Episode 92: Sharing the love with Supercool

Molly Wood Voice-Over: 

Welcome to Everybody in the Pool, the podcast where we dive deep into the innovative solutions and the brilliant minds who are tackling the climate crisis head-on. I'm Molly Wood. 

This week recently I was lucky enough to be a guest on a podcast that’s well kind of like mine! And today, I’m excited to interview the host of that show who’s also a longtime clean tech entrepreneur because the entire premise of this show is that storytelling matters 

Introducing people to solutions MATTERS spotlighting people doing great work matters and as I believe I have said before we need everybody in the pool. Let’s get to it. 

Josh 

I'm Josh Dorfman. I am currently the co-founder and CEO of Supercool. And so we are building a media company, podcast, newsletter around climate solutions that cut carbon, boost the bottom line, good for business. There's a business case and improve modern life so that we're not just talking about solving climate change for the sake of avoiding a doomsday scenario, but actually hopefully moving toward a much more positive, exciting future that we want to live in.

Molly Wood

So on that note, what inspired you to start this media company before we get to your long background in sustainability work?

Josh

The kind of the quick inspiration was so prior to super cool, I'd spent three years building a company called planted and we were focusing on making carbon negative building materials. So identifying something that could grow much faster than trees, which we did. found this crazy grass that grows nine to 10 times faster than trees. So we could pull carbon from the atmosphere. And then I had started the company with two guys from SpaceX. And so we thought, well,

We've got some pretty good manufacturing chops here, some hard tech chops. Why don't we go build a new production capability that's entirely electric, no smoke stack, completely rethink what a manufacturing plant looks like for engineered materials like plywood or oriented strand board, the things we build homes out of, and lock away carbon inside the walls and roofs of places we live, work and play. And so I had spent three years working that really thinking about how do you scale these kinds of solutions. And when I stepped down as CEO last year, I looked around and said, well, who else is doing this and what other industries? And I was delighted to find that for many different reasons, I think we've reached a moment where climate solutions really are scaling. They've had a decade plus to go from pilot stage to commercial stage to scale.

That's different. We're seeing cities, states, lots of local governments that have implemented climate action plans and created living laboratories for change and a lot of exciting stuff happening at a local level. And so I just thought, my gosh, there's all this incredible progress underway. I think the stories need to be packaged in a way where they can be digested. Or maybe I should say it differently. I think that there's a real business case to be understood now around how the low carbon economy is progressing.

What's driving real change, but from a carbon and business perspective. So how do we create compelling stories, wrap some data around that, package it all up so it can be digested to say, hey, this is de-risked, you could do this too. This is really real. And so that's kind how we got here.

Molly Wood

Talk about, I mean, I think we're on the same page with a lot of this, but talk about why we think that is missing from the kind of journalism that I used to do or the outlets that we're reading now.

Josh

Why is it missing? That is a good question. The thing that really strikes me is that, so in our pitch deck, we have a quote from the United Nations Global Communication Department, a study they put out in conjunction with other really smart people that said the best way to get people to engage with climate change is to talk about solutions.

If you look at how the UN communicates around climate change, rarely is solutions in that mix. That's for understandable reasons. There's a UN intergovernmental panel on climate change. They're doing serious work, but yet across that transnational organization, rarely do we focus on solutions. The why, I mean, you tell me, you probably know better than me, but I know that doom, gloom and doom sells. I think there's a bias to

I still think there's just a bias that doesn't appreciate how much progress is actually being made. I don't know why, but I do think that that really is the case. It's just hard for people to accept that this is really happening. And a few years ago, I was talking to Eric Rosten, who's an editor over at Bloomberg Green. And we were talking about this and he's like, it's crazy because what's happening around the clean energy transition, decarbonization,

is the greatest story of innovation in the history of humankind. mean, is like the pace and what is happening is the greatest story, right? Now the question is, is it going to go fast enough to, you know, solve, to address the climate challenge before we face, you know, consequences that we're going to be really unhappy with. Now, maybe that's part of the reason why the solutions don't get covered quite as much, but I don't know. Like that's like something in there is missing.

