Episodios

  • Cultivated Meat Company Pluri Achieves Price Parity with Farmed Meat

    Cultivated Meat Company Pluri Achieves Price Parity with Farmed Meat
    Mar 22 2024

    At 300,000 dollars, the world’s first lab-grown meat burger may have been the most expensive piece of meat ever produced. That was in 2013 – it proved that we can grow meat in a lab, but the cost, engineering, and biological challenges meant that cultivated meat was a far cry from being a viable alternative for supermarkets.

    10 years on, that’s all changed. For the first time, the science behind cell cultivation has progressed to the point where mass production and consumption of meat from cultivated cells is possible at a price point that’s on par with traditionally farmed meat.

    An Israel-based biotechnology company Pluri, is at the heart of this transformation. In 2022, Pluri established a joint venture with Tnuva, Israel’s largest food producer, Ever After Foods, to utilize Pluri’s technology to create a pathway to bringing cultivated meat to the consumer market.


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    32 m
  • Colombia's largest coffee company is disrupting supply chains to put fairness first

    Colombia's largest coffee company is disrupting supply chains to put fairness first
    Sep 29 2023
    A warm welcome to the 40 new subscribers who have joined since the last edition! If you haven’t subscribed, sign up below to join a network of over 2,850 climate tech entrepreneurs and investors. The Green Techpreneur (GT) is a comprehensive platform with a marketplace and magazine to help your climate startup raise funds and gain the actionable insight you need to make your mark on the planet.Investors take note!! We have a fantastic opportunity for you below to make money while making a real difference in empowering Sustainable Finance, Trade, Energy, Money & Community. Find out more below.In tough-to-disrupt industries, going for size and scale can sometimes be the only way to truly rewrite norms and shake up supply chains that are at odds with people and planet.This was the realisation that green techpreneur Boris Wullner Garces, CEO at Green Coffee Company (GCC) – Colombia’s largest producer of Arabica coffee – came to in 2021 when he set out on a scale up journey: “value share is very important for us: everything we do, we are not only doing for us as a company, we are also doing it for the coffee growers. We’re getting away from intermediaries and going directly to the consumer so we can pay a better price to farmers. But to do this, you have to have scale.”Despite the coffee sector acting on sustainability initiatives, commercial practices still often exploit farmers with only 10% of coffee’s total value staying in the countries of origin. The coffee market is largely steeped in a power imbalance where coffee farmers are disempowered by intermediaries who control access to buyers and take the majority share of profits, while the coffee farmers are often left struggling to pay for education and healthcare. “If you can buy green coffee at $1.09 per pound, and the roasters are selling you a bag of roasted coffee in the U.S. at $12.99 in the supermarket and it is only 12 ounces, who’s getting the money? Not the growers and they’re the ones doing everything,” says Boris.In six short years since it’s founding in 2017, Columbia-based Green Coffee Company has not just grown into one of the largest coffee producers in the world, it has been on a fast-track growth journey to cut out intermediaries, disrupt, reshape, own and green every aspect of its supply chain. “We’re thinking completely outside of the box: we are being disruptive at every step of the chain, from the nursery to the dry and wet milling to the roasting. We’re reducing our operating costs all across the chain….we’re attacking all the old parts of the chain that normally are not tackled by growers. Today, GCC has more than 12.5 million coffee trees. Its size and scale gives it the bandwidth to successfully disrupt an often exploitative industry and its proving that the green economy is also better for business.It implements cost-saving, cutting-edge technologies to green its supply chain and is a circular economy pioneer, adding new product lines by repurposing coffee cherry waste to produce ethanol (used in gin/vodka) and cascava flour. “The company generates something very important in the agricultural sector: a mirror effect,” explains Marcela Urueña, Colombian government chief advisor for coffee affairs."I see them as an 'anchor producer' that sets the coffee business dynamics in the area …from delivering information about technologies to centralising purchases of fertilisers to get better prices for all producers around the region, sharing these economic benefits with all the small producers and coffee farmers around GCC. It is a truthful generator of enriched social networks that should lead to social and economic stability in the region where it is located."GCC has already raised a total of $65 million of equity, and is currently seeking $65 million of institutional debt capital to execute expansion plans. By 2026, the company projects it will be in a position to launch a U.S. IPO exit.Here’s a look at what it took to scale up and transform supply chains to put social and climate justice into the heart of your next brew. How did you first get involved with GCC?I'm a biological systems engineer. I've always been involved with agriculture. I spent over a decade working in the Colombian flower business, primarily in sales and marketing. Following that, I led Invest in Bogota, a startup incubator focused on bringing international business to the region. Before joining GCC, I held a position at a university as the Vice Dean for Biological Systems Engineering. I also took on consultancy roles and helped the Colombian palm oil industry improve their sustainability efforts.When I was invited to join GCC in 2020, we talked extensively about the transformative changes they envisioned for the industry, I thought, ‘this is what I've been waiting for.’ We discussed the goal of becoming a highly profitable yet inclusive company. It seemed like the only way to change the culture in Colombia and ...
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    26 m
  • How to scale a niche product into a mainstream market while navigating being business and life partners

