Nobody designs a product for a material made out of potato peels.

Sophie Tuviahu is CEO of Bioplasmar, which makes biodegradable materials from green waste. Before this, she worked in commercial roles at UBQ Materials. When she joined Bioplasmar, the company was selling biodegradable plant pots direct to the horticultural market, a low-end, price-sensitive category where a product costing 2 to 4 times more than standard plastic never wins on a straight comparison. Her fix wasn't a better pot. It was a different business: stop selling a product that degrades and start selling a material that does, supplied to manufacturers as an injection molding or extrusion grade compound.

We discuss:

• Why the plant pot business was a trap even though the material was genuinely better

• The real reason bioplastics get priced out, and it isn't the cost of the raw material

• Why she thinks a good salesperson beats a conference booth almost every time

• Who actually moves first on sustainable materials, and why it's rarely the brand you'd expect

• How Europe's PPWR packaging regulation is about to force new demand for compostable materials, and where the opportunity sits in the supply chain

Sophie's take is direct: it is not a planting pot that degrades, it is a material that degrades, and once you find the right application, the cost difference takes care of itself.

If you're a materials or climate-tech founder pricing against an incumbent commodity, this conversation is full of specific, hard-won lessons on repositioning around your actual value, reading regulation as a demand signal, and choosing your battles in go-to-market.

Most founders protect what's working. Tom Wilford burned his own company down while it was still growing.

Tom is the founder and CEO of Ella, an AI agent for sustainability data, carbon reporting and B Corp certification. For 4 years he ran Future Proof, a working ESG software platform, before deciding at a team retreat in Prague to tear it down and rebuild it from nothing as an AI-native agent. No customer was asking for it. He made the call on instinct a year before the market caught up, and spent 2025 quietly moving every existing customer onto the new platform.

We discuss:

• Why he killed a product that was working, and what convinced him it wouldn't survive
• The moment his team went from "this is bloody scary" to genuinely excited about the rebuild
• Why he prices the agent in days saved, not dollars, and who that's actually written for
• Running two completely different sales motions at once, small B Corp businesses and PE-backed mid-market
• Why he thinks distribution has replaced product as the real competitive moat

Tom's take? "just focus on stuff that is must-haves for businesses and not nice-to-haves."

If you're a bootstrapped climate founder trying to work out whether your product is a want or a need, this conversation is full of specific, hard-won lessons on pivoting, positioning and selling sustainability as a commercial decision, not a mission statement.

Great science doesn't guarantee a market. Nick Sandland spent years finding that out for other people, before he bet his own career on it.

In this episode of The Plucky Bamboo Podcast, Nick Sandland, the commercial lead at Algenesis Labs, talks about what it actually takes to turn deep material science into a business. Algenesis was founded by three UC San Diego professors with a genuinely novel biodegradable polyurethane and no industry experience. Nick joined to build the commercial side from nothing, including the sales pipeline, the manufacturing logistics, and the go-to-market strategy.

Nick explains why footwear became Algenesis's wedge market instead of chasing every industry that could technically use the material, and how a research paper on microplastics, published within weeks of a major New England Journal of Medicine article, unexpectedly turned an abstract sustainability pitch into something people could feel personally.

We discuss:

• Why scientific credibility and commercial viability are two separate problems

• Why off-take agreements aren't the safety net most founders assume

• How the funding bar for materials companies has quietly risen, and what VCs actually mean when they say no

• Why relying on a single manufacturing plant is a bigger risk than founders realise

• Why giving away product converts faster than any pitch deck

Nick's take is straightforward: in industrial materials, there's no way to skip the adoption curve. You win the innovators and early adopters first, and everything else follows from there.

If you're commercialising deep science in a risk-averse, long-cycle industry, this conversation is full of specific, hard-won lessons on positioning, partnerships, and what actually earns trust.

Most founders chase the biggest possible market. Angelo Amicarelli chased the smallest one he could own completely.

