🌱If you want to take part, SowOneGoodSeed is where you can start.

Find impact work happening in your community, or list your own: https://sowonegoodseed.com/

Steve Cinelli asks every founder he mentors the same question: you're raising money to get twelve months out, but what does your company look like five years from now? And very few can answer it.

As a veteran banker, Steve is now building Renaissance Park, with around 20 companies in deal talks and conversations running through Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. He explains why market tailwinds, positioning, and 10- to 30-year frameworks beat quarterly thinking. Then he opens up about his two upcoming books and the inversion mantra behind everything he builds.

"Short-termism, as I call it, is problematic because it doesn't create true solutions as far as we want them. And so Renaissance and the ecosystem and nature are a long-term approach, a legacy approach." - Steven Cinelli

🚀 Key Takeaways:

Picture year five before you build: Few founders can describe their company five or six years out, yet without that picture, you might start building a crosswalk when what you wanted was a bridge.

Build in markets already moving your way: Your own work only goes so far, so choose sectors where outside forces, like carbon footprint tracking and material science, are already pushing toward your goals.

Position before you raise: The same product can be worth ten times more depending on how the market categorizes it, so decide your positioning before you set your valuation.

Map what could go sideways: Anticipate financial, demographic, geopolitical, and tech shifts like AI, then build toward a 10-year vision while expecting zigs and zags along the way.

Invert the default: Steve's go-to move is reversing an accepted pattern, like synthetic back to biological, then asking if that creates more jobs, broader wealth, and environmental benefit.

⏳ Chapters:

- Where we left off with Steve Cinelli

- Why Renaissance Park is worth a legacy bet

- The problem with short-term thinking

- The biggest challenges ahead for Renaissance Park

- The question few founders can answer

- How to spot a market tailwind

- Why the same glass sells for $1 or $10

- Two books on food, nature, and paradise

- Where to find Steve and Renaissance Park

🔗 Connect with Steve

Renaissance Park Website: https://renaissanceparkcorp.com

Steven Cinelli on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevencinelli/

🔗 Two ways to join the community

The GrowGood Playbook newsletter, field-tested insights from the impact founders and leaders we interview: https://sowgoodtogrowgood.substack.com/

Find impact work happening in your community, or list your own: https://sowonegoodseed.com/

🎙️ About SowGood to GrowGood: Hosted by John Kane Gonzales, entrepreneur and innovator. We explore how change-makers and innovators are building sustainable systems for a better future, turning ideas into solutions that serve communities.

🌱If you want to take part, SowOneGoodSeed is where you can start.

Find impact work happening in your community, or list your own: https://sowonegoodseed.com/

Steve Cinelli grew twenty acres of industrial hemp. The farming was a bust. The research survived: every use case for a crop shut out of the US market since 1937. Then the harder problem. The material performs, and the industry around it barely exists.

Steve is the founder and chairman of Renaissance Park, a nature-based materials ecosystem. Three decades in banking and private equity came first. In 1999, he co-founded OffRoad Capital and got the SEC to allow online fundraising, twelve years before crowdfunding became law. He is running that same play on hemp, hempcrete, and natural fiber composites.

In this episode, you will hear how to move an institution that resists change, and why the category has to grow before the company can.

"So it's really playing cards to the game that they want to play. They're setting the rules, they're the regulator. Well, can we improve the way the game's played?" - Steven Cinelli

🚀 Key Takeaways:

Read the charter before you pitch: Read the gatekeeper's founding rules before you pitch them, then show how your version delivers the outcome they exist to protect.

Map the process before you automate it: Map every touch point in the existing process by hand before automating it, because technology accelerates whatever workflow you hand it.

Grow the category, then compete in it: Competing for share makes sense in a mature market, but in a category this young, the work is growing the category itself.

Lead with the spec sheet: Lead with performance rather than mission when selling a sustainable alternative because parity on the spec sheet is what moves a buyer.

Decide the leave-behind first: Value that stays in a community requires a plan for who owns the asset at the end, decided before the first job is created.