    How to scale a niche product into a mainstream market while navigating being business and life partners
    Jul 28 2023
    A warm welcome to the 60 new subscribers who have joined since the last edition!If you haven’t subscribed yet, sign up below to join a network of 2,730 climate tech entrepreneurs and investors. The Green Techpreneur (GT) will provide you with the actionable insight and connections you need to make your mark on the planet with your business!In this Green Techpreneur episode, I spoke to the Co-founders of Gimme Seaweed to share how their journey of infusing passion, love, and a personal touch - connecting with customers as you would with friends and family - became keys to growing a household name brand that’s both delicious, nutritious and good for the planet.“I’ll never forget that feeling I had, in the early morning, it was 6 a.m., I was 35 and at the farmers market and feeling like I was in charge of my life and about to go on this very refreshing journey. And that became Annie Chun’s and the start of all that transpired. It was based on really wanting to be myself and sharing the love and experience that I have. Based on this, I always make sure to connect with myself, who I am, and what I have learned.”Annie Chun is the pioneer of an organic seaweed US snack brand, Gimme Seaweed, that has shifted what was a niche product into the mainstream market. She immigrated from Korea as a young woman in 1976 - but it was in selling homemade produce at a farmers market in 1991 that she found her North Star as a green techpreneur. At the time, she would never have imagined that her humble outdoor market beginnings would lead to building a household brand name.So how did she beat the odds to build an exceptional business from the ground up?“You're not really calculating, I'm going to put that into the US market, I did it truly as a friend, as a neighbour, one by one. And by doing so, I learnt a lot about what American culture is, how they connect, what they like. It just came to me naturally through that experience, and I think that's the base of our reach to our market and our buyers.”Along the way, she met her husband and co-founder, Steve Broad. They launched Gimme Seaweed in 2012, where Annie brings her Korean roots to the US with the introduction of seaweed as a snack. Together, they created the world’s first USDA Certified Organic, non-GMO Project Verified seaweed snacks.“I couldn't have built the business by myself,” says Chun. “It was almost like that was the path we had to walk together.”Seaweed is the underrated story of our time – it’s the ultimate regenerative crop – and along with shellfish, it’s one of the few farmed foods with a net positive environmental impact. In a world of water scarcity, it provides valuable nutrition without use of freshwater, and if farmed organically, it helps keep the oceans clean and fights climate change. Seaweed farms sequester carbon and improve water quality: one ton of seaweed can sequester over 1 ton of CO2 annually – a stark contrast to the heavy toll traditional agriculture takes on the environment. But it’s also a commercial success story: since 2018 the seaweed category has grown by 63% with strong double-digit growth YOY.Today, Gimme is on track to double its business sales since 2021 and deliver 40% year on year growth. It’s the #1 organic seaweed brand leading the way in online channel sales with a 60% category share on Amazon and can be found at major US and Canadian retailers including Wholefoods, Kroger, Publix, Target, Safeway, Sprouts and HEB. What sustainability practices does Gimme Seaweed employ?Annie: Our commitment to sustainability starts in the ocean, Gimme was the first US company to offer organic, non-GMO seaweed. We worked closely with seaweed farmers in South Korea and in close cooperation with the Korean National Federation of Fisheries Cooperatives to develop the standard for organic, non-GMO seaweed that is widely used today by the industry.It was a lot of work for us to coordinate between the Korean Control Union and the USDA and then to find a supplier – because organic wasn't in the vocabulary in Korea, nor non-GMO, and it took a lot of time. In recognition for helping transform the seaweed industry we received a Supplier of the Year Award for Organic Commitment from Whole Foods Market. We use 250 tons of dried seaweed a year which requires 2,500 tons of wet seaweed, this absorbs 4,265 tons of CO2 per year.How were you able to take a niche product and introduce it in a mainstream market?Steve: Understand what you have as a product and understand where the consumer is and what they're seeking and how you bring that together.* What helped us was starting at the farmers market and directly speaking to the consumer as opposed to just looking at a data story and then figuring out what needs to happen.* Then you create the brand with the values you embody to create that consumer love that's really where the magic happens. * We built a brand that was more mainstream than the seaweed market had ...
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    26 m
  • How to Communicate & Build Community on Social Media