Right? that's, and I think like where you step in, where I step in, where others are stepping in and say, how do we, how do we fill this gap to just tell the people like, Hey, there's another side to this thing that, is really exciting.

Molly Wood

Yeah, people are working on it. Really smart people working on really cool things. What I mean, I, I could digress into a long conversation here about hope casting, but I will not write. Like I understand that we are in the business of believing that some and probably not all, like we have to be honest about that, but some of these solutions will come to pass and when they do. then this is, want to touch on the other part of your thesis, which is yes, there's innovation happening. Yes, there's ingenuity happening.

and it will not just solve this problem, it will create a better world. Like, what are you seeing that makes you think like, this is in fact the world I want to live in?

Josh 

Yeah.

Josh 

Well, if you ask the academics or the policy folks, it all gets wrapped up in these co-benefits. so someone was just asking me that recently. were saying, I felt an oddly framed question. Why should we focus on solving climate now or backing these technologies when there's all these other things to go solve that seem more pressing? And I thought about that. I said, OK, let's just thought experiment. Let's just take an example. Let's take Africa, where there's

1.2 billion people, 600 million give or take either have access to an unreliable energy grid or no grid at all, right? These are the stats we all know. Okay, so there are companies stepping into that breach. One of the companies that we really love is company D-Lite that is probably the biggest solar company on the planet. They've created solar products and solar enabled products like lights with little solar panels you put on essentially the roof of your home out in a rural village in Kenya or...

Tanzania, right? And then so you get light or you can, you know, there's companies working on cook stoves so you can cook without kerosene or light without kerosene, right? That's all great, right? That's great for like renewable energy. But you could also say, you know what? There's a lot of kerosene being burnt in homes and that's really unhealthy, right? There's these people in these homes and it's really, we know it's bad for their health or people are running diesel generators and that's really bad for people's health. Okay, well, how do you solve for health?

Well, here's solar and the co- so one way or the other, right? Software health co-benefit is like get renewable energy. Want renewable energy? The co-benefit is better health and like people with solar where there's just no energy and kids are going to go to school and all the benefits we know around education and women empowerment, right? All of this stuff that we know can flow from renewable energy. So it's just all intrinsically tied together. I don't think it can be separated and these co-benefits, right? That's part of the thesis. They're amazing.

And I just see many, different examples of.

Molly Wood

Yeah. What else are you excited about? On your show, we talked a lot about the energy transition when I was on Supercool. We can do that here. And also, what are you seeing that kind of gets you fired up out there?

Josh

There's a couple of things that get me fired up and it's looking at these different layers of innovation. And so you could look at this like hard tech layer of innovation and say, man, okay, there's all this cool technology. That's one thing, really exciting. I really love the layer of innovation that is about, I guess you have to call it kind of coalition building in a way, or this like core competence.

that I feel like is not fully appreciated. I'll give you an example. We were doing a show on net zero energy schools and these two net zero, two of the first in the country, they were built in inner city Baltimore, a place where the schools that are being replaced border I-95, they're loud, you hear the cars going, it's just like a, it was a terrible learning environment. And now they've got like two of the most cutting edge buildings just.

Nevermind net zero, mean, but just like incredibly modern buildings in which to learn for these K through eight schools. And we had the architect on who was the project manager overseeing this. And so we're asking her like, okay, how do you do this in a world-class way? Because you have to sustain, you have to bring together.

Like you have to bring together the engineers, have to bring together the landscape architects, you have to bring together the city and the permitting and the community and the principal and the school board and the mayor's office. For years, right, for years to get this thing across the finish line. How? Like how do you do that? And she lit up because she was like, we're really, really good at that. Here's some of the things that we do. And like, what are some of the things you do? We bring like...

Molly Wood

Mm-hmm.