⏳ Chapters:

- Introduction to Steve Cinelli and Renaissance Park

- Founding OffRoad Capital to digitize private fundraising

- The patterns behind fintech and nature-based materials

- The SEC said you cannot do that

- What finally unlocked FINRA and the SEC

- Why hemp

- Hempcrete, fire resistance, and the cost of rebuilding

- Building an ecosystem instead of a company

- Why build a new industry instead of joining an existing one

- Campuses, ESOPs, and what gets left behind

🔗 Connect with Steve

Renaissance Park Website: https://renaissanceparkcorp.com

Steven Cinelli on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevencinelli/

🔗 Two ways to join the community

The GrowGood Playbook newsletter, field-tested insights from the impact founders and leaders we interview: https://sowgoodtogrowgood.substack.com/

Find impact work happening in your community, or list your own: https://sowonegoodseed.com/

🎙️ About SowGood to GrowGood: Hosted by John Kane Gonzales, entrepreneur and innovator. We explore how change-makers and innovators are building sustainable systems for a better future, turning ideas into solutions that serve communities.

🌱 If this conversation resonated, the GrowGood Playbook goes deeper.

Field-tested insights from every episode: https://sowgoodtogrowgood.substack.com/

A company walks into a meeting claiming zero emissions. Abhinav Kaushal tells them that's not possible. They push back. He shows them the data. Scope 1 is clean. Scope 2 and 3 are not. For the first time, they can see exactly where their impact is coming from.

Abhinav is the founder and CEO of Zero Carbon One, a climate tech platform automating ESG reporting and decarbonization across six continents. In 18 months, he bootstrapped a team of 27 and reached nearly $500K in annual revenue. This conversation is about what happens when awareness finally becomes action.

"You cannot manage what you cannot measure. For the first time they are able to see what is their negative impact on the emission part, which they are denying before we walk into the room." - Abhinav Kaushal

🚀 Key Takeaways:

Visibility precedes action: Most enterprises aren't ignoring their emissions. They genuinely can't see them, and that gap is what Zero Carbon One was built to close.

ESG reporting is a $100B productivity problem: Large enterprises spend nearly $100 billion annually on compliance because the process is broken, Excel-driven, and scattered across too many consultants.

Proof unlocks revenue, not just credibility: A jaggery cup company grew 7x not by reducing emissions but by finally having the data to prove what they were already doing right.

Regulation drives behavior more than mission does: The biggest sales friction Abhinav faces isn't skepticism. It's procrastination, because without regulatory urgency, decisions get deferred.

Bootstrapping preserves vision: Abhinav chose not to raise VC funding specifically to stay agile enough to follow what customers actually needed rather than what investors projected.

⏳ Chapters:

00:00 Introduction to Abhinav Kaushal and Zero Carbon One

05:32 What Zero Carbon One does and how it works

08:34 Hard to abate sectors and why they matter

13:36 Three ways enterprises capture their emissions data

19:03 Where AI fits into ESG reporting and decarbonization

26:39 Climate change as a slow pandemic

32:05 The jaggery cup company that grew 7x

46:38 The biggest challenge to growing Zero Carbon One

1:01:19 Why Abhinav chose not to take VC funding

1:13:46 Why everyone should care about this problem

🔗 Connect with Abhinav

Website: https://zerocarbon.one/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abhinav-kaushal-500global/

🔗 Resources Mentioned

Promo Code: Use code SOWGOODTOGROWGOOD for a discount on the Zero Carbon One platform.

To redeem, email [email protected] with SOWGOODTOGROWGOOD as your subject line and include your requirement. Their team will take it from there.

🎙️ About SowGood to GrowGood: Hosted by John Kane Gonzales, entrepreneur and innovator. We explore how change-makers and innovators are building sustainable systems for a better future, turning ideas into scalable impact.

🌱If this conversation resonated, the GrowGood Playbook goes deeper.