    How to Communicate & Build Community on Social Media
    Jun 23 2023
    A warm welcome to the 50 new subscribers who have joined since the last edition!If you haven’t subscribed yet, sign up below to join a network of 2,600 climate tech entrepreneurs and investors. The Green Techpreneur (GT) will provide you with the actionable insight and connections you need to make your mark on the planet with your business!If you’re a climate tech startup raising funds, we can connect you with a global investor database of 2,000+ proven climate tech investors. Learn more here and contact us today!In this Green Techpreneur edition I spoke to Going Green Media to share their insight on how to effectively communicate your climate innovation with the world and gain customers and loyal followers!For climate tech businesses that want to connect with consumers and inspire action, creating compelling stories online is a crucial marketing tool. Going Green Media is a growing media platform that does just that.Founded by a creative duo –Ben Brown and Ciara Doyle – the project boasts over 200,000 Instagram followers and creates inspiring films that showcase innovative green projects around the world.Like many Green Techpreneurs, Ben founded the business out of a frustration with the status quo: “I was a student of architecture and getting really frustrated with lecturers talking about modernist designs with no sustainability credentials. So I bought a second hand camera and travelled to locations to film sustainable building projects, in the hope it would encourage the lecturers on his architecture course to teach the principles of environmentally-friendly construction.”Little did he know the initiative would change the course of his life – “it became a viral hit on Youtube, and I realised it wasn’t just the architecture space that needs to get up to speed on environmental innovation, it’s the whole world.”Ciara joined Going Green Media in 2020, and the brand has since steadily grown, working alongside organisations as varied as the WWF, Mastercard and The Olympics.“We film green projects that inspire action,” says Ciara, “we go visit climate tech projects and allow them to tell their story. We translate often very high-tech projects and make the average person understand them and get excited about them.”Winning followers and fans online is especially important for climate tech startups that want to connect with Gen Z and Millennials: according to a 2021 survey by the Pew Research Center, this demographic is far more likely to care about environmental issues than previous generations. They’re also more likely to engage with sustainability content on social media: some 56% of Gen Z reported seeing at least two posts on climate action during their weekly scrolling, with 45% of respondents in that age group engaging with the content.Ben and Ciara share what it takes to communicate effectively and build community in a virtual world.What are the goals of Going Green Media?Ciara: Our tagline is: ‘We film green projects that inspire action’. We are fortunate enough to find incredible green solutions from around the world, whether it’s an organisation or an individual who has come up with a solution to a big climate problem and help them tell their story using video.The second part of our business model is to inspire people to take action for the environment in their own lives and get involved in their community in any way they can.Ben: We feel like a lot of the climate news out there is so negative. That’s why all the content we produce is hopeful and inspiring. And that’s why we feel we’ve been able to have this success so fast, because people want to see content that makes them feel hopeful and like a better solution is possible.What’s a project you’ve worked on that stands out?Ciara: One big moment was back in early 2021. We went to visit a small greentech startup called NotPLA. They were making plastic alternatives from seaweed.It was a really small team at the time. They were in a little office but they were so knowledgeable. Fast forward to the end of 2022, they won the Earthshot prize, which granted them a million pounds toward their project.It’s those incredible startup transformations and journeys that are so amazing, and we hope we played a part in that.What are your tips on creating content and growing online?Make your content personable and accessibleBen: The most successful climate tech startup stories that we’ve seen have made their content personable and accessible. So, taking a wider perspective and looking at ‘what is the problem we’re trying to solve? And then relaying that by breaking it down for people, making it easy to understand, so it’s not in this complex language.Connect your service or product to an individual personCiara: Put a person behind [your product] and say: ‘this is how I use it in my daily life’, or, ‘this is what it’s done for me’. Make that connection to how the product benefits the ...
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    28 m
  • The $9.5 trillion market opportunity: how INOVUES is transforming energy-efficiency in real estate