Josh

Big, we would try everything, Josh. We'd bring billboards and donuts to the drop-off line for the kids to talk to the parents. I'm like, hold on, on. Everybody's racing to drop off their kids and run into the school and you're out there handing out donuts. She's like, we did everything we possibly could to get everyone to buy into this project. And it worked and you get these world-class things. So I think that's an underappreciated core competence, an innovation layer, because everybody needs to be in the pool. And if you're really trying to do big systemic change that actually drives real progress. No one does that alone. you have to be, someone has to be incredible at keeping that coalition together and getting everybody to operate at their best for very, very long periods of time. I, and I see that, you know, constantly, cause we're, cause now we're looking for it because I just find that to be, you know, an extraordinary thing. you know, that's one thing that jumps out at me. The other thing that I would just say is

Molly Wood 

I could not love that more. I am fond of saying that despair is top down, but hope is bottom up. And I do think that we're starting to see this kind of decentralization, this idea that solutions don't have to be pushed upon you, that you can in fact say, setting everything else aside, this is just better, cheaper, more efficient, more innovative, more interesting.

And also that presents a storytelling challenge or its own kind of storytelling challenge, because you got to find all those things and you have to sort of like, you know, it's it's a very, it just is an interesting world. I think when you have entire States, entire countries, entire cities, just saying like, we're going to try our own thing. I don't know where I'm going with this except that, except that like, it's definitely happening and it's a big deal. And I think that I, if I am guilty of anything on my show and maybe you experienced this too.

I'm a little guilty of being a bit of a technocrat. Like, well, we'll just get this technology solution and everyone will do it.

Josh

Yeah, I don't know if I actually do feel that way only because well, I guess what comes up for me years ago when I had this TV show and Brandon and put a lot of heart and effort and time into called the Lazy Environmentalist. So, consumer focus trying to help all of us lazy Americans go green. I mean, on the one hand, it was like it was great.

Molly Wood

which I'm pretty sure we now know is not a thing.

Josh

And I think it was important work and other people were doing that really important work and continue to do that important work. But if I look at a consumer market today, are we really that much further along in terms of like our sustainable shopping or consumption than we were a decade and a half ago? I'm not so sure. So I don't know that I'm inherently like that I inherently feel like these solutions will just take root. What I find continue to kind of probe is how, is really the how. How is it having, and like this week's show, I'm really excited about, we talked to this company called Upway, and I just thought, and it just got really fascinating the more we talked about it. So Upway on the face it, it seems like a pretty simple business. It's a reseller of used e-bikes, right? So like,

What's interesting about that, there's a of things interesting about that, but what's interesting about that is like there are nearly as many e-bikes, or nearly as many e-bikes were bought in America in 2024 as electric cars, right? Like one million plus, right? Some people say 1.7 million, 1.1 million, there are 1.3 million EVs sold in America in 2024. So you have this other electric mobility thing happening and it's growing faster than cars. It's growing like 35 % year over year, right?

So this company is like, oh yeah, we're gonna be a reseller of e-bikes. Okay, well that doesn't sound very complicated. Like I could be a reseller of e-bikes. I'd just go buy a bike, fix it up, it on Facebook or Craigslist and whatever. Like why does that matter? So we start probing this and it turns out this is company from, these are Uber guys who, do you remember when Uber went to Paris and it was like.

total mayhem and like controversy because they were like disreputable like the taxi cab like everyone was striking and it was unions. The guys who started Upway opened France and Paris for Uber. They're right, right. They're here. Let's say they're here to go fast, right? They're here. They're here to go fast.

Molly Wood

Yep.

Molly Wood

okay. So they're here to mess stuff up. it, you know, positive, let's say, let's call it a positive provocation.

There we go, okay.

Josh 

And they're here to, let's also say, create a better user experience. Maybe that, right? But when I talk to these guys about what's happening in Europe, they're like, dude, if you go to Paris or you go to Berlin, e-bike adoption is like iPhone adoption. It is crazy. But here in the States now, it's also growing really fast. And so you say, OK, well, what are you guys doing? And they're like, if we're going to, the role that we play, we come in, we're like the Carvana for e-bikes, right?

