Cow burps are one of climate’s strangest and most stubborn problems. Methane is an extremely potent greenhouse gas, and cattle are responsible for about 30 percent of global methane emissions. For years, the basic answer has been: eat less beef and drink less milk.

Kathryn Polkoff, PhD, co-founder and CEO of Hoofprint Biome, thinks there is a better way. Hoofprint uses natural enzymes to reshape the cow’s rumen microbiome, cutting methane production while boosting dairy milk yield and beef cattle weight gain. No harsh chemical feed additives. Just a solution that helps farmers produce more with less methane.

In Supercool’s first live recording, Josh talks with Kathryn at Raleigh-Durham Startup Week’s inaugural Climate Tech Day about cow burps, commercializing agricultural climate tech, and why Hoofprint could not exist without AI. It is a climate story about biology, business, and turning wasted energy into value.

Show Notes

Guest: Kathryn Polkoff, PhD, co-founder and CEO

Company: Hoofprint Biome

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Construction has a hidden waste problem, and it starts long before anything reaches the job site.

For centuries, the master builder was the person who translated architectural vision into buildable reality. Today, modern construction is too complex for any one person to play that role. A commercial building can contain hundreds of thousands of components across electrical, mechanical, plumbing, structural, and fire protection systems. No one can see it all.

That turns construction into a zero-sum game. Trades compete for the same walls, ceilings, shafts, and risers. Some win. Some lose. And when those conflicts get discovered during construction instead of design, the result is rework, delays, wasted material, and systems that cost more than they should to build and operate.

In this episode, Josh talks with Frio Iorio, co-founder and CEO of Augmenta, about using AI to bring constructability to the start of design: turning architectural models, engineering requirements, and project constraints into 3D designs that show what can actually be built before construction begins.

The result: less material waste, fewer expensive mistakes, and buildings designed to use less energy for decades.

Show Notes

Guest: Francesco Iorio

Company: Augmenta

Documentary (referenced): Manufactured Landscapes

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Ron Gonen built the largest privately held recycling and composting company in America largely in secret. For five years, his team acquired family-owned recycling operations across the country. When Circular Services finally surfaced two years ago — 35 facilities, municipal contracts in New York, Charlotte, Austin, San Antonio, and Phoenix — the industry's reaction was: wait, they did what?

That's one piece of what Closed Loop Partners does. The company Gonen founded after serving as Mayor Bloomberg's Recycling Czar is built around a single thesis: the circular economy needs infrastructure. To build it, Closed Loop operates across three businesses: an asset management business with funds across venture, private equity, and credit; an advisory arm that works with corporations to redesign their supply chains; and Circular Services, the physical infrastructure that processes material and feeds it back in.

His argument isn't environmental. It's economic. The global supply chains built over the last 60 years made sense under conditions that no longer exist. The businesses that figure out how to use what the economy throws away as their primary input aren't just the future. They're already winning.

Show Notes

Guest: Ron Gonen, Founder & CEO

Company: Closed Loop Partners

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The ocean is an unforgiving place to put a machine. That’s why wave energy has remained one of the most promising — and most elusive — sources of renewable power. In this episode, Josh talks with Catharina Belfrage Sahlstrand, Chief Commercial Officer of CorPower Ocean, about how the company is turning wave energy into a viable power source. They discuss CorPower’s spherical buoys, designed around a principle borrowed from the human heart, and the commercial challenge of getting utilities, developers, and large offtakers comfortable with a new source of clean energy. Catharina explains why surviving 60-foot waves off the coast of Portugal became a critical proof point, why CorPower is now building its first commercial wave farms in Portugal and Scotland, and how wave power — as a complement to wind and solar — can make the broader renewable mix more affordable.

Show Notes

Guest: Catharina Belfrage Sahlstrand, Chief Commercial Officer

Company: CorPower Ocean

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It’s one thing to invent a better, more sustainable building material. It’s another to get builders, dealers, and contractors to adopt it. Modern Mill has done both. In this episode, Josh talks with Chandler Delinks, the company’s Sales Director and employee number one, about how Modern Mill set up shop in Mississippi to upcycle rice hulls into Acre, a high-performance material now used for trim, siding, cladding, cabinetry, and more. Chandler shares how the company brought a lower-carbon alternative into one of the most change-resistant industries in the economy: earning credibility with contractors, building out distribution region by region, and helping a material made from waste earn its place on jobsites.

Show Notes

Guest: Chandler Delinks, Sales Director

Company: Modern Mill

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Sign up for Risk and Resilience — Designing for a Changing World, a Johnson Controls fireside chat at 1pm EST today featuring Ralph DiNola, founder of Building Insights Group and former CEO of New Buildings Institute, in conversation with Rob Tanner, Marketing Director at Johnson Controls.

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For decades, the answer to shoreline erosion has been the same: build something big, hard, and heavy. Natrx is rewriting that playbook using AI, machine learning, and 3D-printed reef structures engineered to work with natural systems, not against them.

In this episode, Josh talks with Tad Schwendler, COO of Natrx, about how the company maps erosion across entire coastlines at one-meter resolution — analysis that would otherwise take years — and turns that intelligence into reef structures that protect shorelines and help coastal ecosystems come back to life.

With more than 80 projects across Louisiana, North Carolina, the Chesapeake Bay, and Hawaii, Natrx is doing more than protecting shorelines. It is helping defend coastal wetlands that store large amounts of carbon — and that, when lost, release nearly 2 gigatons of CO₂ a year. This is a conversation about technology, execution, and what it takes to build a company around one of climate’s hardest challenges: moving fast enough, with the right tools and the right stakeholders, to protect coastlines before they change for good.

Show Notes

Guest: Tad Schwendler, COO

Company: Natrx

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Every climate company that scales knows the secret: they don’t sell climate. In this solo episode of Supercool, host Josh Dorfman shares one of the clearest lessons from nearly two years of conversations with founders, CEOs, operators, and investors across the low-carbon economy: the companies that break through do not lead with technical specs or climate mission. Their messaging is built around concrete customer benefits. Josh shows what that looks like in practice, with examples from companies scaling in mobility, home electrification, the built environment, and renewable energy. Time and again, the same pattern emerges. The climate companies that win never ask customers to sacrifice. They offer something immediate and better: lower costs, better performance, more control, and peace of mind. Carbon reductions are built in.

Reserve your spot here for Johnson Controls' free fireside chat: Risk and Resilience — Designing for a Changing World

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If the circular economy is ever going to become just “the economy,” it will need infrastructure. In this episode, Josh talks with Rich Amsinger, co-founder of ManyCo, about building it. The conversation traces the company’s evolution from Borobabi, which began with Rich and Carolyn Butler trying to keep their daughter’s outgrown clothes in use, to Manymoons, what the company calls America’s first circular retailer, and now ManyCo, the AI-, logistics-, and demand-powered engine behind it all. Rich explains why returns, overstock, and excess inventory aren’t a side issue in retail, but a massive opportunity hiding in plain sight. He also makes the case that circularity requires more than software. It requires actually selling the stuff—while protecting the brand, recovering more value, and keeping better products in use longer.

Show Notes

Guest: Rich Amsinger, Co-Founder

Company: Manymoons

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