"Resilience through intelligence."
On this week’s Profit Meets Purpose, Sustainable Times explores how artificial intelligence is reshaping business resilience. Daisy Moll speaks with Karan Chopra, Co-founder of Earthena AI, and Kevin Vranes, Chief Product Officer at Worldly, about how AI is helping companies manage risk, improve efficiency, and uncover opportunity in an age defined by climate uncertainty.
Founded in 2023, Earthena AI offers “decision intelligence for resilience,” an AI-reasoning engine that helps organisations turn complexity into action - translating data into insight and insight into strategy. Their partnership with Worldly, a leader in supply-chain intelligence, fuses global datasets with proprietary supplier data to identify risks, model returns, and surface investment opportunities with unprecedented precision.
For investors and founders alike, the conversation reveals how AI can accelerate transformation, from decarbonisation to supply-chain optimisation, turning sustainability from a compliance exercise into a driver of competitive advantage.
Chopra and Vranes also reflect on the responsibility that comes with innovation, and how intent, not technology, determines impact.
Website: www.sustainabletimes.co.uk
Earthena AI: https://www.earthena.ai/
Wordly: https://worldly.io/
Contact: daisy.moll@sustainabletimes.co.uk
“Imagine a Guinness X Gucci leather jacket!”
This week on Profit Meets Purpose, TJ Mitchell, Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of ARDA Biomaterials, explains how they are turning beer waste into a scalable, plastic-free leather alternative.
After completing a PhD in supramolecular chemistry at Oxford, Mitchell joined the startup accelerator Entrepreneur First, where he met his co-founder Brett Cotten.
Leveraging Mitchell’s chemistry expertise, ARDA transforms proteins from waste grain from breweries into a material as strong and flexible as leather that is bio-based and plastic-free.
From making two-litre samples in Mitchell’s kitchen to partnering with Beavertown Brewery on a limited run of cardholders, ARDA has scaled fast. The company raised £1.1m in seed funding led by Clean Growth Fund and secured an £800k Innovate UK grant, followed by a £4m round led by Oyster Bay, early investors in Oatly.
Now part of AB InBev’s 100+ Accelerator, ARDA is running a paid pilot using waste grain from major global beer brands. The company envisions decentralised facilities co-located with breweries, turning local waste into local materials.
Arda’s goal is to reach price parity with plastic leather, then undercut animal leather which would achieve circularity at industrial scale. “The first half of our process looks like a brewery, the second like a plastics plant,” he says. “That means we can scale fast without reinventing the system.”
Website: https://arda.bio/
ST Website: www.sustainabletimes.co.uk
Contact: daisy.moll@sustainabletimes.co.uk
“I call it the Cinderella of solar”
This week on Profit Meets Purpose, Daisy Moll sits down with Christophe Williams, Founder and CEO of Naked Energy, to explore why solar thermal is the forgotten Cinderella in the clean energy story…
Williams doesn’t come from the typical engineering mould. Before launching his clean tech venture, he led award-winning ad campaigns for Sony, Microsoft and BMW — even earning a Guinness World Record for a Toshiba commercial. But a chance conversation in 2009 opened his eyes to “the big heat problem” the fact that half the world’s energy goes into producing heat and led to the creation of Naked Energy.
Today, Naked Energy is redefining solar with Virtu, a hybrid technology that combines photovoltaic and thermal technology to generate both electricity and heat, delivering up to four times the carbon savings of standard panels. With 24 patents, TÜV certification, and £30 million raised, the company has already completed more than 150 projects across 10 countries, from luxury hotels to the British Library and even Wimbledon.
But scaling clean tech isn’t just about engineering. Williams talks candidly about navigating the “valley of death” between innovation and mass adoption and why education, policy, and patient capital are key to unlocking solar heat’s potential.
He also shares how Naked Energy’s new software platforms, Clarity 24/7 and Clarity 360, are turning data into design, slashing project timelines and helping organisations that, as he puts it, “want to decarbonise but don’t know where to start.”
From the challenges of grid electrification to the opportunities of heat decarbonisation, this episode dives into what it takes to scale climate innovation and why Williams believes solar thermal is finally ready for its moment in the sun.
