fewer resources. Discussed in this episode Lisa and Paul both endorse The Alchemy of Air by Thomas Hager. Lisa recommends reading The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek as well as The Five Dysfunctions of a Team and The Advantage (both by Patrick M. Lencioni). Paul recommends Resetting the Table by Rob Paarlberg, who we had on this show! More about Lisa Nunez Safarian Lisa Nunez Safarian leads commercial, manufacturing, and product development at Pivot Bio. Dedicating her career to advancing agriculture and helping farmers achieve better outcomes, Lisa oversees the day-to-day operations to ensure we are meeting the nitrogen needs of our customers. Prior to joining Pivot Bio, Lisa held several leadership positions at Bayer and Monsanto. Most recently, she served as President, Crop Science North America for Bayer where she launched innovative technologies and go-to-market strategies that grew the business. Before this role, Lisa served as Vice President, North America for Monsanto where she was responsible for strategy, execution, and commercial transformation of the $12B U.S., Canada, and Latin America North seeds, traits, licensing and crop protection businesses.

One day, while walking through the park and looking at all the leaves on the ground, Mira Nameth had a thought: what could she make with all these leaves? Little did she know that her momentary thought experiment would lead her down an entirely new path in life. The lifelong vegetarian had a keen interest in design and materials, and she wanted to do something good for the world. Already aware of how much environmental and animal welfare harm the leather industry creates, Mira began working to bring a new kind of leather into the world; leather she calls Treekind. After getting a grant from the UK government, Mira's new company Biophilica was born. Converting leaves and even agricultural byproducts into a plastic-free alt-leather, Biophilica's material creation process uses less than 1 percent of the water needed to make cow-based leather, all while being both animal-free and petrochemical free, too. Founded in 2019, her company's gone on to raise seven figures, hire more than a dozen people, and start selling Treekind in the high-end watch market, where you can now own a wristband that looks like leather, but was really made from leaves. It's a fascinating and inspirational story that will "leaf" you wanting to know more! Discussed in this episode Biophilica got its start at an accelerator called Central Research Laboratory Their first grant came from Innovate UK They also went through the Fashion for Good accelerator, which became an investor of Biophilica's Sustainable Ventures and Rhapsody Ventures Partners also invested in the company Biophillica's first commercialized product is an alt-leather watch from ID Genève Biophillica's first patent was granted in 2023 Mira's father Ronald Nameth made a short documentary called Andy Warhol's Exploding Plastic Inevitable Mira's been influenced by Socrates' view of beauty and Kant's categorical imperative Our past episodes on bioplastics, such as what TIPA is doing in Israel More about Mira Nameth Mira Nameth worked as an art and creative director at digital agencies in New York and London for 15 years. In 2013, she had her daughter Nora, which changed her perspective and focus. Becoming acutely aware of the need for action against climate change, waste problems, and usage of concerning chemicals in materials, Mira started developing what was to become Treekind at the Design Master's Programme at the Royal College of Art and subsequently founded Biophilica.

Tuna are like the tigers of the ocean: apex predators essential for oceanic health. And just like with tigers, humanity has been waging an unprovoked war on tuna, causing their numbers to plummet in recent decades. They may not be furry, but these finned beasts still need help, and help them is exactly what Impact Food is seeking to do. Founded in 2021 by a few recent UC-Berkely grads interested in doing something good for the world, the company has embarked on a journey to recreate whole muscle seafood without the fish. In fact, their CEO, Kelly Pan, is so interested in doing good in the world that she's a regular listener of this very show. So when I met Kelly at the Reducetarian conference in May 2022, I knew I'd be cheering her on, and I'm very glad to have her as a guest on this episode. Impact Food has now raised about $1 million in venture backing, gotten onto menus in California, including Pokeworks—the largest poke chain in the US—and is now raising a seed round to bring their whole muscle alt-tuna to thousands of menus nationwide. Kelly tells her tale in this episode, including her past entrepreneurial endeavors and what she's seeking to accomplish now. I think you'll be impressed! Discussed in this episode: Impact Food was born out of the UC-Berkeley Alt-Meat Lab. Impact Food then moved to KitchenTown in San Mateo, Calif. Paul's blog on how food waste alters meat demand. Kelly recommends the book Delivering Happiness. More about Kelly Pan Kelly Pan is the Co-Founder & CEO of Impact Food. She is a foodie turned entrepreneur on a mission to build a more sustainable and resilient food system. With a degree from UC Berkeley-Haas School of Business, Kelly has led multiple interdisciplinary teams and launched impact-driven projects, including a skincare brand and a pro-bono consulting organization for small businesses. Through Impact Food, Kelly envisions a future of food that can reliably feed a growing global population while keeping fish in the oceans. She and her team are leveraging plants and biotechnology to create the most delicious and nutritious whole cut seafood alternatives. She is excited to bring tasty and accessible Impact Food to the masses.