Plantd's Josh Dorfman: Building Homes From Grass, Not Trees

About this episode

Josh Dorfman discusses his journey from sustainable furniture to co-founding Plantd, a company using grass for building materials.

Ravi Kurani sits down with Josh Dorfman, CEO and host of Supercool, to trace his journey from sustainable furniture startups to co-founding Plantd, a carbon-negative building materials company using renewable grass to replace plywood in homebuilding. Josh shares how Plantd landed a relationship with D.R. Horton (America's largest homebuilder) for 90,000 homes, why he left the CEO role to launch Supercool—a B2B media platform spotlighting real-world climate solutions—and the innovations he's most excited about, from AI-powered HVAC to recycling rare earth magnets. The conversation explores how two former SpaceX engineers moved to North Carolina to grow miscanthus grass and turned it into structural boards that are stronger than plywood in all directions—yet feel identical in a construction worker's hands. Josh breaks down three macro trends proving the low-carbon economy is scaling, spotlights companies like BrainBox AI (cutting building HVAC costs by 25% and carbon by 40%) and Zum (using AI to cut Oakland's school bus fleet from 140 diesel buses to 72 electric ones), and shares the remarkable story of Aeroseal—a 1990s duct-sealing technology shelved for a decade that became a…

People in this episode

Host: Ravi Kurani

Guest: Josh Dorfman

Topics covered

• sustainable building materials
• carbon-negative solutions
• AI in construction
• low-carbon economy
• renewable resources
• homebuilding innovations

Keywords

• Plantd
• sustainable furniture
• carbon-negative
• building materials
• miscanthus grass
• AI-powered HVAC
• D.R. Horton
• low-carbon economy
• Aeroseal

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: D.R. Horton, Supercool, BrainBox AI, Zum, Aeroseal

Places: North Carolina, Oakland

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