Website: www.sustainabletimes.co.uk
Naked Energy: https://nakedenergy.com/
Contact: daisy.moll@sustainabletimes.co.uk
“E-waste is the world’s fastest-growing waste stream.”
Entrepreneur Asad Hamir is tackling the growing e-waste crisis with his fourth venture Klyk, a circular IT company helping SMEs cut costs, extend the life of technology, and unlock the hidden value in discarded devices.
Asad explains how Klyk’s model replaces new purchases with refurbished ones, manages those assets in life, and then collects, repurposes, or donates them at end-of-life. This approach not only reduces waste but monetising every stage of a device’s lifecycle. With target customers among fast-growing SMEs, Klyk helps founders save money, stretch limited runways, and adopt IT that’s both affordable and sustainable. Their strength also lies in customer support, positioning themselves as an outsourced IT team for their clients.
Klyk’s growth comes at a time when right-to-repair laws and digital product passports are reshaping the tech industry, but Asad argues big manufacturers are still holding back true circularity by controlling parts and limiting accessibility. To counter this, Klyk has built out its IT services arm to reduce reliance on hardware sales and create sustainable recurring revenue.
Bootstrapped with £1 million of his own capital, Asad has kept operations lean and prioritising services over hardware margins. He shares lessons for both founders and investors: stay focused, build on your strengths, and recognise that circular models represent one of the most profitable opportunities in business today.
Klyk Website: https://helloklyk.com
Sustainable Times Website: www.sustainabletimes.co.uk
Contact: daisy.moll@sustainabletimes.co.uk
Rise Awards: https://riseawards2025.awardstage.com/#!/home
On this week’s episode of Profit Meets Purpose, we are joined by Matthew Journey, CEO of Levistor.
He shares how a capital-light scaling model and breakthrough “shatterproof” flywheel technology could reshape the future of energy storage.
“Energy storage is one of the cornerstone technologies we need for electrification. The difference between when we generate power and when we use it is now becoming critical and you have to make up that difference with storage,” explains Matthew.
Levistor, founded in 2021, has already demonstrated its flywheel technology with National Highways and is now raising a seed round to move into commercial expansion. Unlike lithium-ion batteries, which wear out after around 1,000 charge cycles, Levistor’s flywheels can achieve more than a million cycles making them well suited to high-intensity applications such as EV charging, rail, and data centers.
From modular design to a “recipe-based” manufacturing approach, Levistor’s strategy avoids the burden of building factories, focusing instead on mass production to bring the cost down.
Matthew emphasises the magnitude of the shift to electrification. “We have built our entire civilisational energy infrastructure on fossil fuels. And now we have to change it to electricity in 10 years. The size of that problem is enormous.”
If Levistor can mass-produce flywheels at scale, it could become a defining player in the transition to net zero.
This episode is sponsored by Sustainable Wealth Group.
Levistor Website: https://levistor.com/
Sustainable Wealth Group: https://sustainablewealthgroup.com/
Sustainable Times: https://www.sustainabletimes.co.uk/
Contact: daisy.moll@sustainabletimes.co.uk
This week on Profit Meets Purpose, Alexandra French, CEO of Xampla, explains how a Cambridge spin-out is utilising 15 years of research into plant proteins to create plastic alternatives.
Their Moro technology is a plastic-free coating that works like plastic during use, then breaks down naturally once it’s no longer needed. Xampla’s technology has a range of other uses from vitamins to dishwasher tablets.
Fresh from raising a $14m Series A, Xampla is now looking to scale internationally. With regulations around plastic tightening and PFAS under fire, Xampla’s drop-in, heat-sealable materials let brands switch without requiring any changes.
French explains why Xampla scaled through a licensing business model, partnering with established chemical manufacturers to reach ton-scale fast, and how real-world collaborations with companies like Just Eat and Gousto are already putting Morro into consumers’ hands.
Plus, French discusses the impact of the first Plastic Treaty negotiations earlier this year, and provides clarity on what “fully biodegradable” actually means and we dig into the hidden plastics most people miss, from cup linings to PVOH films and fragrance microcapsules.