But like, it's not just about, so we have to make it super convenient. So we're gonna, you know, give you, we're gonna ship this e-bike to you like 99 % like complete. Cause like, you're, you know, you're a novice, you're a dummy, you're me, right? So like, I don't want to assemble a bike. I just want to screw on the wheels, maybe, you know, turn the handlebars and go. If it's any harder, I'm not gonna do it, right? And I want to know, obviously I can return it if like, I don't like it. And, you know,

Molly Wood

Yep.

Josh

I would like a really long warranty on this thing, they give you. like used bikes never get a warranty. They give you like a year warranty. Okay, cool. That gives me peace of mind. But what they do for the industry is they say to like electric or Aventon or all the rad power bikes, you name it, like, hey, we'll be your re-commerce engine. Someone like, you you're online first. Someone buys a bike from you. They don't like it. We'll send them the shipping label. We'll take it back. We'll clean it up and we'll get it ready for sale. And now they're bringing this infrastructure to an industry that really needs it, right?

And so then you say, okay, well, that's all well and good, but like, what else? And they're like, well, we cut the price like pretty much in half, right? So like, we've kind of like, like we fully de-rested this thing. And so, so where I'm going with all this is like, they're just, they're doing this re-commerce piece, which in like the fashion world is its own business. It's just like part of their model and their whole thing is like, okay, here's this cool tech people do like e-bikes, but a lot of people have never tried them before.

It's like we have to get people on them. How do we make it like super convenient, super efficient, really affordable, remove all the friction, right? To like actually get to adoption. And that's where I think for super cool, I love focusing there. Like tell me how you remove the friction to get to adoption. Cause that's to me, like, I don't just believe that that's going to happen. I know it's a long-winded answer, but I believe that that's really where, you know, the, companies that are thinking from a consumer lens, not just a tech lens.

are the ones who are gonna start winning.

Molly Wood Voice-Over: Time for a quick break. When we come back, a little more of Josh’s interesting background with the Lazy Environmentalist, what makes the perfect climate tech podcast guest and hope. 

Molly Wood Voice-Over: Welcome back to Everybody in the Pool. We’re talking with Josh Dorfman, the cofounder and C-E-O of Supercool.  

Molly Wood

Go back to, you were so modest in your intro, go back to the lazy environmentalists. Like you have a really interesting history of pushing adoption from the consumer side. So talk about like that journey in that show and how that led you to plant it and all of that.

Josh

Mm-hmm.

Josh 

Mmm.

Molly Wood

You skipped a whole huge chunk of your bio there.

Josh

Yeah, a whole huge chunk. yeah, I went through, so in the 90s, I lived in China. I thought that I was going to go into like State Department or CIA. Like it was really clear to me coming out of college in 1994 and I had a three-year plan. I went to Penn and so some Philadelphia roots. And it was really clear to me, don't know, actually I do know why, that like China was going to become a big deal.

in the 21st century. It wasn't necessarily obvious in 1994 that that was gonna happen, but for some reason I was like crystal clear on that. And I was also crystal clear on the fact that I was gonna go to Vale and be a ski bomb for a year before I was gonna do anything else, which is not necessarily like what kids do coming out of Penn. So, you know, so I had to do a little bit of negotiation with my folks, which I did. And it was like, okay, no, you guys like, you don't have to worry. I got a three-year plan. Like I'm going to Vale.

Molly Wood

It's very specific.

Josh 

Then I'm going to China for two years and then I'm probably going into like the State Department, know, maybe hopefully the CAA, but not really, but like, let's see, who knows? And so I did and I was teaching and then I got this part-time job working in a factory for Kryptonite Bike Locks. I don't know if you remember like this original U-lock. They opened their first factory 20 minutes from where I was teaching English. And so I'm in this factory, which was amazing.

And then I went to work for Kryptonite full time in China and opened an office and we were doing, it like 1990, it was crazy. mean, it was just like really, really amazing, profound life experience. But I started thinking like, holy crap, like here we are, we got the best bike in the bike lock in the world. There's a billion people here riding bikes, but man, look at all these highways and tunnels and bridges. And I really don't think anybody wants a bike. Everybody wants cars and there's going be a billion cars here. And I don't know anything about global warming or climate change, but like.

