The Impact Untangled Podcast

Renat Heuberger has been engaged as a social entrepreneur in the fields of sustainability, climate change and renewable energies since 1999. He is the CEO and co-founder of South Pole, a leading provider of global sustainability solutions. South Pole helps realise deep decarbonisation pathways across industries, based on a thorough understanding of climate risks and opportunities in specific sectors, as well as the highest emission reduction standards. Their scope includes developing carbon offset projects and building partnerships with business, governments and civil society,The vision of South Pole is climate action for all and accelerating the transition to a climate smart society. South Pole was founded in 2006 in Zurich. Today it has 18 global offices and clients in over 20 countries. To date, South Pole has mobilised climate-finance for over 700 projects in emission reductions, renewable energy, energy efficiency and sustainable land-use.

 In This Episode

•     Introduction  [1:40]

Episode Links

South Pole Website

Renat Heuberger - LinkedIn

Renat Heuberger - Twitter

IPCC: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

Project Drawdown

Global Footprint Network

2-Degrees Investing Initiative: Aligning financial markets with climate goals

Al Gore’s Website

Bertrand Piccard & 1000 Profitable Solutions to Solve Climate Change

Definition of Blue Economy

Today on the podcast we have the CEO and co-founder of Yova, Tillmann Lang. Yova is a leading impact investing platform that enables individuals to invest their money into companies and industries that have a positive impact. Yova exists to create a better Planet Earth through sustainable investments. Yova recognizes that capital allocation is a key way to make a difference in the world, and the platform has appealed to many individuals, even people completely new to investing, who want to make a positive impact with their investments without compromising their investment returns. Investing with Yova goes hand in hand with supporting clean energy and equal rights. Yova appeals to many customers because it is also actively excluding investments in companies that fuel worsening climate change or the weapons industry.

Stay tuned to hear about Tillmann talk about how Yova works for the average person, how he co-founded Yova after first gaining experience in management consulting, and the books that most shaped his thinking. Tillmann also talks about what he would recommend people do with their personal finances during the current Covid-19 crisis period. 

 In This Episode

•     Introduction of Yova [0:38]

Episode Links

Yova Website

What You Do Is Who You Are: How to Create Your Business Culture 

The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses 

Lean UX: Applying Lean Principles to Improve User Experience

Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It...and Why the Rest Don't

Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies

Masters of Scale Podcast

Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?

23 Things They Don’t Tell you about Capitalism

www.impactuntangled.com

www.impactcareers.ch

This episode explores edible insects! You may have heard of the Swiss company Essento. Essento is the Swiss-based pioneer in foods based on edible insects. Through Essento, you can find insect snacks, insect protein bars, insect flour and more. As crazy it might sound to some, their vision is to establish insects as normal foods on European plates. Edible insects have the potential to make your diet more diverse, sustainable and nutritious. Therefore, Essento establishes insects as an alternative protein source with a positive impact on you, your health, and our planet.

Melchior Füglistaller, Head of Marketing & Sales for Essento, joins the Impact Untangled show today. Melchior is committed to pushing forward the sustainable food revolution in order to create value for people and the planet. Being part of the board at Essento and having studied Business Management with a strong focus on Entrepreneurship/organizational design and sustainability, he is eager to have a real impact at Essento.  

Melchior talks about Essento’s most successful products. People are slowly starting to get over their fear of eating bugs. It actually wasn’t hard to convince Swiss supermarkets to carry their products; Essento accomplished bringing an extremely innovative product into stores. Melchior says it is difficult for your food product to have a real impact in Switzerland unless you make it into a large supermarket.

Melchior also speaks about Essento’s partnership with a famous German burger company. The burger will be launching in sixty restaurants in Germany. Melchior says to understand what your partner wants and how you can add value, you need to make sure you know how you are going to fit into the partnership. Are you going to be able to meet their expectations?