Xampla website: https://xampla.com/
Sustainable Times: www.sustainabletimes.co.uk
Contact: daisy.moll@sustainabletimes.co.uk
Anthony, co-founder and CEO of SeedLegals, joins Profit Meets Purpose for a candid look at how founders raise, build, and scale. He isn’t a lawyer—he previously led the development of BBC iPlayer and has built multiple startups—and that outsider perspective has helped him see both the product and the customer’s needs more clearly. SeedLegals streamlines legal documentation so founders can focus on what really matters: securing investment, hiring, and growing with fewer mistakes.
Anthony shares his obsession with customer-driven development, illustrated by his well-known “Lindt chocolate test”: bribe users with chocolate, watch them struggle, fix the top three issues, and repeat until the product clicks. He argues this rapid feedback loop beats expensive research cycles, and that in startups, “building stuff” is often a sign you haven’t validated enough. Better, he says, to test with low-code tools or even human-in-the-loop processes, discover what people truly want, then automate once demand is proven.
He also unpacks current fundraising trends. The market is far tougher than the boom of 2021. Higher interest rates mean safer returns elsewhere, and while AI attracts attention, it also adds noise and uncertainty. Today’s investors expect to see revenue earlier, so Anthony advises founders to raise only what they need, keep operations lean, and build traction before approaching venture capital.
This week on Profit Meets Purpose George Thompson, founder and CEO of GT Wings, shares how their technology is sailing the shipping industry into a more sustainable future.
As shipping braces for tougher climate rules, GT Wings is showing that compact, high-thrust wind tech can turn compliance into competitive advantage.
The clean shipping boom has long been promised and is slow to arrive. But if you ask George, the inflection point is in sight and regulation is the accelerant.
“The market’s really coming in 2027. That’s when the regulation hits hard,” Thompson says. For shipowners and operators, he adds, “the cost of non-compliance is growing”. Those two forces, looming rules and rising penalties, are reshaping buying decisions at sea, creating space for technologies that deliver verifiable fuel and emissions cuts.
Borrowing from high-lift aeronautics, GT Wings uses active flow-control fans that “both suck and blow the air at different places”, maintaining attached flow and generating greater thrust from a smaller device. That extra thrust reduces engine load, and therefore fuel use, by “anywhere between five to 35 percent”, depending on route and weather conditions.
Website: www.sustainabletimes.co.uk
GT Wings Website: https://gtwings.com/
Contact: daisy.moll@sustainabletimes.co.uk
“The biggest problem of our time is carbon dioxide. To remove it you need to create a product more valuable than the carbon itself.”
On this week’s episode of Profit Meets Purpose, I’m joined by Harvey Hodd, serial entrepreneur and founder of RIVAN, a company that’s reimagining the future of fuels. Instead of drilling the earth, RIVAN is “mining the sky,” building synthetic fuels from captured carbon and renewable energy with the ambition of producing the cheapest synthetic fuels in the world.
Harvey shares how his team is taking a fully vertically integrated approach, designing and building everything from carbon capture systems and hydrogen units to chemical reactors and even their own solar supply, to cut costs, scale faster, and make synthetic fuels affordable.
We also dive into:
Why drop-in fuels that are chemically identical to fossil fuels could decarbonise industries overnight
The challenge of making synthetic fuels cost-competitive at scale
How RIVAN’s pilot plant in Wiltshire is already producing tens of thousands of litres of hydrogen daily
What it will take to shift the global energy market and incentivise oil and gas to change
Website: www.sustainabletimes.co.uk
RIVAN Website: https://rivan.com/
Contact: daisy.moll@sustainabletimes.co.uk
“If every company takes even a small step, like 1%, that creates momentum for much bigger change.”
On this week’s episode of Profit Meets Purpose, I’m joined by Kate Williams, CEO of 1% for the Planet. We dive into how businesses around the world are committing 1% of their revenues to environmental causes—and why that simple pledge has become such a powerful force for change.