In this episode of The Plucky Bamboo Podcast, Angelo Amicarelli, co-founder of FinApp, talks about building a category of one. FinApp uses cosmic ray neutron detection, technology that started as university research into homeland security, to measure water in soil, snow, and crops. There are only three companies in the world doing this. FinApp is one of them.

Angelo explains why he'd rather spend an hour explaining something no one has heard of than compete in a market everyone already understands, and how that choice has shaped everything from FinApp's name to its sales cycle.

We discuss:

• Why FinApp built the technology first and found the market second, and why Angelo wouldn't recommend that path to anyone else

• The reseller partnership that looked perfect and quietly went nowhere

• Why "the technology speaks for itself" has cost Angelo money in two separate companies

• How FinApp's pitch had to fragment across agriculture, meteorology, and disaster monitoring

• What he actually screens for when hiring salespeople for a product with a multi-year sales cycle

Angelo's take is direct: technology only has value once it's tied to a client's specific pain. Without that, even genuinely novel science doesn't sell itself.

If you're building hardware in a technical, long-cycle sustainability market, this conversation is full of specific, hard-earned lessons on positioning, partnerships, and sales.

Bioplastics have existed for over 30 years. After three decades of government grants, investor capital, and charismatic founders, the industry still hasn't produced a genuinely profitable company.

Alexander Blum, founder of Applied Bioplastics, is trying to be the first.

In this episode, Alex breaks down why an industry the world needs has struggled to make money: the gap between scientific leadership and business leadership, a pricing problem that shuts bioplastics out of the markets where plastic actually gets used, and a funding model addicted to grants and capital instead of customers. He also gets into distributed vs. centralised manufacturing, the funding rounds Applied Bioplastics has lost to a pandemic, a crypto crash, and a war, and why "the tech will speak for itself" is the most expensive belief a founder can hold.

Find Alex Blum on LinkedIn and learn more about Applied Bioplastics at applied-bioplastics.com.

———Building a climate or sustainability business and feel like the growth still runs through you?Take the free Growth Diagnostic - 6 minutes to find the biggest bottleneck holding your growth back, and see how you compare to 300+ climate founders: pluckybamboo.com/growth-diagnostic

Climate tech has a communication problem. And it's slowing down the entire industry.

Akhila Kosaraju, co-founder of What If Design, works with deep tech climate companies on design, messaging, and product experience. She's seen brilliant founders with world-changing technology lose deals, confuse buyers, and waste months of development - all because of how they present their work.

In this episode, we dig into why technical founders struggle to talk to business buyers, how to build trust with stakeholders before your product is ready, and what great design actually means beyond logos and pretty websites.

If you're building in the climate space and wondering why your message isn't landing, this episode will be helpful!

———
Building a climate or sustainability business and feel like the growth still runs through you?
Take the free Growth Diagnostic - 6 minutes to find the biggest bottleneck holding your growth back, and see how you compare to 300+ climate founders: pluckybamboo.com/growth-diagnostic
The Plucky Bamboo Podcast: sustainability founders on how they actually grow - demand, sales, and the systems behind it. Hosted by Chris Jones.

Climate action without measurement is guesswork.

In this episode, Gilad Regev explains how Kora is building real-time carbon tracking tools to turn employee behavior into measurable decarbonization.

We explore the gap between intention and action - and why most companies still treat sustainability as a reporting function instead of a strategic lever.

We discuss:

• Why carbon data must be real-time to drive change

• Why many CSOs lack the budget to execute

• How CFOs respond when climate ties to cost savings

• The limits of regulation and top-down policy

• How to engage entire organizations on Scope 3 emissions

Gilad’s perspective is clear: sustainability cannot sit in one department. It must create financial value and organizational engagement - or it won’t scale.

If you’re operating in enterprise climate tech or building tools for corporate decarbonization, this episode offers both strategic and tactical insight.

