Future Optimist

Jo Norris is a climate scientist, materials engineer, and artist, combining all three in the climate tech startup space. She’s the co-founder and CEO of Carbon Reform, a start-up that’s built a device that removes carbon from the air and safely stores it into sustainable building materials, while improving indoor air quality and reducing HVAC costs by up to 40%. It’s one of those wild, too-good-to-be-true ideas that I’m just so excited about, and I’m not the only one: Carbon Reform has raised over $3.5 million to date, and the future looks bright for us all. ➡️ https://carbonreform.com/ ➡️ Highlights: https://rosspalmer.com/jo-norris ➡️ Follow me on Instagram: @therosspalmer ➡️ Subscribe on YouTube: @therosspalmer

Joining us today is Nicholas Grundish, who earned a Ph.D. in Materials Science and studied under a Nobel Prize recipient. Now he’s putting his battery tech to use for EnergyX, a company that’s secured tens of millions in funding with GM leading their Series B with 50 million. What does this mean for you and me? Batteries in our cars and everyday devices will soon charge faster, be more safe, and have dramatically increased capacity. I love people who are building a more sustainable future in eminently practical ways. ➡️ https://energyx.com/ ➡️ Highlights: https://rosspalmer.com/nicholas-grundish   Follow me on Instagram: @therosspalmer Subscribe on YouTube: @therosspalmer

Valorant Health was founded in 2018 after Founder and CEO, Ahmed Qureshi experienced the impact that lack of access had on communities from his early years in Pakistan. Through extensive global travel, Ahmed realized that large portions of our population lack the access to healthcare that others of us expect. He saw enormous inefficiencies in outdated systems that led to incredible waste (nearly $1 trillion in waste in the US alone!), often with the people who need the healthcare the most paying the highest price. His is a fascinating take on a problem that affects us all, and I just love anyone audacious enough to take on something as massive as healthcare. ➡️ https://www.valoranthealth.com/  ➡️ Highlights: https://rosspalmer.com/ahmed-qureshi   Follow me on Instagram: @therosspalmer Subscribe on YouTube: @therosspalmer

Phnam Bagley designs the future of everything on and off planet Earth. She co-founded Nonfiction, a design firm that turns science fiction into reality for a better future. She's a TED speaker who has designed new food systems for astronauts and who really sees the bigger picture in everything that she does. Her company closely parallels the vision that I have for myself, for my own future and for my own company, so it was deeply fascinating talking with someone who has truly shaped an unusual life of exceptional meaning. ➡️ www.nonfiction.design ➡️ Highlights: https://rosspalmer.com/phnam-bagley

Audrey Wisch is a powerhouse, a juggernaut, a wunderkind… Or maybe she’s just a cool person with a great idea. Audrey is the Stanford “stop-out” co-founder of Curious Cardinals, a company that’s redefining mentorship for K-12 students. They’ve raised millions in funding, and they did an astonishing $750k of sales in their first year in business, essentially linking passionate college mentors with younger mentees, in a time when children are in dire need of better education and human connection. ➡️ https://www.curiouscardinals.com/ ➡️ Highlights: https://rosspalmer.com/audrey-wisch

Today’s guest changed the trajectory of my life forever. When I was just 11 years old, I heard the song Xpander by Sasha for the first time. That EP opened me up to the world of electronic dance music which would change my career and my life for the next sixteen years and beyond. From that moment forward nobody ever saw me without wearing a pair of headphones, without my trusty little Sony Walkman, listening to all of these albums – Global Underground, Airdrawndagger—all of this deep house music from around the world. I didn’t know it at the time but the creator of this and many other world-changing electronic records was Charlie May, ghost producer extraordinaire. Over the years he’s made pivotal tracks with Sasha, Spooky, Junkie XL, and a who’s-who of top underground artists for the last several decades. You might not know his name but that’s exactly the point. You should. His works have shaped the current electronic scene, taking us from a time when DJs were uncelebrated and underpaid weirdos in the corner of a room to this massive celebrity industry that we see today. This week all the music in this episode is an original creation of Charlie May—I would strongly encourage you to check out Charlie's Bandcamp for more of his work. ➡️ https://charliemay.bandcamp.com/ ➡️ Highlights: https://rosspalmer.com/charlie-may

What would a future look like where wherever you go, you can plug in your car without worrying about who’s getting paid and how? Well it turns out, in addition to the vast hardware infrastructure requirements of electric vehicle charging, there’s a tremendous software need too. To balance power, to accept payments, to supply apartment buildings and more. And someone’s got to build that software. Well that someone is my guest today, Zak Lefevre, CEO of ChargeLab. He’s a Forbes 30 Under 30 Founder who’s raised about $30 million for his company to date, they make software that runs about 80% of the EV chargers out there, so it’s a very cool concept from an extremely smart founder making a difference. ➡️ https://www.chargelab.co/ ➡️ https://www.linkedin.com/in/zaklefevre/ ➡️ Highlights: https://rosspalmer.com/zak-lefevre

Why should every building be green? Buildings, both commercial and residential, account for about 40% of annual CO2 emissions. It’s an enormously wasteful industry ripe for innovation. But how do we bring about the new era of eco buildings? My guest today is Tommy Linstroth, the CEO of Green Badger, an SaaS platform for automating sustainability. They make it much much easier for construction professionals to build sustainably. It’s a clever approach to an important sector we don’t often think about, oh, and these buildings can dramatically lower your monthly energy costs as well.  ➡️ https://getgreenbadger.com/ ➡️ Highlights: https://rosspalmer.com/tommy-linstroth

Tony Selvaggio is a Social Entrepreneur and the Founder of eSmart Recycling, a social enterprise whose primary goal is to recycle old technology to set up computer labs for kids, worldwide. It turns out that all kids need to be competitive in today’s digital world is some Betamax tapes, a few laserdiscs, and a few old paddle’s from the 1972 version of Pong. Alright, maybe it’s not quite that, but the point is that a e-waste is an enormous problem, and tons of viable tech ends up in landfills or collecting dust in ole’ granny’s broom closet, when it could be used to give kids without access to computers a leg up. ➡️ https://www.esmartrecycling.com/ ➡️ Highlights: https://rosspalmer.com/tony-selvaggio

Carlos Meza is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Crowd Content, a content creation service that does millions in revenue per year. Many of you out there are interested in SEO, digital marketing, and how to get more people to look at your s***, well it’s no secret that great content is the key. But making content is a grind, trust me. What if you could have pieces written for you at scale? That’s the idea behind Crowd Content. And more importantly, we’ll talk about Carlos’s journey from leaving finance behind to being caught by the entrepreneurial bug, a bug that in my opinion feels like a mixture between the flu and RSV. Or maybe I’m just sick, who knows. In any case, there’s lots of practical advice and inspiration in today’s episode! ➡️ https://www.crowdcontent.com/ ➡️ Highlights: https://rosspalmer.com/carlos-meza