    The $9.5 trillion market opportunity: how INOVUES is transforming energy-efficiency in real estate
    Mar 24 2023
    A warm welcome to the 112 new subscribers who have joined since the last edition!If you’re reading this and haven’t subscribed, sign up below to join a high-value network of 2,300 climate tech entrepreneurs, industry leaders and investors.The Green Techpreneur (GT) will provide you with the tools, resources and connections you need to make your mark on the planet with your climate tech business! Every other week, I interview extraordinary climate tech entrepreneurs, investors and sustainability experts to share practical advice on how to build, grow, and thrive. Follow the GT podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.As an architect from Syria, Anas da Kassas, Founder and CEO of INOVUES, has come a long way. His journey into green techpreneurship took him from Damascus to Dubai where he worked in architectural facade engineering and manufacturing before moving to Boston to get a Master’s degree in architecture. Along the way, Anas caught the entrepreneurial bug. He wanted to create scaleable solutions for buildings that could help tackle the climate crisis: “the problem for me was that you invest several years in every project, but it's a one-off prototype. You go to the next project and you face the same challenges again.He was staring out the window of his apartment, brainstorming ideas that could have a big impact, when the window itself became his source of inspiration: “I thought, ‘what if there was a way to transform these windows into smart systems without having to remove or replace anything at all? I was thinking about ideas from my multidisciplinary experience in architecture and facade engineering.”That was the day INOVUES – innovative views – was born. Anas’ idea has since grown into a multiple-award winning startup that has already participated in several accelerators including Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy and is ready to take on a global $9.5 trillion market opportunity for more energy-efficient buildings. It's the only patented solution in its class that can transform building facades with the latest energy-saving and smart glass innovations without rebuilding or replacing any parts. INOVUES retrofits a second window pane to existing windows using adhesive structural material, creating a 10x cost reduction compared to existing methods, and reducing energy inefficiency of buildings by up to 40%. And with the push of the energy crisis and inflation putting pressure on energy costs and the strong pull of incentives from the US’ Inflation Reduction Act or the European Green Deal’s energy efficiency directive which requires EU countries to collectively reduce energy consumption by 9% by 2030. Anas is bringing a right place, right time, solution to conquer a real estate retrofit market that’s largely untapped.How does your solution work?We don't use mechanical fasteners in our system, we rely on structural glazing materials. The system integrates with the existing facade and does not require drilling or altering anything. It's a very clean and easy installation process, we can add a window to create double pane windows.We use 70% fewer materials compared to existing methods and prefabricate the system off-site so installation costs are cut by up to 80%, reducing the total cost of window upgrades buy up to 10 times.We’re pushing the boundaries of facade engineering on many aspects…transparent photovoltaic or dynamic tinting or vacuum insulated glass. All of these now can be available for existing buildings at a fraction of the usual cost. There’s no disruption, and no need to replace anything. How big is the market opportunity?Experts estimate that about 40% of all US buildings still have single pane windows and a lot more have low performing double pane windows, so 70% of existing building stock is in need of an upgrade. Globally, there are estimates that this is a $9.5 trillion market opportunity. The potential impact on the climate and carbon reduction is huge because windows account for up to 40% of the energy loss in buildings.Through our installations, we're reducing carbon emissions by 100 tonnes annually, and the potential impact, at scale, is close to half a giga tonne to a giga tonne of reduced emissions.These efficiencies means we can disrupt the built environment which has been painfully slow to retrofit ageing infrastructure in commercial real estate. INOVUES has already installed upgrades for leading industry players like Saint-Gobain, 3M and the University of Minnesota. 2022 was our breakout year. We finished some major pilots and got $50 million of potential projects in our pipeline. What were the make or break moments you faced in getting started?I had quite my job in Boston and moved to Houston so spend 1 year doing my architectural Master thesis on the INOVUES idea. That got me a year to devote full-time to it, but I was not making any money. We moved in with family to cut costs to almost nothing. But after a year, I told my wife: ‘if by...
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    32 m
  • An Inside Look at how Flashfood Revolutionised the Grocery Shopping Industry