Field-tested insights from every episode: https://sowgoodtogrowgood.substack.com/

A chemical manufacturer was spending $5 million a year just to haul contaminated water off-site. Tanker trucks in, tanker trucks out — every single day. International companies had tried to fix it. They couldn't. Then IX Water came in and cut the cost from $3–5 per gallon to $0.25 per gallon, while giving the water back.

That's not a product pitch. That's what happens when a 9-time founder spends 10 years turning national lab science into something that actually works in the field. In this episode, Grizz breaks down how IX Water commercialized breakthrough water treatment technology, why green only sticks when there's money in it, and what he believes companies actually owe the world.

"Persistence is the key thing. If you know you have a product people want and it works, everything else can be solved." - John "Grizz" Deal

🚀 Key Takeaways:

- Money is the only universal lever for green adoption: Incentives — saving or making money — override resistance to change every time.

- Science and product are not the same thing: Going from national lab patent to field-ready product took IX Water 10 years.

- First customers are desperate, not ideal: Early adopters get you credibility. They rarely become recurring revenue.

- Wrong market focus is expensive: IX Water wasted years chasing oil and gas — an industry that only buys from catalogs.

- Persistence is non-negotiable: Capital, team, and distribution can all be solved. Quitting can't be undone.

⏳ Chapters:

00:00 Introduction

01:24 Who is Grizz and why water?

03:43 How to get people to implement change

08:32 His conversation with his sister that changed everything

12:30 Explaining industrial water treatment to anyone

20:35 Who actually buys IX Water and how to find them

25:59 The $5M case study where giants walked away

35:09 How IX Water finds customers using public permits

40:15 The bottlenecks nobody talks about when scaling deep tech

46:34 How to shorten the gap from lab to market

48:53 The one thing that would change everything for IX Water right now

50:43 What nine startups actually teach you about building

53:50 Where IX Water is headed and why Grizz already

🔗 Connect with Grizz

Website: https://ixwater.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/coloradogrizz

🔗 Resources Mentioned

Invest in IX Water: https://startengine.com/ix-water

🎙️ About SowGood to GrowGood: Hosted by John Kane Gonzales, entrepreneur and innovator. We explore how change-makers and innovators are building sustainable systems for a better future, turning ideas into scalable impact.

Teachers in affluent schools spend $600 of their own money every year on classroom supplies. In high-poverty schools, teachers spend double that. Something's fundamentally broken in how we fund education—and Jessica Thorne spent 14 years learning exactly where those cracks are.

After working across school districts, state legislatures, and education policy, she joined DonorsChoose as Vice President of Government Partnerships. The platform has channeled $1.8 billion to teachers over 25 years, and now Jessica's working to make it permanent government infrastructure—embedding DonorsChoose into state education budgets in Utah, Hawaii, Nevada, and Delaware, proving that mission-driven organizations can become essential, not optional.

"Teachers are the future of this country and they are taking care of our children every day and they bear this massive responsibility. I think the least we can do is let them kind of guide the way." - Jessica Thorne

🚀 Key Takeaways:

Transparency builds trust faster than polish: DonorsChoose shows every item, every price, every donor—making the platform trustworthy enough for government partnerships worth millions.

Speed and accuracy matter more than scale: Getting supplies to teachers in 2 weeks versus 18 months made DonorsChoose irreplaceable to states managing COVID relief funds.

Grassroots beats top-down every time: Letting teachers define their own needs creates better outcomes than one-size-fits-all government programs dictating what classrooms should have.

Government partnerships require proof, not promises: Utah, Hawaii, Nevada, and Delaware built DonorsChoose into permanent state budgets because the platform delivered measurable, fast results.

Fighting for funding never stops, even at $150M: Success doesn't end the hustle—donor attention shifts, priorities change, and mission-driven organizations must constantly innovate to sustain impact.

