Future Optimist

What would a future look like where wherever you go, you can plug in your car without worrying about who’s getting paid and how? Well it turns out, in addition to the vast hardware infrastructure requirements of electric vehicle charging, there’s a tremendous software need too. To balance power, to accept payments, to supply apartment buildings and more. And someone’s got to build that software. Well that someone is my guest today, Zak Lefevre, CEO of ChargeLab. He’s a Forbes 30 Under 30 Founder who’s raised about $30 million for his company to date, they make software that runs about 80% of the EV chargers out there, so it’s a very cool concept from an extremely smart founder making a difference.

➡️ https://www.chargelab.co/

➡️ https://www.linkedin.com/in/zaklefevre/

➡️ Highlights: https://rosspalmer.com/zak-lefevre

Why should every building be green? Buildings, both commercial and residential, account for about 40% of annual CO2 emissions. It’s an enormously wasteful industry ripe for innovation. But how do we bring about the new era of eco buildings? My guest today is Tommy Linstroth, the CEO of Green Badger, an SaaS platform for automating sustainability. They make it much much easier for construction professionals to build sustainably. It’s a clever approach to an important sector we don’t often think about, oh, and these buildings can dramatically lower your monthly energy costs as well. 

➡️ https://getgreenbadger.com/

➡️ Highlights: https://rosspalmer.com/tommy-linstroth

Tony Selvaggio is a Social Entrepreneur and the Founder of eSmart Recycling, a social enterprise whose primary goal is to recycle old technology to set up computer labs for kids, worldwide. It turns out that all kids need to be competitive in today’s digital world is some Betamax tapes, a few laserdiscs, and a few old paddle’s from the 1972 version of Pong. Alright, maybe it’s not quite that, but the point is that a e-waste is an enormous problem, and tons of viable tech ends up in landfills or collecting dust in ole’ granny’s broom closet, when it could be used to give kids without access to computers a leg up.

➡️ https://www.esmartrecycling.com/

➡️ Highlights: https://rosspalmer.com/tony-selvaggio

Carlos Meza is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Crowd Content, a content creation service that does millions in revenue per year.

Many of you out there are interested in SEO, digital marketing, and how to get more people to look at your s***, well it’s no secret that great content is the key. But making content is a grind, trust me. What if you could have pieces written for you at scale? That’s the idea behind Crowd Content. And more importantly, we’ll talk about Carlos’s journey from leaving finance behind to being caught by the entrepreneurial bug, a bug that in my opinion feels like a mixture between the flu and RSV. Or maybe I’m just sick, who knows. In any case, there’s lots of practical advice and inspiration in today’s episode!

➡️ https://www.crowdcontent.com/

➡️ Highlights: https://rosspalmer.com/carlos-meza

Paige Peters is the founder and CTO of Rapid Radicals, a company that is able to treat wastewater much faster than traditional methods. 

She developed this technology to tackle the massive problem of the over 850 billion gallons of untreated wastewater that go into our lakes, oceans, and rivers each year. 

What’s worse? When it rains, these outdated systems flood and overflow, causing massive damage. She’s built a thriving business solving a problem no one else wanted to solve.

➡️ https://rapidradicals.com/ 

➡️ Highlights: https://rosspalmer.com/paige-peters 

Alexander Olesen is the CEO & Co-Founder of Babylon Micro-Farms Inc. He’s a social entrepreneur, keynote and TEDx speaker, and urban agriculture expert.

Today we talk about how he’s been building a successful business making produce much more sustainable than conventional methods. We get into the ups and downs of social entrepreneurship, and especially why this is such a timely concept for us all getting access to better food.    

➡️https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-olesen-7aa4a16a/

➡️https://babylonmicrofarms.com/

➡️ Highlights: https://rosspalmer.com/alexander-olesen

Masachs Boungou, a recent doctoral graduate of UMass Lowell, is a keynote speaker, Ph.D. holder, and Fulbright Scholar Alumnus.

His childhood was completely upended when his village was ravaged and destroyed, forcing him into exile. He was forced to live in the jungle for a year, facing unimaginable circumstances.

Somehow he never lost faith, educating himself and eventually getting an advanced degree in America. Now he’s a public speaker and author, and his jaw-dropping tale is inspiration for us all.

➡️ https://www.drmasachs.com/

➡️ Highlights: https://rosspalmer.com/masachs-boungou 

Can we get rid of all the plastic in the oceans? 

Like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, 1.6 million square kilometers of plastic trash floating in the Pacific Ocean. 

Some see this never-decomposing trash as one of the biggest problems facing our species, others like Eleonore Eisath see that plastic as a “locked resource” that can be tapped into. 

Her company Beworm is developing a biocatalytic recycling process that decomposes plastic waste into natural raw materials—it’s about as cool as it gets!

➡️ https://www.linkedin.com/in/eleonore-eisath/

➡️ https://www.beworm.org/

➡️ Highlights: https://rosspalmer.com/eleonore-eisath

How do we eradicate extreme rural poverty? What can we do to build up communities? 

Jacob Foss asked this question when travelling in Africa, and his answer was to co-found Agricycle—a brilliant start-up that connects women, smallholders, and youth in East Africa with global markets. 

Don’t know what a smallholder is? I didn’t either, but we’re about to find out! Jacob’s been on Forbes 30 Under 30, he’s received millions in funding for his work, and Agricycle is an official partner of the United Nations FAO. Join us as we talk about taking the road less traveled.

➡️ https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacob-foss-/

➡️ https://agricycleglobal.com/

➡️ Highlights: https://rosspalmer.com/jacob-foss

What if you could program a cell directly to fight cancer? What if you could solve the 7,000 genetic diseases facing our species? This type of science fiction is now a reality, thanks to today’s guests on the Beat the Often Path Podcast. Joining me today are Omar Abudayyeh and Jonathan Gootenberg, creators of the AbuGoot lab at MIT, two people leading the way in gene therapy, gene editing, and CRISPR innovations.

The AbuGoot lab combines natural biological discovery and molecular engineering to develop a suite of new tools for manipulation of DNA, RNA, and cellular states – the cellular engineering toolbox. In short, it doesn’t get more cutting edge than this.

➡️ https://www.abugootlab.org/

➡️ Highlights: https://rosspalmer.com/omar-abudayyeh