Alison Hirukawa, PhD is the Co-founder and CEO of DropGenie. DropGenie is a groundbreaking start-up in the tech bio space making gene editing cheaper and lowering the amount of donor cells required. They’ve made a little plastic tray not much larger than the size of a playing card that makes molecular surgery affordable and scalable. The card itself looks like a maze, where a single droplet can be moved from one square to another via a revolutionary system of electric gates, which means that the...
Aug 18, 2023•38 min
Sharon Kan is the CEO & Co-Founder at Pepperlane, a start-up that helped mothers transform their ideas, skills, and passions into businesses that fit into their busy lives. They raised millions with her brilliant concept. Alas, like so many others, COVID had a massive negative impact on her business, and she had to make the difficult decision to shut it down earlier this year. In my conversations, I’m keenly aware of survivorship bias—that only talking to people who’ve won the lottery can gi...
Aug 11, 2023•53 min
Adam Molnar is the Co-Founder and Head of Partnerships at Neurable, the beautiful office in historic downtown Boston where we filmed this episode live. Neurable was gracious enough to lend me one of their conference rooms to meet inspiring local founders & entrepreneurs, and I got a first-hand look at their upcoming tech. Neurable makes brain-control interfaces or BCIs, and their tech is so discreet and non-invasive that it can literally fit into a pair of normal headphones. That’s right, ju...
Aug 04, 2023•59 min
Welcome to the Boston Series of Beat the Often Path! I got the chance to meet some of the most innovative and inspiring people in Boston’s robust start-up series, and I have to tell you, I absolutely loved my time there. Joining us on location at the Neurable offices in downtown Boston, Sridhar Iyengar is the Chief Innovation Officer of Elemental Machines and the former founder and director of Misfit, a wearable tech company that was purchased in 2015 by Fossil for $260 million. Sridhar holds ov...
Jul 28, 2023•1 hr 5 min
Bolis Ibrahim is the president of Cence Power, a start-up that aims to stop energy waste when AC power is converted to DC. The power coming into your house or office is AC, or alternating current. However, the vast majority of the devices and lights you use are DC, or direct current. Currently (har har), each individual device does its own AC/DC conversion, and if you’ve ever felt a hot laptop charger, you’ll have witnessed power going to waste. Cence can save buildings up to 40% on their energy...
Jul 21, 2023•33 min
Maeve Wang is a Harvard graduate and the CEO of IAMBIC, a company that uses AI to make truly customized shoes that are tailored to your exact foot. Finding shoes that fit, it turns out, is a big problem for 27% of the population and it affects a considerably larger percentage. It’s not just about comfort and fashion, it’s about health and fundamental wellbeing. Beyond that, Maeve has a remarkable personal story and career, as she left the corporate world to become an unlikely founder. ➡️ https:/...
Jul 14, 2023•58 min
Is the "green rush" over? Are NFTs still a thing? Was it wrong of me to put my life savings into AMC stock? Michael Johnson is the CEO of Metrc, a company that makes supply chain software for the cannabis industry. If talking about cannabis bothers you, I suggest you skip this episode… This is one of those businesses that makes sense when you learn about it, but seems so out of left field for an uneducated person such as myself. Today we discuss the cannabis industry boom and maturation of the “...
Jul 07, 2023•34 min
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 ov...
Jun 30, 2023•36 min
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 emi...
Jun 23, 2023•37 min
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...
Jun 16, 2023•42 min
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 l...
Jun 09, 2023•45 min
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....
Jun 02, 2023•49 min
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...
May 26, 2023•1 hr 17 min
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...
May 19, 2023•58 min
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 a...
May 12, 2023•52 min
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 ...
May 05, 2023•58 min
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 fro...
Apr 28, 2023•1 hr
Paige Peters is the founder and CTO of Rapid Radicals, a company that is able to treat wastewater much faster than traditional methods. She developed this technology to tackle the massive problem of the over 850 billion gallons of untreated wastewater that go into our lakes, oceans, and rivers each year. What’s worse? When it rains, these outdated systems flood and overflow, causing massive damage. She’s built a thriving business solving a problem no one else wanted to solve. ➡️ https://rapidrad...
Apr 21, 2023•56 min
Alexander Olesen is the CEO & Co-Founder of Babylon Micro-Farms Inc. He’s a social entrepreneur, keynote and TEDx speaker, and urban agriculture expert. Today we talk about how he’s been building a successful business making produce much more sustainable than conventional methods. We get into the ups and downs of social entrepreneurship, and especially why this is such a timely concept for us all getting access to better food. ➡️ https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-olesen-7aa4a16a/ ➡️ http...