⏳ Chapters:

00:00 Introduction to Jessica Thorne and DonorsChoose

01:36 How personal school experiences shaped her mission

05:18 What equity means in education and why it matters

09:12 Breaking into government funding and policy work

15:34 Moving from schools to policy and legislation

19:37 How DonorsChoose works and why teachers trust it

24:42 Why DonorsChoose exists when government could do this work

27:28 Government partnerships during COVID-19 crisis

33:24 Building trust through transparency and operational excellence

46:25 Reaching 90% of US schools and raising $150M annually

55:32 Using platform data to inform state education policy

1:02:26 Lessons on grassroots funding versus top-down mandates

🔗 Connect with Jessica Thorne

Website: https://www.donorschoose.org

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-thorne

🔗Resources Mentioned

Support a teacher or get funded: Visit https://www.donorschoose.org to get involved

DonorsChoose on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/donorschoose/

Subscribe to the GrowGood Playbook — field-tested insights from every episode, distilled into actionable strategies: https://sowgoodtogrowgood.substack.com/

🎙️ About SowGood to GrowGood: Hosted by John Kane Gonzales, entrepreneur and innovator. We explore how change-makers and innovators are building sustainable systems for a better future, turning ideas into scalable impact.

Social entrepreneurs spend years building solutions that could transform communities, only to hear the same answer from venture capitalists: no.

The frustration is real. The question is constant. Why don't VCs invest in social enterprises?

Dr. Luis Martinez has a unique answer because he's lived on both sides. As director of Trinity University's Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, he helped launch 65+ student ventures that raised $60 million in external funding. Now, as Senior Venture Associate at Capital Factory, he works with one of Texas's most active early-stage investors managing 750+ portfolio companies including eight unicorns. In this episode, host John Kane Gonzales gets Luis to pull back the curtain on the hard realities of venture capital, why impact alone isn't enough, and what it actually takes to build a social enterprise that can scale.

"Being a startup founder is impossibly hard. Being a startup founder that is also driven by social impact? Congratulations, you're on advanced mode." - Dr. Luis Martinez

🚀 Key Takeaways:

VCs Aren't Giving You Money, They're Investing for Returns: Venture capitalists promise their investors superior returns (10-20x) in 7-10 years—impact alone isn't enough, it has to come with velocity and scale in a compressed timeline.

Social Impact VCs Exist, But They're Rare: There are funds with social enterprise as their thesis, but performance hasn't always matched traditional VC returns, and some investors handle impact through philanthropy instead of expecting investment returns.

The Three Levels of Fit: Problem-solution fit (does your solution work?), value proposition-customer fit (will someone pay for it?), and product-market fit (can it scale?)—most social entrepreneurs get stuck at level two.

You May Not Be the Founder Who Scales It: The team that takes a company from 0 to 10 is often not the team that takes it from 10 to 100—knowing whether you want to be king or rich is critical.

Stop Planning, Start Building: Go build a real business with real customers and real revenue before seeking VC funding—if you can't convince people you know to invest, you'll never convince institutional investors.

⏳ Chapters:

00:00 Introduction to Luis and Capital Factory

01:40 Luis's journey from organic chemist to VC

05:09 How Trinity launched 65+ student ventures with $60 million raised

08:01 The four components of startup success: idea, capital, mentors, talent

13:01 Why social entrepreneurship flourished in the 2010s

15:07 The nonlinear path from science to entrepreneurship

18:31 English majors launching tech companies at Trinity

21:05 Creating value vs capturing value in entrepreneurship

23:36 The difference between Trinity and Capital Factory

28:44 Why VCs promise superior returns to their investors

32:26 What venture scale actually means: velocity matters

34:49 Why social impact VCs are less common

39:07 The competitive advantage question most founders miss

44:18 The three levels of fit every entrepreneur must master

46:21 What makes a business actually scalable

49:27 Do you want to be king or rich? You can't have both

52:16 Go build a real business first

54:04 What would flip VCs toward social enterprise investing

59:12 Five pieces of practical advice for social entrepreneurs

01:04:43 Where to find Luis

🔗 Connect with Luis Martinez

Website: https://capitalfactory.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drluismartinez/

X: https://x.com/DrLuisEMartinez

🔗 Resources Mentioned

Capital Factory Portfolio: 750+ companies, 8 of Texas's 20 unicorns

https://capitalfactory.com/portfolio/

Subscribe to the GrowGood Playbook — field-tested insights from every episode, distilled into actionable strategies: https://sowgoodtogrowgood.substack.com/

🎙️ About SowGood to GrowGood: Hosted by John Kane Gonzales, entrepreneur and innovator. We explore how change-makers and innovators are building sustainable systems for a better future, turning ideas into scalable impact.