———
Building a climate or sustainability business and feel like the growth still runs through you?
Take the free Growth Diagnostic - 6 minutes to find the biggest bottleneck holding your growth back, and see how you compare to 300+ climate founders: pluckybamboo.com/growth-diagnostic
The Plucky Bamboo Podcast: sustainability founders on how they actually grow - demand, sales, and the systems behind it. Hosted by Chris Jones.

Sustainability isn’t sustainable without revenue.

In this episode, Helen Zhang shares how she’s building Coffee Elf -a company transforming commercial coffee waste into bio-based materials and cosmetic ingredients.

What started as a kitchen experiment is now evolving into a circular system spanning industrial sourcing, processing, and downstream partnerships.

We discuss:

• Why climate founders must commercialize early

• How to navigate small buyers vs. enterprise procurement teams

• The complexity of building physical infrastructure in climate tech

• The overlooked strategic framework climate startups need

• Why profit and purpose must coexist

Helen’s perspective is clear: you’re not building a charity. You’re building a business and profitability is what allows impact to scale and last.

———
Building a climate or sustainability business and feel like the growth still runs through you?
Take the free Growth Diagnostic - 6 minutes to find the biggest bottleneck holding your growth back, and see how you compare to 300+ climate founders: pluckybamboo.com/growth-diagnostic
The Plucky Bamboo Podcast: sustainability founders on how they actually grow - demand, sales, and the systems behind it. Hosted by Chris Jones.

What does real scale look like in a sustainability business?

For Mallika Reddy, founder of Cancelled Plans, it doesn’t mean producing more.

It means producing differently.

Mallika’s studio transforms industrial waste, from pharmaceutical packaging to billboard misprints, into high-value design pieces. But along the way, she’s had to confront some uncomfortable truths about growth, marketing, and what actually drives adoption.

In this episode, we explore:

• Why “saving the planet” isn’t a strong enough sales message

• The tension between profitability and purpose

• How to pivot without losing your core philosophy

• Why performance marketing failed and what worked instead

• How founder-led storytelling builds credibility in a world of greenwashing

This is an honest conversation about redefining scale, resisting overproduction, and building a sustainability business that can stand commercially, not just morally.

———
Building a climate or sustainability business and feel like the growth still runs through you?
Take the free Growth Diagnostic - 6 minutes to find the biggest bottleneck holding your growth back, and see how you compare to 300+ climate founders: pluckybamboo.com/growth-diagnostic
The Plucky Bamboo Podcast: sustainability founders on how they actually grow - demand, sales, and the systems behind it. Hosted by Chris Jones.

Clean heat is one of the biggest pieces of the climate puzzle - but it won’t scale unless it makes financial sense.

In this episode of The Plucky Bamboo Podcast, I sat down with Jane Melia, Co-Founder and Chief Revenue Officer of Harvest Thermal, to explore what it really takes to bring climate hardware into the mainstream.

Harvest combines heat pumps with thermal storage to deliver low-carbon heating and hot water that cuts emissions by around 90% - while lowering bills and supporting grid flexibility.

But this conversation goes far beyond the technology.

Jane shares:

• Why economics - not emissions - determine whether climate solutions scale

• The reality of product-market fit in climate tech

• Why go-to-market is often harder than building the product

• What founders underestimate about selling into utilities and infrastructure

• The mindset shift required when transitioning from CEO to CRO

• Why hiring the right team is one of the most important decisions a founder makes

This episode is a practical look at scaling sustainability in the real world - where incentives, timing, and trust matter just as much as innovation.

———
Building a climate or sustainability business and feel like the growth still runs through you?
Take the free Growth Diagnostic - 6 minutes to find the biggest bottleneck holding your growth back, and see how you compare to 300+ climate founders: pluckybamboo.com/growth-diagnostic
The Plucky Bamboo Podcast: sustainability founders on how they actually grow - demand, sales, and the systems behind it. Hosted by Chris Jones.