🌱If you want to take part, SowOneGoodSeed is where you can start.

Find impact work happening in your community, or list your own: https://sowonegoodseed.com/

Amy McCrae Kessler doesn't think government or philanthropy will solve climate. It gets solved, she argues, when local climate action becomes something investors can actually fund. With $150 trillion in institutional capital sitting on the sidelines right now, the money isn't the problem: the bridge is.

Amy is an environmental attorney and the co-founder and CEO of FacetPower, which bridges climate finance and local climate action across sub-Saharan Africa. You'll hear what a local project needs to get right before investors will fund it, and the community risks most big projects ignore.

"There's $150 trillion of institutional dry powder sitting on the sidelines right now. 80% of that money, capital, wants to get into climate investing, but can't." - Amy McCrae Kessler

🚀 Key Takeaways:

Community risk is project risk: Treat hyper-local context, livelihood mapping, and social assessments as core due diligence, because the community side of any project is its riskiest part.

Line up the money before you build: Secure investor relationships and a finance pool before developing, because projects built without knowing market fit or investor appetite end up with no one willing to fund them.

Bundle small projects to meet big capital: Institutional investors rarely look below $100 million, so packaging several $10 to $50 million local projects into one portfolio makes community-scale work fundable.

Stack revenue streams for resilience: Projects with one or two revenue streams live at the mercy of energy markets; five to seven streams let a business weather swings in prices and regulation.

Treat climate as a business, not philanthropy: Lasting behavior change comes when communities and investors earn from doing the right thing every day.

⏳ Chapters:

- Introduction to Amy McCrae Kessler and FacetPower

- The plane ride that changed her career

- The #1 risk big projects keep ignoring

- Why $150 trillion is sitting on the sidelines

- How FacetPower connects investors to local entrepreneurs

- The invasive bush blinding Namibia's cheetahs

- Why $50 million is too small for big investors

- Why nature is the bank every business borrows from

- Pitching the president of Burundi

- Lining up investors before building anything

- What she had to unlearn as a founder

- Where to find Amy and FacetPower

🔗 Connect with Amy

FacetPower Website: https://facetpower.com

Amy McCrae Kessler on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amy-mccrae-kessler/

🔗 Two ways to join the community

The GrowGood Playbook newsletter, field-tested insights from the impact founders and leaders we interview: https://sowgoodtogrowgood.substack.com/

Find impact work happening in your community, or list your own: https://sowonegoodseed.com/

🎙️ About SowGood to GrowGood: Hosted by John Kane Gonzales, entrepreneur and innovator. We explore how change-makers and innovators are building sustainable systems for a better future, turning ideas into solutions that serve communities.

🌱If you want to take part, SowOneGoodSeed is where you can start.

Find impact work happening in your community, or list your own: https://sowonegoodseed.com/

Steve Cinelli asks every founder he mentors the same question: you're raising money to get twelve months out, but what does your company look like five years from now? And very few can answer it.

As a veteran banker, Steve is now building Renaissance Park, with around 20 companies in deal talks and conversations running through Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. He explains why market tailwinds, positioning, and 10- to 30-year frameworks beat quarterly thinking. Then he opens up about his two upcoming books and the inversion mantra behind everything he builds.

"Short-termism, as I call it, is problematic because it doesn't create true solutions as far as we want them. And so Renaissance and the ecosystem and nature are a long-term approach, a legacy approach." - Steven Cinelli

🚀 Key Takeaways:

Picture year five before you build: Few founders can describe their company five or six years out, yet without that picture, you might start building a crosswalk when what you wanted was a bridge.

Build in markets already moving your way: Your own work only goes so far, so choose sectors where outside forces, like carbon footprint tracking and material science, are already pushing toward your goals.

Position before you raise: The same product can be worth ten times more depending on how the market categorizes it, so decide your positioning before you set your valuation.

Map what could go sideways: Anticipate financial, demographic, geopolitical, and tech shifts like AI, then build toward a 10-year vision while expecting zigs and zags along the way.

Invert the default: Steve's go-to move is reversing an accepted pattern, like synthetic back to biological, then asking if that creates more jobs, broader wealth, and environmental benefit.

⏳ Chapters:

- Where we left off with Steve Cinelli

- Why Renaissance Park is worth a legacy bet

- The problem with short-term thinking

- The biggest challenges ahead for Renaissance Park

- The question few founders can answer

- How to spot a market tailwind

- Why the same glass sells for $1 or $10

- Two books on food, nature, and paradise

- Where to find Steve and Renaissance Park

🔗 Connect with Steve

Renaissance Park Website: https://renaissanceparkcorp.com

Steven Cinelli on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevencinelli/

🔗 Two ways to join the community

The GrowGood Playbook newsletter, field-tested insights from the impact founders and leaders we interview: https://sowgoodtogrowgood.substack.com/

Find impact work happening in your community, or list your own: https://sowonegoodseed.com/

🎙️ About SowGood to GrowGood: Hosted by John Kane Gonzales, entrepreneur and innovator. We explore how change-makers and innovators are building sustainable systems for a better future, turning ideas into solutions that serve communities.

🌱If you want to take part, SowOneGoodSeed is where you can start.

Find impact work happening in your community, or list your own: https://sowonegoodseed.com/

Steve Cinelli grew twenty acres of industrial hemp. The farming was a bust. The research survived: every use case for a crop shut out of the US market since 1937. Then the harder problem. The material performs, and the industry around it barely exists.

Steve is the founder and chairman of Renaissance Park, a nature-based materials ecosystem. Three decades in banking and private equity came first. In 1999, he co-founded OffRoad Capital and got the SEC to allow online fundraising, twelve years before crowdfunding became law. He is running that same play on hemp, hempcrete, and natural fiber composites.

In this episode, you will hear how to move an institution that resists change, and why the category has to grow before the company can.

"So it's really playing cards to the game that they want to play. They're setting the rules, they're the regulator. Well, can we improve the way the game's played?" - Steven Cinelli

🚀 Key Takeaways:

Read the charter before you pitch: Read the gatekeeper's founding rules before you pitch them, then show how your version delivers the outcome they exist to protect.

Map the process before you automate it: Map every touch point in the existing process by hand before automating it, because technology accelerates whatever workflow you hand it.

Grow the category, then compete in it: Competing for share makes sense in a mature market, but in a category this young, the work is growing the category itself.

Lead with the spec sheet: Lead with performance rather than mission when selling a sustainable alternative because parity on the spec sheet is what moves a buyer.

Decide the leave-behind first: Value that stays in a community requires a plan for who owns the asset at the end, decided before the first job is created.

⏳ Chapters:

- Introduction to Steve Cinelli and Renaissance Park

- Founding OffRoad Capital to digitize private fundraising

- The patterns behind fintech and nature-based materials

- The SEC said you cannot do that

- What finally unlocked FINRA and the SEC

- Why hemp

- Hempcrete, fire resistance, and the cost of rebuilding

- Building an ecosystem instead of a company

- Why build a new industry instead of joining an existing one

- Campuses, ESOPs, and what gets left behind

🔗 Connect with Steve

Renaissance Park Website: https://renaissanceparkcorp.com

Steven Cinelli on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevencinelli/

🔗 Two ways to join the community

The GrowGood Playbook newsletter, field-tested insights from the impact founders and leaders we interview: https://sowgoodtogrowgood.substack.com/

Find impact work happening in your community, or list your own: https://sowonegoodseed.com/

🎙️ About SowGood to GrowGood: Hosted by John Kane Gonzales, entrepreneur and innovator. We explore how change-makers and innovators are building sustainable systems for a better future, turning ideas into solutions that serve communities.