Chris Hewitt had a problem. Every time he tried to explain his local currency project, people's eyes would roll back in their heads. For six years, he watched potential members tune out the moment he started talking about money, economics, and alternative systems.

In this episode, host John Kane Gonzales sits down with Chris, co-founder and executive director of Hudson Valley Current, a 12-year-old nonprofit local currency that's exchanged over 2 million "currents" across 400+ members. You'll hear how a sales coach taught him to stop explaining money and start talking about benefits, why he built a restaurant and magazine to make the currency actually work, and how he transformed from being 95% grant-dependent to generating 60% of revenue through diversified streams.

"We don't really understand exchange. We know that the dollar works to buy us things, to earn us money for our jobs, but we don't as a society understand money in a complex and deep way and how powerful we are with every dollar." - Chris Hewitt

🚀 Key Takeaways:

Stop Explaining, Start Showing Benefits: A sales coach taught Chris to talk about four benefits—innovative, hyper-local, shifts narrative, saves money—instead of explaining economic theory.

Extractive vs Regenerative Economics: The dollar extracts wealth and centralizes it in corporate headquarters, while local currencies regenerate communities by keeping money circulating locally.

Build the Missing Infrastructure: When not enough businesses accepted currents, Chris built a restaurant and magazine that take 100% currents to prove the model works.

Revenue Diversification Takes Time: Hudson Valley Current went from 95% grant-dependent to 60% diversified revenue over 12 years through eight different streams.

Start With What You Have: You can start a local currency with a notebook tracking barters, then scale to software like Cyclos when ready.

⏳ Chapters:

00:00 Introduction to Chris and Hudson Valley Current

01:49 The 2004 conference that sparked the idea

04:33 What is a local currency and how is it legal

06:05 Understanding exchange and how money really works

10:53 Why Chris built Tilda's Kitchen to fix the catch-22

13:52 Why supporting local economies matters

17:38 Regional specialization and the bio-regional economy vision

22:37 The triple bottom line: people, planet, profit

24:58 The sales coach who changed everything

27:09 Extractive economy vs regenerative economy

32:21 From revolutionary to evolutionary leadership

37:45 Revenue diversification: 95% grants to 60% earned income

41:54 Ratcheting your fundraising success

46:10 How mutual credit systems actually work

50:32 Building momentum with the first members

54:33 The marsh ecosystem metaphor for currency flow

59:40 Technology, people, and community building

01:05:29 Proving the model: 40% income in currents

01:12:27 Small gatherings drive currency movement

01:18:55 Why Chris is stepping down as executive director

01:21:22 Staying flexible while avoiding mission drift

01:25:55 It's just money—and it's justice money

🔗 Connect with Chris Hewitt

Website: https://hudsonvalleycurrent.org

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-hewitt-423a691b4/

🔗 Resources Mentioned

Tilda's Kitchen & Market: 630 Broadway, Kingston, NY | https://tildaskitchenandmarket.com

Midtown Lively (Publication): https://midtownlively.org

Subscribe to the GrowGood Playbook — field-tested insights from every episode, distilled into actionable strategies: https://sowgoodtogrowgood.substack.com/

🎙️ About SowGood to GrowGood: Hosted by John Kane Gonzales, entrepreneur and innovator. We explore how change-makers and innovators are building sustainable systems for a better future, turning ideas into scalable impact.

Camille Tagle was living her dream—designing evening wear for luxury fashion brands, seeing her gowns on red carpets.

