Tech and Trees

This time I spoke to Timur Sirman, co-founder of Magnotherm. Magnotherm is a German company that developed a magnetic cooling technology that is vastly more energy-efficient and environmentally friendly than fluid-based cooling systems. By bringing this cooling technology to for example super markets Magnotherm plans to cut the energy usage and emission intensity of cooling. I spoke to Timur about sales, dealing with customers and fundraising. Sit back, listen and learn about Magnotherm from Timur Sirman. Check out Magnotherm:

https://www.magnotherm.com

Reach out to me:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/pascal-mies/

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Hello and welcome to the Tech and Trees podcast. My name is Pascal Mies and today I am starting a new season of Tech and Trees. After leaving Africa I took a little pause to reflect on what I wanted to do next and what I wanted to learn about. However, in the end everything will still be about the questions of how do we build better ClimateTech and how do build more of it faster. The focus is now shifting back to European ClimateTech. I will try and put a stronger focus on DeepTech as well as hands-on-learnings for operators while keeping a balance with the higher level investor interviews. This first interview is with one of the OGs in European ClimateTech: Hampus Jakobson, General Partner and co-founder of the ClimateTech VC Pale Blue Dot. Our conversation spans Hampus’ evening routine, Larry Fink’s overestimation of the ClimateTech opportunity as well as malpractices in the ClimateTech sector. After our call, Hampus apologized for being impossible to steer in a conversation. I think having a creative spirit like him on the pod is simply a guarantee for inspiring content. So sit back and enjoy listening to Hampus Jakobson.

Check out Pale Blue Dot:

https://paleblue.vc

Reach out to me:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/pascal-mies/

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This time I spoke to Jit Bhattacharya, Founder and CEO of the Kenyan electric bus company BasiGo. He is one of those people with whom I do not know where to start asking questions. Jit has spent significant time in Silicon Valley working on battery systems, then moving on to Apple, then building one of the biggest solar business in Africa, moving on to being an investor and now driving his next venture forward: BasiGo. Jit says about himself that he is an intense person and so is this podcast. It’s a mix of lessons on entrepreneurship, African hardware business building and career advice. There is something for everyone. Enjoy.

Reach out to me on Linkedin

https://www.linkedin.com/in/pascal-mies/

Reach out to Jit on Linkedin

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jit-bhattacharya-35a9902/

Check out BasiGo

https://www.basi-go.com

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Having spent the past year on the African continent, I am now in the final stages of this series of African guests. This time I am talking to the economics professor and economic historian Johan Fourie. He is something like the South African Noah Yuval Harari whom most people know for his book Sapiens - A short history of mankind. Johan wrote a book as well called “Our long walk to economic freedom”. In this book he tells the history of human development, the role that economics play for progress and most importantly: he tells this story from a South African perspective. We talk about the importance of innovation and entrepreneurship for development and I get his take as an economist on climate change and AI. I think from time to time it is good to get an academic’s overview of things to complement the views of founders on the ground. Enjoy!

Feel free to reach out to me on Linkedin:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/pascal-mies/

Check out Johan's substack:

https://johanfourie.substack.com

and give his book "Our long walk to economic freedom" a try:

https://www.johanfourie.com/ourlongwalk/

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Hello and welcome to the Tech and Trees Podcast. My name is Pascal Mies and on Tech and Trees I talk to Climate-Tech Founders, Operators, Investors and Academics who get me smarter on how to build better climate-tech companies. 