I know enough to know just from an energy perspective, this is going to be problematic. And then you got India, and then you got Eastern Europe, and everyone's developing really fast. I need to think about this. And so eventually, I did start thinking around about the environment and felt that the best way that I could affect change as a kid from Westchester County outside of New York who also likes his stuff was to think about helping shift consumer lifestyles in a greener direction. So I started this company called Babavi and I was selling like eventually like modern design furniture and I moved up to Brooklyn and kind of to get around all these cool designers and decided that I needed a showroom but I couldn't afford a showroom in an apartment because I was bootstrapping this business so I turned my apartment in Greenpoint into my showroom and ended up living it for like four years and on the way up

I was in DC, I'm going skip over some of my history, but I did quit a PhD program in political science and environment where I was going to study China. They did send letters to my house, apparently, that my mom threw away, apparently, at least one. I went to a business school called Thunderbird and they recruit heavily out of Thunderbird. who knows, man? Who knows? Could have been a totally different thing.

Molly Wood 

no CIA.

Molly Wood 

Wow.

Molly Wood 

There's like, there's a bit, it's like box universe theory. There is a parallel universe in which you are fully a spy, which is awesome. Yeah.

Josh 

Sliding doors, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, thank you. I know how to do it, because that's pretty much all the only movies I watch. I know how to do

Molly Wood 

I'm so glad you said that because I'm just waiting to ask you about your favorites by shows and movies because that's my preferred genre in life. Yeah. It's obviously relevant to this conversation. Look, climate change is a national security issue. Okay. Anyway.

Josh

Oh, yeah. Well, I figured, you know, I figured. Yeah, yeah, I did some prep. Yeah. Yeah. Well, when I was in China, yeah, yeah. When I was, I can just tell you, like, what a giant dork I am when I was in China. And I'm like, do it working with these Chinese companies. And my office is inside the state owned Chinese company. Like, it was crazy. I went to a camera store. I was such a loser. And I bought the smallest camera I could find because I'm like, I know the CIA is coming.

Like, this is impossible that I can be doing this and they're not watching me, you know? So, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I know they're showing up any minute now, because come on, I'm having lunch with my communist counterparts every day. was, yeah, it was quite a thing.

Molly Wood 

So you bugged your own office is what you're saying with the camera to like wait for the CIA to break in. Awesome.

Josh 

The lazy environmentalist came about because I'm starting this green company. I'd quit this PhD program in DC where I'd started this green company and decided to go to Brooklyn, my first employee in her last day working for me because she wasn't moving with me up to moving with the company rather up to New York. On her last day working for me, she laid into me for being, she was like, Josh, look, I have to ask something. You're not my boss anymore. And I just got to get this off my chest. And I was like, yeah, sure. She was like, all right, look, like you're selling all this green stuff, but like you're the worst environmentalist I've.

ever met. Like you are always in the shower, you barely recycle, like you were going to throw your bed out. I took it to the homeless shelter. Like you suck. And like I've been holding this in for a year and a half, but like you're not my boss. So like, what is your deal, man? And I was, I didn't really have a very good answer, except I had heard the CEO, Michael Crook of Patagonia talk about having to be really kind of authentic and transparent if you're building a values based company.

Molly Wood

you

Josh 

So I ended up writing a blog called The Lazy Environment. It's like, care, but I take long showers. I do my best thing in the shower. I need an awesome low flow shower head. I'll buy it. I want an LTT convertible. I don't care if it's electric or biodiesel or whatever. If it fits right, I'll get it. On and on and on. And so eventually, yeah, a radio producer called me up. He's like, hey, I just read your blog. And I'm like, how? Like, this is like, how could you possibly find my blog? It's 2004.

And he's like, well, this is cool. Let's turn it into a radio show. Do you want to do that? And I was like, sure. He's like, well, you're going to have to pay for it. I'm like, well, that's OK. I'm game. Let's see. So I converted my closet in my Brooklyn apartment, or converted it, soundproofed it, and started doing this little show out of my Greenpoint closet. And then it went to serious exam. then just kind of right place, right time became a thing.