Then one day, her boss looked at hundreds of fabric samples they'd ordered and said, "I'm not feeling it anymore. Start from scratch." That moment changed everything.

In this episode, host John Kane Gonzales sits down with Camille, Co-Founder of FABSCRAP, to talk about what happens when you can't unsee the waste anymore. You'll hear how she walked away from fashion to build a solution that didn't exist, why thousands of volunteers showed up without her asking, and how she built a financially sustainable nonprofit where brands actually pay for the service.

"There was this need and I had these answers and I had these skills. And so it felt like, why would I not just jump right into this and try to do it sooner than later?" - Camille Tagle

🚀 Key Takeaways:

The Hidden Waste Problem: Fashion's biggest waste happens during design—samples and full rolls thrown out before reaching stores—and most people have no idea.

Community Powered, Not Grant Funded: FABSCRAP mobilized 11,000+ volunteers and generates 64% of revenue from brands paying for services, not donations.

Brands Found Them: All 800+ brand partnerships came inbound—when the solution works, you don't have to convince anyone.

The "Can't Unsee It" Moment: Watching her boss throw away hundreds of fabric samples became impossible to ignore and fuel to build something different.

Naivety as an Asset: Being "young and naive" helped Camille start—knowing the complexity ahead might have stopped her.

⏳ Chapters:

00:00 Introduction to Camille and FABSCRAP

01:48 Camille's journey from fashion designer to textile waste pioneer

04:01 The moment she couldn't unsee the waste

05:14 Making the transition from luxury fashion to nonprofit

07:15 Meeting her co-founder Jessica

07:53 How family reacted to leaving fashion behind

09:07 Why she decided to start FABSCRAP now

12:05 Defining her purpose beyond design

14:43 What sample headers are in the fashion industry

15:34 The commercial textile waste problem no one sees

17:45 How FABSCRAP's fabric recycling service works

19:17 Why brands don't monetize their fabric waste

23:16 Getting fashion brands to sign up for recycling

25:44 The warehouse sorting and volunteer process

29:27 Building 11,000 volunteers without advertising

35:22 Scaling with just 15 employees

38:53 How 800+ brands found FABSCRAP organically

40:15 The revenue model: brands pay for services

44:12 Future plans for scaling FABSCRAP

46:38 What infrastructure FABSCRAP needs to grow

47:55 Challenges in the sustainability space

49:25 Advice for aspiring social entrepreneurs

🔗 Connect with Camille Tagle

Website: https://fabscrap.org

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/camille-diane-tagle-017b00a/

🔗 Resources Mentioned

Volunteer or Shop Fabric: Visit http://fabscrap.org to get involved

FABSCRAP on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fabscrap

Subscribe to the GrowGood Playbook — field-tested insights from every episode, distilled into actionable strategies: https://sowgoodtogrowgood.substack.com/

🎙️ About SowGood to GrowGood: Hosted by John Kane Gonzales, entrepreneur and innovator. We explore how change-makers and innovators are building sustainable systems for a better future, turning ideas into scalable impact.

SowGood to GrowGood spotlights solutions that already work—but most people don't know they exist.

Hosted by John "Kane" Gonzales, this show features founders and operators building alternatives to systems that don't want to change. From water recycling tech to waste-to-energy systems to circular fashion models, we talk to the builders actively rewiring how things work.

Building for impact is hard. You're not just filling a gap—you're introducing better patterns into systems running on old habits, old incentives, and old stories. When people don't see real alternatives, they keep doing what they've always done. This show makes those alternatives visible so they can become the new normal.

Each episode unpacks how founders make it work in the real world: what inspired their work, how they built sustainable operations, and the practical lessons they've learned along the way.

Whether you're scaling a social enterprise, launching a climate company, or seeking inspiration from fellow changemakers, this show is for builders who want to see how others are actually doing it.

New episodes drop twice a month, every Tuesday.

Connect with us:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/109572334/admin/dashboard/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@SowGoodToGrowGood

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