Today’s guest is Dai Ellis, founder and CEO of Cascade Climate. Dai spent his career creating and accelerating the development of systems and markets in multiple sectors – first in global health, then in education, and now climate tech. In this episode, Dai tells host Inder Singh all about the work he and his team at Cascade are doing to orchestrate markets for innovations that will help stabilize our climate. He also reveals the key lessons he learned from his time at CHAI leading groundbreaking work that reduced the price of life-saving medicines, and how he’s imported those lessons to the climate sector. Dai and Inder dig into the market shaping tools he honed in global health to tackle climate issues, the critical role of market orchestrators in driving large-scale systemic change, and how someone could create that role in a new sector. The Market Shapers Podcast is a production of Inder Singh and is produced by University FM. The interview was recorded in May 2025. Episode Quotes: SHORT VIDEO: Why the real power of market shaping lives in the middle 09:12: The stance of a market shaper is fundamentally to occupy a middle ground on that question: to neither, capitalism is what's causing this problem in the first place, which is not without any truth obviously, nor at the other end of the spectrum to say, markets will solve this. To choose to be a market shaper is to say there's truth in both of those things, that, like, there's truth in the idea that markets are a powerful way to organize incentives and organize human behavior and action toward outcomes, and they're deeply flawed when left unattended and unregulated in terms of, you know, what outcomes you are going to see from that. SOCIAL CARD: What market shaping actually is and why it matters across sectors 08:05: You have to have power to market shape, but it's not just financial power or government power, like hard power. A lot of it is soft power. How do we assemble soft power and other forms of, you know, influence and steerability? And then how do we put that to work, and coordinate efforts to get us more quickly from place A to place B? AUDIOGRAM: What it really means to be a market orchestrator 24:49: I think Cascade is very explicitly trying to offer itself up as an orchestrator for specific market shaping initiatives. Your ability to orchestrate is fundamentally targeted or limited. But you're trying to do that in high… Oh, I hate the word leverage, but highly leveraged, wise. Show Links: Cascade Climate Dai Ellis Bio Dai Ellis on Substack
Today’s guest is Dai Ellis, founder and CEO of Cascade Climate. Dai spent his career creating and accelerating the development of systems and markets in multiple sectors – first in global health, then in education, and now climate tech.
In this episode, Dai tells host Inder Singh all about the work he and his team at Cascade are doing to orchestrate markets for innovations that will help stabilize our climate. He also reveals the key lessons he learned from his time at CHAI leading groundbreaking work that reduced the price of life-saving medicines, and how he’s imported those lessons to the climate sector.
Dai and Inder dig into the market shaping tools he honed in global health to tackle climate issues, the critical role of market orchestrators in driving large-scale systemic change, and how someone could create that role in a new sector.
The Market Shapers Podcast is a production of Inder Singh and is produced by University FM.
The interview was recorded in May 2025.
Why the real power of market shaping lives in the middle
09:12: The stance of a market shaper is fundamentally to occupy a middle ground on that question: to neither, capitalism is what's causing this problem in the first place, which is not without any truth obviously, nor at the other end of the spectrum to say, markets will solve this. To choose to be a market shaper is to say there's truth in both of those things, that, like, there's truth in the idea that markets are a powerful way to organize incentives and organize human behavior and action toward outcomes, and they're deeply flawed when left unattended and unregulated in terms of, you know, what outcomes you are going to see from that.
What market shaping actually is and why it matters across sectors
08:05: You have to have power to market shape, but it's not just financial power or government power, like hard power. A lot of it is soft power. How do we assemble soft power and other forms of, you know, influence and steerability? And then how do we put that to work, and coordinate efforts to get us more quickly from place A to place B?
What it really means to be a market orchestrator
24:49: I think Cascade is very explicitly trying to offer itself up as an orchestrator for specific market shaping initiatives. Your ability to orchestrate is fundamentally targeted or limited. But you're trying to do that in high… Oh, I hate the word leverage, but highly leveraged, wise.