Molly Wood 

Classic.

Molly Wood 

Yeah, so it's important context also because it says this is not your first rodeo with the media side of things and with how hard it can be to turn those big engines toward this type of content even though consumers really respond to it. Yeah.

Josh 

Right, that's right, yeah, yeah. It's a journey.

Molly Wood 

so, and yet it seems like it's a journey that feels really important to you. So like to return to the idea of why super cool, like you could, you know, you could keep trying to build a billion dollar startup. Like why, you know, keep beating our heads against, include, I include myself here. Why do we keep beating our heads against the storytelling wall?

Josh 

my gosh, I know it's like, just this like, what is that compulsion that you just feel people need to know? Right? Or people just need to know it. I think from the, you know, so Lazy Environments was a, it went to SiriusXM, became this radio show. I like doing the podcast, you know, like you, I think I'm just a very curious person about like how the world works. And this is a part of the world that I...

really want to understand. So it's sort of endlessly fascinating to me to be able to kind of just dig in and say, well, how are we going to get this? How is this going to happen? But I will say this, like if I am a little bit sort of like, how can I say this? Nixon opened China on the day I was born.

February 21st, 1972. That's the day that Nixon opened China. So I did feel like when I was like, China, that's interesting. was like, wait a second. I am destined to go to China and play a role in the 21st century in US-Sino relations so we don't blow each other up. now it's like, maybe just maybe around this clean, so like in this clean energy thing, like maybe that's still in the future for me. So I'll leave a little bit of that.

destiny stuff, it's propelled me. But I also just can't help feeling as someone who thinks about the world that, you know, there's China, there's America, that's the most important, like strategic relationship on the planet right now. And climate change is the biggest challenge to go solve in my mind. like, I'm like, my core skill sets are communication and probably like, like something in these like interrelationships and so I'm just naturally gravitate toward like I want to know I want to meet people I want to talk about this and I want to share what we can figure out to just make it go faster.

Molly Wood 

As a result of the work you're doing, like I often tell people that I am much more hopeful than even seems reasonable sometimes. As a result of the work you're doing, like where would you say your sort of overall hope level sits?

Josh 

same, just so elevated. Because it's the thing, right? You just think like, okay, the world doesn't really see what's actually happening right now. And you get to talk about that research, talk about it all the time. It's just the lens, it's the filter for so much of how I see the world. I do think, I just do think we're in this moment and it sustains over this long time of like,

you can choose to, I mean, you can hold both realities. can say, hey, this problem's really, really devastating and awful and already having impact. And yet here is also all this awesome stuff. I actually think it's important to kind of hold onto a little bit of that. But I certainly would caution our audience, hey, like, it's not gonna help you all that much. Like, yeah, this stuff is terrible. Like, climate's awful. But if you spend your time there, like, you're just, you know, you're depriving yourself probably of some

a power and agency to do something about it. And yet there's all this awesome stuff happening too. So I know it's very elevated. My views of what I think our ability is to actually solve the problems in front of us and create a world that we're more excited about in the process.

Molly Wood 

Awesome. Josh working people. Thanks. Super cool.

Josh

GetSuper.Cool is our home, so you can find our podcast, our newsletter there. I am on social, mostly LinkedIn, so folks wanna connect with me there. That would be great, and I would love that.

Molly Wood 

Josh Duffman, thank you so much. Everybody in the pool, love it.

Josh 

Thank you, Molly.

Molly Wood Voice-Over:

That's it for this episode of Everybody in the Pool. Thank you so much for listening. 

By the way we DID have a nice chat about spy shows and movies but mostly we agreed we’re both just super excited to see the new Mission Impossible movie and I said everyone should watch the French spy show called The Bureau. Little bit of everything on this podcast. 

Thank you for listening! Email me your thoughts and suggestions to in at everybody in the pool dot com and find all the latest episodes and more at everybody in the pool dot com, the website. And if you want to become a subscriber and get an ad free version of the show, hit the link in the description in your podcast app of choice.

Thank you to those of you who already have. Together, we can get this done. See you next week.