    An Inside Look at how Flashfood Revolutionised the Grocery Shopping Industry
    Mar 10 2023
    A warm welcome to the 53 new subscribers who have joined since the last edition!If you’re reading this and haven’t subscribed, sign up below to join a high-value network of 2,200 climate tech entrepreneurs, industry leaders and investors.The Green Techpreneur (GT) will provide you with the tools, resources and connections you need to make your mark on the planet with your climate tech business! Every other week, I interview extraordinary climate tech entrepreneurs, investors and sustainability experts to share practical advice on how to build, grow, and thrive. Follow the GT podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.Hello there 👋🏼Before we launch into today’s episode, I wanted to share a couple of ways The Green Techpreneur can help you:We can help you with: * personalised support and coaching to help you prepare for and find investors * a website makeover/upgrade. Or a new website, if you need one.* amplifying and growing your LinkedIn presence – get a personalised and easy-to-implement strategy or buy our LinkedIn for Sustainability Leaders course here. * telling your founder story – nothing connects people more strongly to your business than hearing about where you came from!* place an ad on The GT website and newsletter by purchasing GT membership.* We’ve put together a checklist to help you assess if you’re investment-fit:GT Collaboration OpportunityWe’re looking platform sponsors who want to get in front of the climatetech startup/investor ecosystem to collaborate on content and promotions over a 6-month period. It would suit a climate tech investor, accelerator, or a B2B climate tech business. Get in touch at: marianne@thegreentechpreneur.uk Flashfood is on Fast Company's annual list of the world's most Innovative Companies for 2023, coming in at first place for Social Good. The Canada-born startup tackles food waste with a digital marketplace and app that alerts consumers to discounted and near end-of-date food products. Customers can buy bargains directly through the app and then do a same-day pick up from a Flashfood designated store zone. Within 7 years since inception, the concept has spread to 1,600 stores across Canada and the US.Flashfood founder and CEO, Josh Domingues, had always wanted to tackle environmental issues; “you turn on the TV and there's just a different city under water or there’s a horrible storm. Whatever I was going to spend my time on through my working career, it was going to have to be something with the environment.” But it was after he heard about an incident at his sister’s workplace that his journey as a Green Techpreneur began: “My sister was a chef, she called me after a catering event and said ‘I just threw out $4,000 worth of food.’ I started laughing; ‘Polly, you idiot. Why would you do that?’ She said, ‘oh, this feeling sucks, my boss was over my shoulder making me do it.’“So I started reading about food waste and I learned that if international food waste were a country it'd be the third leading cause of greenhouse gas emissions behind the US and China.“That led me to talking to store managers in Toronto and I learnt they're throwing out fresh food that still has two or three days of shelf life because consumers won't buy it. The idea I had was if there's a way for the store to mark the price of the food down and send me a notification so I could see the deal on my phone, pay through my phone, and pick up from the store the same day – people would shop like that all the time.”As it turned out, Josh was right: as prices surge today, his idea has helped many thousands of people navigate the cost of living crisis. To date, saved shoppers over $150 million on grocery bills, and diverted over 65 million pounds of food from landfill.“We're still so early in our journey in terms of what we can accomplish, it's really humbling to think about,” says Josh.“I don't want to come off as if it was easy the whole time. This was basically impossible, this has been so hard to do at so many different levels. And even to be named in Fast Company’s list of most innovative companies…this was just an idea seven years ago and now looking at where we're at, it's just a wild journey.”How does the Flashfood app work?The Flashfood app shows which grocers in your area have partnered with the startup. It enables consumers to browse deals – directly from their phone – to save up to 50% off high-quality items nearing their best-by date, such as meats, dairy, seafood, produce, bakery items and more. When retailers partner with Flashfood, they enter into a revenue sharing agreement.How did you first market the app and gain early adopters?We offered free pizza to studentsWe got our first set of users by organising an information session and offering free pizza to students. Sometimes the simplest marketing tactics can be the most effective, especially when you're just starting out.We leveraged local Facebook groupsI leveraged ...
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    30 m
  • Why Imperial College launched a climatetech pre-accelerator: the benefits of starting young as an entrepreneur