Kate shares the evolving role of philanthropy alongside corporate sustainability, how the focus of giving has expanded from traditional conservation to climate adaptation and resilient communities, and why trust and accountability are at the heart of the 1% logo.
We also discuss the organisation’s global growth, the ripple effects on member companies, and what the future of corporate responsibility could look like if every business paid their “rent to the planet.”
Tune in for a conversation about progress, not perfection, and why small commitments can lead to transformative impact.
Website: www.sustainabletimes.co.uk
1% Website: https://www.onepercentfortheplanet.org
Contact: daisy.moll@sustainabletimes.co.uk
"We are a small company with an absolutely Goliath product."
I’m joined by Bob Long, Executive Chairman of O-Hx, and an engineer with over 50 years’ experience in applied thermodynamics.
In 2017, Bob set out to solve what he calls “the holy grail of the renewable energy industry”, thermal energy storage. The result is the Energy Vault: a high-density thermal battery that can store and rapidly release cooling power, unlocking resilience and efficiency for industries where failure isn’t an option.
From vertical farms in Dundee to pharmaceutical giants and prospective NHS sites, O-Hx’s patented technology offers a cool storage solution. Bob shares how a chance client challenge sparked a four-year R&D journey, why surface area is the secret to thermal efficiency, and how AI-driven energy management is helping customers tap into the cheapest and greenest power on the grid.
We also discuss what it takes to commercialise an entirely new category of infrastructure, why chilled water is becoming a $600 billion global market, and how O-Hx plans to expand across every continent within four years. If you’re interested in the intersection of engineering ingenuity, sustainability, and scalable business models, this episode is for you.
This episode is sponsored by Sustainable Wealth Group.
Website: https://www.sustainabletimes.co.uk/all-news
O-HX Website:https://o-hx.com/
Contact: daisy.moll@sustainabletimes.co.uk
RISE Awards: https://riseawards2025.awardstage.com/#!/home
“We looked beyond our own supply chain to explore how we could drive behaviour change across our community of millions.”
In this episode of Profit Meets Purpose, we speak with Salah Said, Director of Sustainability at Klarna, the Swedish born, fintech giant.
We explore how Klarna is looking beyond its own supply chain to consider the powerful role it can play in shaping the behaviour of its hundreds of millions of users. Salah shares insights into Klarna’s latest resell technology, which makes it easy for users to relist items they’ve purchased, demonstrating how thoughtful product design can reduce friction and encourage more circular consumption.
He explains why a payments company like Klarna is deeply invested in sustainability from a business perspective, how they’re collaborating with startups to drive innovation, and offers valuable advice for founders building purpose-driven companies from the ground up.
We also discuss:
Why Klarna shifted focus from carbon calculators to circular design
The role of data in making sustainability profitable and measurable
How Klarna partners with startups to create trusted sustainability tools
Why integrating sustainability is no longer a marketing vehicle
RISE Awards: https://riseawards2025.awardstage.com/#!/home
Website: www.sustainabletimes.co.uk
Klarna: https://www.klarna.com/uk/about-us/
Contact: daisy.moll@sustainabletimes.co.uk
“If we can park a kayak in a patch of seaweed… we could do that with floating wind turbines.”
In this episode of Profit Meets Purpose, we dive deep, literally and figuratively, into a game-changing idea from Harland Evans, founder of Nature Based Limited.
Nature Based Limited aims to address the high cost and vulnerability of floating wind turbines, which are expensive to maintain and often break due to constant ocean movement, by using kelp as a natural stabiliser. Alternative, traditional solutions, rely on heavy engineering or vast amounts of concrete, which are costly, and carbon-intensive.
Kelp, on the other hand, is nature’s own breakwater. It dampens wave energy, captures carbon, boosts biodiversity, and doesn’t interfere with the turbines themselves. We explored how this isn’t just a nature story, it's a finance story too. If nature-based solutions can deliver predictable, infrastructure-style returns, they can unlock serious capital. Evans argues for positioning ecosystems as functioning infrastructure.
Throughout the episode, we discussed the early steps from concept to company: validating the science, winning over skeptical engineers, and building a team with complementary skills, including a co-founder with 15 years of renewable energy experience.
