Bao Podcast

For episode 22 of the Bao Podcast, we welcome Ismaël Ben-Al-Lal. Ismaël is a visionary entrepreneur and innovator who made a name for himself in the world of renewable energy. After he finished his studies at Groep T at the University of Leuven, Ismaël went on to found his own company, Futech, in 2008. Later on he started another company named iLumen. Both companies work around sustainable energy. In addition to this, he’s an investor and consultant. This way he can share his expertise and insights on sustainable energy and the importance of entrepreneurship in driving positive change.

Lieven is CEO of Lito. He and his team managed to develop the ‘Litobox’: the Litobox combines a heat pump, solar water heater, PV system, battery storage, rainwater filtering, ventilation, electrical equipment and internet network in one unit. All this on 3 square metres and placed on site in less than an hour! We at Bao Living look with admiration at this innovative product and I am happy to talk to Lieven about it.

Filip is the founder of Skilpod. This is a company that builds houses using a prefab system. All parts of the houses are made in the factory, and set on site in an incredibly quick way. With this, Skilpod wants to disrupt the traditional construction industry where the duration of a project takes a huge amount of time. And all this without compromising on quality!

Sarah is founder and CEO at Go Forest. Go Forest is a young company, established in 2020 that plants trees all over the world for companies and individuals who want to work towards a greener environment. Go Forest aims to restore nature by planting the right kind of trees in environments where they have positive effects on biodiversity, carbon storage, employment, livelihood, and local economy. With more than 200 companies having become clients in only 2 years time, they have had tremendously rapid growth. Therefore, I thought it would be nice to invite Sarah to discuss the past 2 years and also look ahead to the future together.

For our Christmas Special of the Bao Podcast, we welcomed someone very special: Axel van der Donk! Axel is CTO and co-founder at Bao Living. We thought it would be fun to dedicate an episode to what we do here at Bao Living and the learnings of the past 5 years. So I invited my partner in crime Axel to discuss it together.

For episode 17 of the Bao Podcast, we had the honour to welcome Kristof De Jaeger. Kristof is the director of Inhout, a company specialising in timber frame construction. Here they focus on sustainable business using bio-ecological materials. Since 2020, they have also been making modular homes, under the name of Mobble. This is the result of a collaboration with the University of Ghent. These houses, 'Mobbles', are also made from sustainable materials (wood frame with bio-ecological insulation materials) and are flexible and adaptable according to the needs of the moment. We at Bao Living have already had the honour to work together with Mobble when they just started. We love the idea behind it and Kristof is one of the guests that have been on our list of podcast guests for a long time.

Özturk Taspinar works at KPMG as Digital Innovation Consultant and is very passionate about entrepreneurship, innovation and anything that’s digital such as AI, Blockchain, robotics et cetera. With the ever-growing PropTech industry that's closing the gap between construction and the digital world, he’s the perfect guest for our Bao Podcast to tell us more about this interesting industry.

For the last episode of this season, our guest is Margaux Lespagnard. Margaux is a PhD researcher at VUB - Vrije Universiteit Brussel - in architectural engineering. In her research, she aims to develop circular design guidance for architects when designing circular affordable housing. She does this under supervision of engineer-architects Niels De Temmerman and Waldo Galle. Her research obviously leans very closely to what we want to achieve at Bao Living, so we thought it would be interesting to have a conversation with her about this.

Johan is director of Madaster Belgium. This Dutch company developed a digital materials passport for buildings. This passport is a crucial link to make circular building possible. It’s a digital platform where users can list all the materials that are in a building. This information is enriched, among other things, with product data and commodity prices, and related to regulations and certification methods.

In the 13th episode of the Bao Podcast, we welcome Xavier Leclair. Xavier is founder and CEO of Slow Cabins. This is a Belgian company that allows guests to rent cabins placed in secret locations across the countryside, and has plans to soon expand the concept throughout Belgium and Europe. These Slow Cabins are temporary eco houses that are completely self-sufficient when it comes to water and electricity provisions. In a Slow Cabin there is no internet as well, which means that you can slow down and break free from the stress of everyday life.