    Why Imperial College launched a climatetech pre-accelerator: the benefits of starting young as an entrepreneur
    Feb 24 2023
    A warm welcome to the 40 new subscribers who have joined since the last edition!If you’re reading this and haven’t subscribed, sign up below to join a high-value network of over 2,100 climate tech entrepreneurs, industry leaders and investors.The Green Techpreneur (GT) will provide you with the tools, resources, and connections you need to make your mark on the planet with your climate tech business! Every other week, I interview extraordinary climate tech entrepreneurs, investors and sustainability experts to share practical advice on how to build your business. Join us for connections, advice, ideas, and mentors. Follow the GT podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.GT Collaboration OpportunityWe’re looking for a sponsor with an aligned mission and vision to collaborate on content and promotions over a 6-month period. It would suit a climate tech investor, accelerator, or a B2B climate tech business. Get in touch at: marianne@thegreentechpreneur.ukImperial College has just had a star-studded lineup with Bill Gates and Rishi Sunak helping to kick off the climate tech accelerator Undaunted which is for full-time founders ready to run with their ideas. But it's got another first-of-its-kind programme that has just launched for students with brilliant entrepreneurial ideas who want a chance to sharpen these ideas in a supportive environment.For pre-accelerator Co-founders Filippo Varini and Elliot Queisser de Stockalper, a passion for protecting nature came from life experiences that were close to home. While growing up in Geneva, Switzerland, Elliot saw ecosystems, quite literally, melt away: “watching the snow, the glaciers, the little details from my home region dramatically changing, it made a difference. It pushed me to address these problems and these unmet needs in a tangible way.”In Italy, Filippo had always been in close contact with the sea as a sailor, fisherman and a free diver; “I witnessed it firsthand – the depletion of the sea – which brought me to start to look for solutions into the area of biodiversity and climate change.”“It was so nice to find each other because we had this passion that was so raw for everything climate, sustainability and entrepreneurship,” says Elliot.They developed the idea for the pre-accelerator programme last summer after noticing that many students who wanted to make a difference and help solve climate change had entrepreneurial ideas that died on the vine: the pressures of needing to find work and repay student loans immediately after graduating meant many would-be founders never got started. Their solution? Provide students with a complete support system for validating and testing their ideas, building a team and network, and pitching to institutional investors – a pre-accelerator.“We wanted to set up something that will be heard,” says Elliot, “but also something that will inspire people and give clear opportunities and possibilities at the end. That's how we came up with the pre-accelerator to help student founders get investment-ready and validate their idea.” How do you help student founders validate their ideas at the pre-accelerator?Elliot: We give student founders every tool in hand to propose either an MVP at the end of a programme, or at least a solution that has the possibility to become a startup in the future. We have programme sponsors, collaborators, mentors and partners on board to help in shaping the idea. We’ll have a series of workshops, challenges and pitching days and we’ll finish with Demo Day, where teams will present in front of investors and partners, show what they are addressing, and how that idea compliments a gap in the market sector. It’s an opportunity for them to speak about something they’re deeply passionate about at their first pitching event and build on these capabilities in the future.How many student founders are in your first cohort?Filippo: We’ve had 200 applications and have launched our first cohort with 100 students – from PHDs to undergraduates – after opening up applications to students from universities including Cambridge, MIT, Oxford, the Royal College of Arts and LSE. Half of the people we selected already have a team and idea they will want to work on and half of them are unsure about what to work on and need to find a team. We have a multidisciplinary cohort because we believe something great happens when you mix perspectives from different backgrounds.What are the benefits of starting young as an entrepreneur? Filippo: I think the benefit of starting young is that you have energy and you also have the beginner mindset that lets you approach a problem with a new perspective and sometimes that can lead to authentic solutions.However, you don't have experience and your network or skillset can't compare with people that already have experience. But it depends on the personality, if you can learn by doing and you're a resilient person, those qualities can help you ...
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    25 m
  • How to work with sustainability influencers