This episode is a blueprint for how bold ideas could reshape not just sustainability but the economics of climate solutions themselves.
RISE Awards: https://riseawards2025.awardstage.com/#!/home
Website: www.sustainabletimes.co.uk
Contact: daisy.moll@sustainabletimes.co.uk
“Risk is something you manage, it’s not something to fear. But women are often made to feel terrified of it.”
In this episode of Profit Meets Purpose, Daisy Moll speaks with Sarah Turner, CEO of Angel Academe, and Tom Britton, co-founder of SyndicateRoom, about their new collaboration, the UK’s first EIS fund focused on female founders.
The fund is built on data. Despite clear evidence that women-led businesses are more capital-efficient and often outperform, all-female founding teams still receive less than 2% of UK venture capital. This conversation explores why that gap persists and what this new fund is doing to change it.
Sarah and Tom share how they combined Angel Academe’s track record in backing women-led startups with SyndicateRoom’s expertise in fund structuring to create a model that offers diversification, EIS tax benefits, and impact-driven investment.
They discuss the biases that shape funding decisions, why traditional VC networks often fail women, and how syndicate investing and investor education, especially for women, can shift the landscape.
Website: sustainabletimes.co.uk/all-news
Angel Academe: https://www.angelacademe.com/
Syndicate Room: https://www.syndicateroom.com/
RISE Awards: riseawards2025.awardstage.com
Contact: daisy.moll@sustainabletimes.co.uk
“What we don’t do is tell you off for your behaviour. We’ll never do that because then people switch off.”
I'm joined by Oli Cook, CEO and co-founder of ekko, the London-born fintech reimagining how we engage with climate responsibility, one transaction at a time.
Ekko has identified a powerful consumer touchpoint: the moment of purchase. By integrating directly into payment systems, ekko allows users to see the carbon impact of each transaction and take immediate action. From offsetting the footprint of your morning coffee to balancing out the emissions from your latest tech upgrade.
Oli shares how this simple yet scalable idea could channel over £1 billion into global nature and climate projects. We also dive into ekko’s unconventional founding journey, his leadership lessons from HSBC, and what scaling sustainability looks like in a heavily regulated, high-volume financial world.
If you’re interested in the intersection of fintech, behaviour change, and climate action this one’s for you.
This episode is sponsored by Sustainable Wealth Group.
Website: https://www.sustainabletimes.co.uk/all-news
ekko Website: https://ekko.earth/
Contact: daisy.moll@sustainabletimes.co.uk
RISE Awards: https://riseawards2025.awardstage.com/#!/home
"Hire based on your current needs not your future customers"
If you're a founder looking to grow your team, this episode of Profit Meets Purpose is for you. This week I’m joined by Cherry Swayne, founder of Above and Beyond, a recruitment firm that helps climate tech startups hire the right people at the right time.
Cherry takes a thoughtful, strategic approach to recruitment, treating it not just as a box-ticking exercise but understanding it as an important part of a startup’s growth plan. She talks about how she works with founders to get hiring right, and why it’s so important to think about your team early—not just when you're desperate to fill a gap.
Her biggest piece of advice?
Don’t hire for hypothetical futures - hire for what you need now!
Cherry also shares the kinds of conversations she has with people trying to move into climate tech but unsure where to start. As a founder herself, Cherry brings a grounded, practical perspective that’s especially valuable for early-stage companies trying to scale with purpose.
RISE Awards: https://riseawards2025.awardstage.com/#!/home
Contact: daisy.moll@sustainabletimes.co.uk
Website: www.sustainabletimes.co.uk
Above and Beyond Recruitment: https://www.aboveandbeyondrec.co.uk/
"We asked founders what they needed, then invited investors, marketers, and sales coaches who could help immediately.”
Juliette Devillard is revolutionising the UK’s climate innovation scene through her initiative, Climate Connection, which focuses on creating meaningful spaces for climate professionals to connect, collaborate, and support each other. After relocating from the U.S. to London, Devillard noticed a fragmented climate community. She began with the launch of a small event for 30 professionals, which quickly revealed the strong demand for such spaces. This grew into the UK’s largest regular event for climate innovation, offering in-person meetups, dinners, and curated sessions aimed at fostering quality relationships among founders, funders, and other stakeholders.
