Mobility Miniseries part 1: Israel Duanis of Fleetonomy

This is part 2 of our great discussion with Mallory Dwinal Palisch. If you've not yet listened to part 1, please do so before listening to this second half. 

In this part of the conversation about Reach University and Craft Education System we discuss student-centered technologies, professional capital, labor mobility of teachers, remote learning, teacher credentialing, data aggregation, teachers unions, teacher wages, and more. AND Mallory shows off her econ skills, talking about monopsonies and non-pecuniary incentives,

Enjoy part 2 of the episode and Thanks for Being Curious!

There is arguably nothing more important to our future economy than the quality of our education system, and there is nothing more important to that than the quality and availability of teachers. But as anyone who's followed the news in the last couple of years knows, we are currently facing something of a crisis in the availability of qualified teachers.

Here are some stats to put that crisis into perspective. According to EdWeek, there are over 3.1 million full-time equivalent teachers in public schools in the fall of 2022.

 But the National Education Association estimates that there is a shortage of roughly 300,000 teachers in public schools. So 10% of needed teachers are missing. We should have 3.4 million. But in fact, the number of full-time—not full-time equivalent teachers—is less than 3.1 million. That full-time equivalent number, includes aides and part-time teachers, so in fact, the missing 300,000—maybe more like missing 20% of full-time teachers.

According to EdWeek, again, there are nearly 50 million students in public schools across the country. So using the teacher-to-student ratio of 50 million students and 3.4 million teachers, that works out to just under about 15 kids per teacher.  So missing 300,000 teachers works out to about four and a half million kids without sufficient teacher-led instruction. Without a major shift in education policy, there is not much that can change on the demand side that is in the school system to attract much more supply. 

 But our guest today,   Mallory Dwinal-Palisch, has come up with not one but two initiatives. One, to help increase the supply of trained teachers, and the other, to remove friction in the system so supply can better meet demand. She has an MBA, but also a Ph.D., and her dissertation was about labor supply and Teach for America. She's taught in the classroom and founded charter schools. She is the Chancellor of Reach University and the CEO of Craft Education Systems.

Enjoy part 1 of the episode and Thanks for Being Curious!

With interest rates rising and the economy slowing, the world of credit is getting a lot harder for both lenders and borrowers — and that’s especially painful in the mortgage market, given how high house prices are. 

Matt Sanchez, Founder and CTO of CognitiveScale thinks that Artificial Intelligence can help: it can help loan officers identify potential borrowers ahead of time, and it can help borrowers get access to the right mortgage offers. Can it also help make the lending process more fair? Matt , an IBM veteran and a board member of the Responsible AI Institute, believes it can. 
In this talk with hosts Michael Leifman and Marco Annunziata, Matt explains the value that CognitiveScale’s TrustStar solution brings to the table, and how. TrustStar is only one of the AI solutions developed by CognitiveScale, so you may hear more from Matt…

Developing Clean Energy Solutions With KraftBlock’s Martin Schichtel

Across the world, a huge amount of energy is wasted in the form of heat. In industries like glass and steel, manufacturing processes require extremely high temperatures, and those processes generate a lot of wasted heat. That heat is usually blown directly into the atmosphere.

But what if there was a way to capture, store, and reuse that heat, effectively transforming it into a climate-neutral energy source?

That’s exactly what Martin Schichtel set out to do. A chemist by training, Martin believes he has the answer in the form of a thermal energy storage system called “Kraftblock.”

In this episode, Martin sat down with hosts Marco Annunziata and Michael Leifman to talk about Kraftblock and what it does, its many different applications, and how it may fundamentally change how we use energy.

Show Highlights

[00:49] Factoids about the energy sector

• [02:06] What is Kraftblock and what does it do?
• [02:40] How Kraftblock differs from other energy storage systems
• [04:10] The profile of an early adopter company that fits the mold for where Kraftblock currently is
• [04:56] Two applications for Kraftblock storage units
• [07:38] How Kraftblock differs from “green hydrogen” systems
• [09:21] What needs to happen for Kraftblock to scale up over the next 10 years
• [11:58] The state of the heat market
• [13:05] Closing statements

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M4Edge is coming back soon, with a new format.
Stay tuned! Stay curious!

In the 3+ years that M4Edge has been around, we've aired over 50 episodes and, as listeners know, we usually ask our guests to give us their view of the future 20 years hence. Sometimes the answers are somewhat expected, sometimes they're a little humorous, and sometimes they're deeply thought provoking. As a holiday present, this episode offers a compilation of some of our favorites. We won't go so far as to say that this is a "best of" set, since we left out some great ones. But we've reached across the catalog, from our very first to our most recent episode, and offer you here some of our guests' views on the future of manufacturing, material design, food and agriculture, artificial intelligence, human resources, business analytics, robotics, clean energy, autonomous driving ... you know, M4Edge stuff.

Stay tuned and stay curious as we retool our show in 2022!

This is the final M4Edge episode of 2021 an we are finishing this year with a bang, Our guest is Alex Rodrigues, founder and CEO of Embark Trucks; he is a Forbes 30 under 30, and more importantly, at the tender age of 26 he has just brought Embark public through a SPAC deal valuing the company at over 5 billion dollars.

