Reducing Climate Change with Existing Solutions
“CleanTech solutions already exist that can dramatically reduce climate change. The tech isn’t the problem. But the best sustainable tech doesn’t do any good in a lab. They need the financing and the marketing of those solutions so they can reach the masses.”
That’s what Ricardo Chut with Choice Clean Tech is all about. They don’t develop the technology – they help them scale and get market penetration. Sort of like Tech Transfer but for CleanTech.
From our conversation while visiting São Paulo, interviewing interesting individuals for our micro-podcast series, Impact Stories.
Podcast Transcript
Jacob: [00:00:00] Okay. I’m here with Ricardo Chute, with Choice. And why don’t you introduce yourself?
Ricardo: Thank you. I’m happy to be here. Our endeavor aims to help accelerate sustainability. We come from the marketing angle and the business development angle of clean technologies. We do have the solutions, but it’s taking too long for us to implement them in the market and in society.
We’re really a scaling mechanism to sustainability, their bankability level, which is a very important thing because those solutions come from an area that’s not the financial area. Suddenly there’s a brilliant guy who develops a brilliant new way to create plastics like sustainable plastics from well, plants. This guy needs a whole team to market, translate that technology to a proper business so they can actually get funded. [00:01:00]
On one hand, you have a marketplace in which we show that the sustainable solutions that are selected, mature, advanced, et cetera. And on the other hand, we have a marketing machine to drive people towards this marketplace, help the clean tech to scale. So they can reach more markets faster. They can reach more people faster. They can reach more investors faster. They can reach more strategic partnerships faster.
Jacob: Give me an example of one of these companies.
Ricardo: For example, there’s an entrepreneur who found out how to break the water molecule with low frequencies and which can generate a green hydrogen very green hydrogen in a very simple and cheap way. One technology that can then be deployed in several areas.
Jacob: What is the business model for choice?
Ricardo: Our business model is pretty simple. Some companies do have some budget to hire some services from our [00:02:00] teams. Some not. Those who do not, we partner up those companies that we really believe in will be part of the financial outcomes later on.
So some companies are really inspiring and we want to do everything we can to help them. So we invest our resources in these companies.
Jacob: What’s your pitch to an investor that has a lot of different options? Why should they put their money into Choice?
Ricardo: The funders do not know how to assess the technologies. The funders do not know how to understand really the depths of the technology and how it will impact or not in the market. So choice has a differential in these areas. We bring both the scientific and financial expertise and also the marketing to increase the numbers of cleantech that can be funded.
Choice is closing a few gaps. There is a [00:03:00] gap between the capital markets and the technologies. Although we hear a lot of noise about this, a lot of these impact funds face problems to really assess, to really know what are bankable, feasible and really sustainable projects, really sustainable companies.
So we have a strong mechanism to help fill this gap, help bring this tax to the level these capital markets need. Once they’re ready, we have a whole marketing ecosystem to help them scale up their operations and sell in many places. We’re investing in marketing and distribution in a new way.
Marketing has a very strong role in sustainability issues. We were led to think that sustainability is an expensive thing. Which is complete nonsense because sustainability is [00:04:00] cheaper in many, many, many cases. The whole ecosystem project is a macro marketing strategy, to actually change this status quo.
So, we need to change our way of thinking, our way of communicating. The technology is out there every day and we see wonderful solutions. One year and a half ago, I had the opportunity to give a lecture in a university in the countryside of San Paolo. I began listing some of the solutions that were around us and some within our portfolio, some we wanted to work with but not yet , the energy of the room changed because people suddenly saw. Hey, there’s hope, there’s hope. And then it was a very thrilling thing. We do know there are some wonderful financial opportunities in this area. Wonderful, wonderful, because we see solutions that can really solve several sustainability issues, and also they can be profitable.
They can [00:05:00] both Choice is a profit driven company, economical sustainability. People are understanding that sustainability is viable and also can be profitable. So we’re combining saving the world with making money. And this is a win-win situation.
Jacob: If someone was interested in learning more about Choice, where do they find you?
Ricardo: Choiceecosystems .com or Richardo Chut at LinkedIn.
Jacob: Well, thank you for sharing a bit about Choice and looking forward to seeing more things come to life.
Ricardo: Thank you. Thank you very much.
Jacob: Awesome. Thank you.
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