Apr 14, 2023•42 min
Masachs Boungou, a recent doctoral graduate of UMass Lowell, is a keynote speaker, Ph.D. holder, and Fulbright Scholar Alumnus. His childhood was completely upended when his village was ravaged and destroyed, forcing him into exile. He was forced to live in the jungle for a year, facing unimaginable circumstances. Somehow he never lost faith, educating himself and eventually getting an advanced degree in America. Now he’s a public speaker and author, and his jaw-dropping tale is inspiration for ...
Apr 07, 2023•1 hr
Can we get rid of all the plastic in the oceans? Like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, 1.6 million square kilometers of plastic trash floating in the Pacific Ocean. Some see this never-decomposing trash as one of the biggest problems facing our species, others like Eleonore Eisath see that plastic as a “locked resource” that can be tapped into. Her company Beworm is developing a biocatalytic recycling process that decomposes plastic waste into natural raw materials—it’s about as cool as it gets!...
Mar 31, 2023•58 min
How do we eradicate extreme rural poverty? What can we do to build up communities? Jacob Foss asked this question when travelling in Africa, and his answer was to co-found Agricycle—a brilliant start-up that connects women, smallholders, and youth in East Africa with global markets. Don’t know what a smallholder is? I didn’t either, but we’re about to find out! Jacob’s been on Forbes 30 Under 30, he’s received millions in funding for his work, and Agricycle is an official partner of the United N...
Mar 24, 2023•57 min
What if you could program a cell directly to fight cancer? What if you could solve the 7,000 genetic diseases facing our species? This type of science fiction is now a reality, thanks to today’s guests on the Beat the Often Path Podcast. Joining me today are Omar Abudayyeh and Jonathan Gootenberg, creators of the AbuGoot lab at MIT, two people leading the way in gene therapy, gene editing, and CRISPR innovations. The AbuGoot lab combines natural biological discovery and molecular engineering to ...
Mar 21, 2023•56 min
What if you could create meaningful memories with loved ones around the globe? My guest today Anieke Lamers has created Peekabond, a new app that makes it easier to not just connect remotely, but bond. She left a lucrative role as a VC to follow her passion and build her own company in a space she believed in. She created a kid-friendly platform with science-based activities, ethical games, and a bank to store all the memories made. Many of us have gone years without being able to see loved ones...
Mar 17, 2023•50 min
Mai Shimada is a medical doctor, and the Founder & CEO of Isha Health, providers of ketamine-assisted therapy. She spent many years of her life as an ER doctor, and she came to understand that ketamine was a legal and underutilized treatment option for clinically-resistant depression, PTSD, and a wide range of other mental health disorders. In this episode, we are going to talk about DRUGS. Even though this treatment is completely legal, if that bothers you, turn it off right now. I’m going ...
Mar 14, 2023•49 min
Brian Cook is the President of Local Bounti, a company that brings fresh local produce to the world using 90% less water and land than traditional agriculture. In a world that’s poised to hit 10 billion people not too long from now, we need all the help we can get finding innovative ways to feed our population food that isn’t just gruel, mush, mushy-gruel, or god-forbid, soylent green. Brian has dedicated his life to food production, and today we talk about not only what Local Bounti is doing an...
Mar 07, 2023•49 min
David Dellal is the Co-Founder & CEO of Floe Inc, a cleantech startup developing a smart solution to prevent the extensive, costly water damage caused by ice buildup on buildings' roofs in the winter. You know what I love? I love learning about amazing solutions to problems that I never knew existed, such as the fact that $9.5 billion in damage occurs due to ice on rooftops each year in the US alone. Not only that, de-icing as an entire industry is archaic, harmful, and wasteful, meaning tha...
Mar 03, 2023•54 min
Brett Thompson is the CEO of Mzansi Meat Co, Africa’s first cell-based meat start-up. Using cellular agriculture technology, the company hopes to produce cruelty-free cell-cultured protein products. It’s something that I personally see as the future of meat consumption on our planet, and a necessary step towards a more sustainable future. Today we talk about taking an unpopular stand for something you believe in, building a company in uncharted waters, and how cultured meat represents a massive ...
Feb 28, 2023•1 hr 5 min
Angela Wilson is the creator of Exploryst, a start-up that seeks to create a more accessible world. Their motto is “explore EVERYWHERE, whatever your disability”, and they seek to add valuable accessibility information to travel, experiences, and business in Colorado and around the country. Angela’s son has intellectual and progressive physical disabilities, and this led her to understanding that many experiences simple aren’t catered to—or available for—people like her son. Today we explore how...
Feb 24, 2023•55 min
Michiel Vos is the Founder & CTO of CocoPallet, a Dutch start-up that makes circular, affordable transportation pallets from coconut husks only. They’re helping to save an estimated 200 million trees from being chopped down needlessly, and their solution is not only more affordable but is itself biodegradable and re-sellable as a potting soil enhancer. It’s an ingenious solution that uses the waste from the coconut industry—material that would otherwise just be dumped or burned, and it’s exa...
Feb 17, 2023•57 min