Essento likes to learn by trial and error. They try this in terms of performance marketing and digital marketing. Each time they try something new, they are getting closer to understanding their customers. Stay tuned to hear Melchior talk about recruiting for talent at Essento, lobbying for insect consumption in Switzerland, and providing advice for people who are interested in entering startups in the impact space.

 In This Episode

•     What inspired the creation of Essento [2:30]

Episode Links

Email: [email protected]

Essento Website

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

Melchior Füglistaller LinkedIn

Coop Supermarket Products

Julia Devecchi is the founder of Happy Bites in Switzerland. [Mid-Feb 2020 UPDATE: Happy Bites has changed its name to Naanu. https://mynaanu.com/about] 

Julia founded Happy Bites at only 24 years old in April 2019. Happy Bites believes in empowering vegans. How? Well, vegans often suffer from nutritional deficiencies. Happy Bites helps alleviate this problem by providing nutritional supplements. These supplements come in the form of delicious gluten free cookies. The cookies contain sufficient daily amounts of many vitamins - like Vitamin B12, Vitamin D, Omega 3 and these cookies are also a high source of Calcium, Iron and Zinc.You can find her cookies on https://happybites.co/

or https://mynaanu.com/

On this episode, Julia talks about her journey from her studies at university, living abroad, working at Tesla, attending start-up events in Switzerland, to eventually creating and founding her own food start-up. 

Julia is driven to ensure that vegans like herself get enough nutrition in the form of delicious cookies, “My vision to save those who save our planet began and I believe it has guided all decisions so far. I formed a diverse and inclusive team with people from all sorts of backgrounds and think of our customers in every step of the way. We want natural ingredients, sustainable packaging, integrating otherwise wasted food sources, no animal products or products that could affect animals in any way. We want a low carbon footprint and essentially to save the planet.” Julia also talks about the start-up scene in Switzerland and states, “We are at a very good place to be very entrepreneurial in Switzerland.”

I hope you enjoy this episode!

Introduction [0:55] - Julia Introduces herself  [1:23] - Julia talks about the inspiration behind Happy Bites in Switzerland  [2:00] - The Decision to Go Vegan [3:00] - A Day in the Life of a Founder [5:23 ]- Finding Customers [7:52] - Founder Institute: World’s Largest pre-seed startup accelerator [11:15] - Regulations to Sell Food in Switzerland  [12:03] - Finding a food advisor [15:26] - Finding the right team [18:39] - Reaching out to new contacts [19:21] - Working at Tesla [22:44] - Experience at University and why she would study something different [23:28] - Start-up weekend  [25:54] - Experience Living Abroad [30:21] - Other Impact Ideas to Work on [33:23] - Recommendations of books and podcasts [34:34] - Impact Events in Switzerland [37:49] - Favorite Swiss Products [40:05] - DasProvisorium in Zurich - Coworking Foodspace Accelerator [40:28] - What does a successful career mean to you [41:09] 

Happy Bites

Naanu

Founder Institute: World’s Largest Pre-seed startup Accelerator

Venture Kick

Startup Weekend in Switzerland

Emerge Conference at Oxford University

Guilty Feminists - Comedy Podcast

Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong about the World - and Why Things are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling

The Lean Canvas by Eric Ries

Blitzscaling: The Lightning - Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies by Reid Hoffman

Enactus Organization

DasProvisorium Zurich - Coworking Foodspace Accelerator

FoodHack.ch

Julia Devecchi LinkedIn

www.impactuntangled.com

www.impactcareers.ch

Our guest on this episode is Patrick Stadler. Patrick is the definition of a social and charity entrepreneur. Currently, Patrick is the co-founder and the board chair of the Give-Well-incubated charity New Incentives. New Incentives is a nonprofit dedicated to conditional cash transfers. Conditional cash transfers or CCTs are small amounts of money that is given to those in need if they meet certain benchmarks related to education and health. In addition, Patrick mentors startups incubated by Charity Entrepreneurship, as well as develops the curriculum and content of their upcoming incubation program and publishes articles on starting organizations from scratch. On the side, Patrick is also working on a Swiss platform called MindfulMoney.ch, which offers free advice on how to invest responsibly. This is really a great resource for regular people in Switzerland who want to invest their money responsibly into impact related investments. Before all this, he was a political advisor for Switzerland’s economic development agency where he participated in the negotiations on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. He also worked on strategic communications in the context of peacebuilding and mediation at the United Nations Department of Political Affairs in New York. 