    How to work with sustainability influencers
    Feb 10 2023
    A warm welcome to the 50 new subscribers who have joined since the last edition!If you’re reading this and haven’t subscribed, sign up below to join a high-value network of over 2,100 climate tech entrepreneurs, industry leaders and investors.In The Green Techpreneur (GT), I interview extraordinary climate tech entrepreneurs, investors and sustainability experts to share practical advice on how to build your business. Join us for connections, advice, ideas, and mentors. Follow the GT podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.GT Collaboration OpportunityWe’re looking for a sponsor with an aligned mission and vision to collaborate on content and promotions over a 6-month period. It would suit a climate tech investor, accelerator, or a B2B climate tech business. Get in touch at: marianne@thegreentechpreneur.ukIn 2022, influencer marketing was a $16.4 billion industry and it’s due to 5x to reach $84.89 billion by 2028. This phenomenal growth is down to just how effective it is; influencer marketing content delivers 11X better ROI than traditional marketing tactics. Why? 92% of consumers trust influencer marketing over traditional advertising.So for climate tech startups that need to make every dollar count, quickly spread the message and attract clients, a carefully targeted ‘guerrilla’ influencer marketing approach could deliver more and cost less than a PR campaign.Influencer marketing expert Gordon Glenister is the author of Influencer Marketing Strategy and a columnist on influencer marketing for the London Evening Standard. He stumbled into the industry “by accident” – “I couldn’t find a book that explained influencer marketing, so I wrote one and started the UK influencer industry with my business partner.”In this Green Techpreneur episode, he breaks down how to select and work with influencers as a climate tech startup.How do you judge whether an influencer is a good match?Look for shared values and engagementWhat’s important to your business? Does that reflect well in the type of content that you're seeing from that individual?Another thing to look for is their level of engagement. How responsive are they to their followers? And are they good at creating a conversation and growing their audience?Look into the relevance of their followers, where they're coming from, it's not about numbers, it's about quality.Are they working with your competitors?The last thing you want to do is work with an influencer who's working with all of your competitors day in day out. That's not going to make you feel special within your own brand.Ask for their media deckThe first thing you should do before engaging them is to ask for their media deck which is equivalent to a CV, you want to know how they've grown their audience, what their level of engagement is, what type of campaigns they've worked on before.Focus on long-term collaborationUnderstand what sort of success criteria you want, but also what the influencer wants. There's a reason we use the word collaboration because that's exactly what it is. It's about actually joining at the hip because there are two things that an influencer wants: one is a reward for the work that they've done, and also anything that sustains and grows their audience. So look for how you can create and help them with exclusive content, opportunities to come to your events, or something where you could bring them onto a panel.The more you brief the influencer and help them with understanding the markets in your area, the better. You wouldn't hire a salesperson and say ‘off you go and do your best,’ you would properly brief them.Don’t think transactionalDon’t think transactional, like ‘should I employ an influencer for one post?’ Think about the bigger picture and be creative and involve them. Think about ‘how can I help you? We're a startup we don't have huge amounts of money, but what I could do is I have this, I have that, and I have this’ and the influencer may say ‘wow, that's super cool. I can do some really good things with that.’How can you co-create an immersive experience?Oxfam brought influencers to one of their big hub centres and showed them the entire back office system of what they do when clothes come in the recycling centre. They gave them a complete, ‘behind-the-scenes’ experience, and that got huge amounts of engagement on the influencers content and on Oxfam's engagement as well.“I believe in immersive content. If you're talking about climate change, can you go somewhere together? Think about the impact you want from this. You can do some amazing things with influencers.”What types of content campaigns benefit from using influencers?* Co-created content* Podcasts* Inviting the influencer onto your podcast* Sponsored posts and videos* Competitions and contests* Tik Tok has been great for challenges* Tutorials and reviews of your products/services can be really successful* Social media takeovers - hire an influencer to work...
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    27 m