The scale and urgency of the transformation required to fight climate change has never been more clear. Building hardware and software products, acquiring the funding and creating a diverse community to enhance talent capacity and to drive innovation, is essential to tackling this global environmental crisis. In this podcast, host Silicon Valley Bank (a division of First Citizens Bank) Climate Tech & Sustainability SVP Maggie Wong will be interviewing JUUNOO Founder Chris Van de Voorde to discuss building modular and reusable interior walls to eliminate waste in commercial real estate fit-outs, scaling a circular economy startup from Belgium to rapid growth in the U.S., and the product design philosophy of relentlessly minimizing components to build simple, great products.
(1:30) Chris’s background: engineer, walls obsessive, and why he named JUUNOO after his kids Jules and Lanor
(3:08) The problem JUUNOO is solving: single-use office fitouts in a world of shorter leases
(6:11) How a COVID strategic Excel spreadsheet led Chris from Belgium to New York
(10:05) Company culture: three rules, crucial conversations, and why sustainability comes before sales
(12:36) Why diversity is just good business: the 99.999% of smart people not working for your company
(13:31) The revenue model: why gross margins improve 20% the second and third time you sell the same wall
(17:49) Go-to-market flywheel: why JUUNOO targets tenants first and uses those wins to unlock architects
(20:06) Circular valuable design: how to build products where end-of-life value exceeds reuse cost
(22:35) The Circular Value Institute: how Chris is teaching a 70-billion-dollar retailer to profit from resale
(25:06) The biggest opportunity in sustainability right now, and why Chris is also worried it might be too late
(28:28) What is coming next for JUUNOO: the clickable drywall patent and the plan to roll it out in 20 countries
(34:46) What makes a great product manager: a relentless drive for fewer components
Blog and detailed workflow walkthroughs from this episode: https://productsthatcount.com/turning-interior-walls-into-a-circular-economy-business/