Patrick was not always a risk-taker and still found himself working as a charity entrepreneur. He shares how he is actually an extremely risk-averse individual:

“I'm quite risk averse personally, so I slowly got into this like a frog in boiling water...If you think about it...the risks are not that high….financial risk, you can get another job if your charity fails, you have your safety network through friends and family, you have your safety network if you're living in Switzerland by the state. There's various options that you have so you can take some justified risks. Basically you overrate it psychologically, but the actual risk is much lower.”

• Introduction [0:38]

Episode Links

• The United Nations

Today we are joined by Alexandra Pastollnigg, the founder of Fair Voyage. Fair Voyage makes sustainable travel easy. Originally from Austria, Alex lives in Switzerland and travels extensively in Africa both in her capacity as the founder of Fair Voyage and for pleasure. She is a Board member of the International Mountain Explorers Connection, a non-profit organization committed to improving the working conditions of the porters on Mount Kilimanjaro through the Kilimanjaro Porters Assistance Project (KPAP). Prior to venturing into social entrepreneurship, Alexandra gained over 12 years of experience in the banking industry, most recently as Director of Mergers & Acquisitions. In between, she also cycled from Cairo to Cape Town, all the way through Africa. Alex started off in banking and was called to the social entrepreneur world by chance. As Alex considered a career change that would make her work more meaningful, she experienced firsthand the exploitation that local people often face in the tourism industry. While climbing Kilimanjaro, Alex realized that organizations that claimed to be sustainable or ethical were simply "green-washing" their practices. Frustratingly, it isn't very easy for travelers to discern what companies are legitimately sustainable in the tourism industry and which simply market themselves as such. Alex saw an opportunity. She wanted to ensure that travelers could be sure they are putting their money into sustainable practices, and Fair Voyage was born. 

Alex explains that her journey was not simple; in her first start-up year, it was challenging to find the right people to work with, and she faced burnout. This taught Alex valuable lessons. In the start-up space, you have to be very mindful of who you fill your team with and understand that they are many soft skills that go into the work. Things like communication and working with people are just as important as being financially savvy. 

For recent graduates and others interested in the impact start-up space, Alex offered some advice. If you have already found your purpose or the issues that you are going to try and solve, you don't have to waste time in another career. If you aren't sure initially what your mission will be, look for a good company with mentors and coaches who you can learn from. Join a team that is already working on something aligned with your mission. If you can't find a company that is doing what you are interested in, start one! Alex, however, cautions against being an entrepreneur for the sake of being an entrepreneur, unless you are incredibly mission-driven, you may not find the work sustainable. 

Last, Alex offers up a few more nuggets of wisdom and information about what her next project may be. She reminds us that we need more than just understanding of sustainable practices in this work, we also need engineers, software developers and folks with other skills that may not initially seem transferable but are essential to making change happen. 

• Alex’s Introduction [1:42]

• Fair Voyage 

You are listening to the Impact Untangled Podcast where we make it easy to understand Impact Careers. The Impact Untangled Podcast is brought to you by www.impactcareers.ch 

We interview remarkable individuals in Switzerland making a positive impact on communities through their careers whether it be in combating climate change, fostering local community development, enabling sustainable investing, encouraging sustainable travel, or even just working for companies whose vision it is to create a better and more sustainable world for everyone to live in. There are really limitless ways to make an impact with one’s career today.