Devillard also champions gender equality, notably through her Female Founders Dinner, addressing the underfunding of women-led startups. Beyond this, she emphasises the wellbeing of all founders within the startup ecosystem, founding Founders Connect, a series where entrepreneurs discuss the realities of running a business without any investors in the room.
She offers valuable insights for founders, coupled with a comprehensive understanding of the future direction of the ecosystem. For instance, we explore the need for innovative financing models that can support startups through their Series A, B, and C rounds, ensuring sustainable growth at each stage.
https://hubs.li/Q03sQRSY0
"If we can make nature an investable asset class then all of a sudden the big asset owners of this world can start to make a 2% allocation."
In this week's episode I was joined by fellow geographer Robert Gardner. In this episode, he shares his unique journey from navigating hyperinflation in 1980s Argentina to reshaping the world of finance through environmental restoration.
Drawing on childhood lessons in currency and a career spanning Deutsche Bank to asset management, Rob shares what he has learnt, and put in his book Freedom, about financial literacy.
He introduces listeners to his latest venture, Rebalance Earth, which aims to make nature an investable asset class, transforming ecosystems like moss wetlands and oyster reefs into financial infrastructure. The conversation explores how investing in nature can build climate resilience, drive biodiversity, and offer solid returns, all while redefining what we value in our financial systems.
Rise Awards: https://riseawards2025.awardstage.com/#!/home
Rebalance Earth:
https://www.rebalance.earth/
Contact: daisy.moll@sustainabletimes.co.uk
"If you are that ambitious generalist, that wants to actually do things and build quickly, then start-ups are for you"
In today's episode of Profit Meets Purpose I was joined by Peter Wood from the Graduate Guide.
We spoke about all things working in the startup world, the doors it can open, the ambition it can spark, and the opportunity to work on something real, fast, and with influence.
This one’s for anyone thinking about joining the startup world, and why it might be the best decision you make.
We discuss how his podcast turned into a company, why you have absolutely nothing to lose by asking Google to come on your non-existent podcast, and why thinking about your skills is often more useful than trying to pick a perfect job title.
Peter shares why being a bit of a generalist is actually a strength, how graduates can bring real value to early-stage companies, and what it means to back yourself even when you’re not 100% sure how it’ll work out.
We also touch on:
How to get hired by a startup
Why curiosity gets you further than confidence
Rise Awards Website: https://riseawards2025.awardstage.com/#!/home
Sustainable Times:
www.sustainabletimes.co.uk
Contact:
Daisy.moll@sustainabletimes.co.uk
“Angel investing is not just for multi-millionaires”
This episode of Profit Meets Purpose features Emma Mee, Head of Membership and Marketing at Green Angel Ventures, the UK’s largest angel syndicate focused exclusively on climate tech. With a background that spans corporate sustainability, venture building, and climate innovation, Emma brings a grounded yet urgent perspective on what it means to fund and scale technologies that will define the future.
We explore how Green Angel Ventures leverages its syndicate model to combine capital with deep sector expertise, allowing over 300 members with money but with critical due diligence and advisory input.
Emma speaks frankly about the exit bottleneck that is constraining capital recycling and slowing the growth of promising companies.
Another core theme is the cultural mismatch between startups and corporates. Emma argues that while collaboration is essential for scale, the two sides often struggle to work effectively due to fundamentally different operating speeds, expectations, and incentives.
We also discuss diversity in investment. While women make up only 14 percent of UK angel investors, Green Angel Ventures has a higher proportion at 24 percent, though Emma is clear that more work is needed. She unpacks why women often approach investment differently, what barriers remain, and why increasing female participation is not just about equity but about the long-term resilience and reach of the portfolio.
RISE Awards: https://riseawards2025.awardstage.com/#!/home
Website: https://www.sustainabletimes.co.uk/
Contact: daisy.moll@sustainabletimes.co.uk