This time I spoke to Martin Freimüller, Founder of Octavia Carbon - Kenya’s first ever Direct Air Capture Company. Martin is one of the people who have the ability to excite you about a topic through a combination of brain power and charisma - This conversation is a lot about why direct air capture technology - just think of pulling carbon out of the air via big ventilators - is much more suited to be deployed in Kenya than in Europe. There are several reasons: Kenya has abundant renewable energy to power these ventilators, Kenya has the talent to build these machines cost-efficiently and Kenya has the right geographical conditions to store carbon underground for millenia to come. Martin can explain all of that a lot better than I can, so sit back and listen to Martin Freimüller, Founder of Octavia Carbon. Enjoy

Check out Octavia Carbon:

https://www.octaviacarbon.com

Reach out to Martin:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/martin-freimueller/

Reach out to me with feedback and other requests:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/pascal-mies/

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I have started to dive a bit more into the DeepTech-Space and what it takes to build such a venture. Last time, I tried to cover how to start a biotech venture as a business guy. Well, this time I approach the topic from the other side. I want to understand how a deeptech business is run on the science-side. My guest is Leah Bessa, co-founder and chief scientific officer at De Novo Foodlabs. De Novo Foodlabs is researching novel proteins and is about to launch its first product this year. It’s highly secret and I cannot say to much but Leah gave me some insights. 

I tried to understand what are the key metrics and schedules that the scientists stick to and how to align the business with the scientific operations. 

It was relieving for me to hear that Leah is very happy about having her business-oriented co-founder on board. Enjoy!

Reach out to Leah on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leah-bessa-a18664ba/

Check out De Novo FoodLabs: https://denovofoodlabs.com

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Among all the start-ups out there, DeepTech-ventures are the most interesting to me and so I want to make an effort to interview more people who are building something really really hard. As a guy with a business background, I want to understand how to start these type of ventures without having a scientific background.

My guest this time is Tasneem Karodia, co-founder of Mzansi Meat - a biotech start-up that produces cultivated meat - meat grown right in a lab without any animals harmed. She has a business background. So I pick her brain on how to approach building a biotech-firm as someone whose natural environment is not the lab. Enjoy.

https://www.mzansimeat.co

https://www.linkedin.com/in/tasneem-karodia-2852b037/

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 Last time I talked to Romain Diaz Satgana, a venture capitalist who invests in climate-focused companies in Africa. This time I talk to one of the founders who was too good for Romain to pass on and compelled him to invest.. My guest is Jesse Forrester, Founder and CEO of Mazi Mobility. Jesse is building an electric motorcycle company out of Nairobi, Kenya. But he was in South Africa for a couple days and we managed to link up in person. He let’s me in on how Mazi is his path to immortality, his vision of building the premier company in Africa that moves people, data and things and why he would rather focus on hiring technicians than engineers in the early stages of building a hardware company in Africa. Jesse is a force of nature, thoughtful and well-spoken. So sit back and learn about Mazi Mobility.

Reach out to Jesse: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesse-forrester/

Check out Mazi Mobility: https://www.mazimobility.com

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My guest today is Romain Diaz, the founder and managing partner of the climate-tech VC Satgana. In the past year one climate fund after another has been raised in Europe but Satgana is special due to their geographical focus: They invest in Europe and Africa alike. Romain spent several years as an entrepreneur and venture builder on the African continent. He wants to do his part in paving the way for green growth in Africa. However, Africa is big: 54 countries to be precise and not all of them are suitable for foreign investors. Romain walks me through the different criteria that make a country investable and how his fund Satgana bridges Europe and Africa. Enjoy!

Satgana VC: https://www.satgana.com

Romain: https://www.linkedin.com/in/romaindiaz/

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Hello and welcome to the Tech and Trees Podcast - What are the big shifts that technology will bring about on the African continent? I spoke to the most active venture capitalist on the continent about the trends he sees. Zachariah George and his fund “Launch Africa” have made 133 investments across 22 countries over the past 2 ½ years, so he is on top of what is happening. This conversation is less about sustainability and more about the macro-view that a generalist investor has when it comes to Africa. Zach and I spend the first fifteen minutes talking about how he views balance or work-life-integration as he calls it and how he handles being a single father and super-active venture investor at the same time. You get a pretty good sense of Zach’s thinking before we dive into why he is bullish on Africa. So sit back, listen and hopefully become more bullish on Africa as well. 

Launch Africa Ventures:

https://www.launchafrica.vc

Zach's Linkedin:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/zachariahgeorge/?originalSubdomain=za

Zach's Twitter:

https://twitter.com/zach_cpt

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