Embark is right up the M4Edge alley, where we look at technologies that change the way the economy works: Embark develops software for self-driving trucks. Alex Rodrigues has a long-standing interest in automation: his passion for robots started when he was 11, so even though he’s only 26, he is already kind of a veteran in robotics. In our interview he revealed a number of interesting insights on the present and the future of automation, and some of them are quite surprising. How is this for a nugget: here we have the founder of a self-driving trucks company predicting a bright future for truck drivers!

We had a great conversation on where and why self-driving trucks could create – or at least preserve – jobs; but also on where they will be deployed first, and what they could imply for the future of logistics and distribution, quite an important topic given the recent dramatic supply chain disruptions.

Alex also explained why the development of self-driving trucks might be very different from that of self-driving passenger cars; we talk about road safety and cyber-security, and about Embark’s business model: they don’t actually produce trucks, they are a SaaS company.

And we close with Alex’s reflections on the future of robotics and automation. This episode has everything we – and you – like best: an enthusiastic and deeply knowledgeable guest, cutting edge technology, business model innovation and important implications for the way we live and work. 

Thanks for listening, Thanks for Being Curious, and as always, please share the episode and if you have a few minutes, leave us a review. We’ll be back in 2022 with a brand new series we’re planning, so…enjoy the holidays and STAY curious!

After a long absence, we’ve returned with a very fun episode and right in line with the M4Edge theme. The startup we focus on today is really micro, in the weeds, you might say, with some very macro aims, and it’s about as edgy as can be.

You probably know that we’ve done several episodes on ESG or impact investing, and we’ve also done quite a few food-tech and ag-tech episodes. This episode is part of that series, but with some cool twists .We interview Dror Tamir, the CEO of Hargol Food Tech. Dror wants us all to be eating grasshoppers. Yes, I know, it sounds gross. Dror knows that too. But not everyone feels that way! It turns out that in many parts of the world, they are a delicacy. But Dror  doesn’t expect those of us who grew up with Western diets to crunch on wings and legs, instead Hargol grinds up the grasshoppers into a powder, which you can blend with other foods, or even put in gummies.

What’s the big deal about grasshoppers? They are tiny little nutrition machines, so part of Dror’s vision is protein for the world. There’s a climate angle too, since reducing beef and poultry consumption will reduce emissions; there’s a water angle, since growing this form of protein uses FAR less water than other animal production; there’s an animal cruelty angle, since Hargol takes pains to kill the grasshoppers in a humane way. The stats on how healthy grasshoppers are for people and for the planet are frankly mindblowing. Beyond that, Hargol has internal ESG goals unrelated to their product, for example around hiring people with disabilities. Dror sees his mission as being an element of the Jewish tradition of Tikkun Olam - repairing the world.

Oh yeah, this is the Jewiest episode we’ve done, too. Marco compares Jewish grandmothers to Italian grandmothers, I talk about kosher laws, Dror explains a Hebrew pun and Marco even vocalizes an excellent chet. But all you goyim and our faithful M4Edge devotees shouldn’t worry; it’s an ecumenical episode - there’s plenty in here about Hargol’s approach to their market, their production process, their place within the booming food-tech scene and more. We know you’ll enjoy the episode.

And since you’ll enjoy it, please share it with others, rate us on Apple Podcasts, post it on social media - you know what to do - spread the word.  And as always, thanks for being curious!

It’s not often that a small startup has ties to Google and Bill Gates. Our guest today, Michael Sachse, the CEO of Dandelion Energy inhabits that rarefied atmosphere.

Dandelion Energy was originally part of Google X, Alphabet’s so-called moonshot factory. And very recently, Dandelion received substantial series B funding from Breakthrough Energy Ventures, which is the VC arm of a Bill Gates – led organization whose mission is to help get the world to net zero carbon emissions.

So what’s so special about Dandelion that it attracted this sort of attention? They are tackling one of the hardest clean energy problems we will face as we decarbonize, namely how to heat our homes without fossil fuels. Dandelion harnesses geothermal energy – which is itself not a new trick – but the way they do it and deliver it is indeed new. There’s tech and business model innovation involved, and since this is M4Edge, we’ll of course explore some policy issues, some labor issues and more. And you’ll learn what kind of outright ban Marco thinks would be in the public interest.

Enjoy the episode, and thanks for being curious!

We seem drawn to Agtech and impact investing. And good-tasting fruit.
We kicked off our 2021 season with a discussion on impact investing or socially responsible investing, including with a startup (EcoRobotix) that produces solar-power farming equipment for AI-based precision application of herbicide. We've done a few episodes in the Agtech space, including with a startup (Strella Biotech)  that uses sensors to determine optimal fruit ripening in storage, reduce food waste and make our avocados not crummy. In this episode we continue these trends, and learn from TrueAlgae CEO Nathaniel Jackson about how their product can improve crop yields while simultaneously improving the sweetness and nutrient density of fruit, all while saving farmers' money and helping reduce the GHG impact of agriculture. This company is a true "double bottom line" company, or more like triple bottom line. Nathaniel himself was an impact investor at the Inter-American Development Bank, and has strong personal stake in seeing the impact investment sector succeed.

Please share the episode with your friends and ... thanks for being curious!