Startup Series: Sweep

Oct 13

Today’s guest is Rachel Delacour, co-founder and CEO of Sweep.

Carbon accounting helps organizations measure their emissions so they can understand their overall footprint, share findings, and plan future reductions. Sweep’s business intelligence tools specialize in using data to map a company’s carbon emissions and helping them realize feasible goals while managing future growth. In doing so, Sweep is shifting the way companies view carbon from a limitation to a creative force for innovation.

Rachel has a background in business intelligence, having sold her previous startup to Zendesk, and she felt that she could best contribute to the climate problem by leveraging the skills and expertise she and her team already had around data management, modeling, and forecasting. Sweep recently announced a sizable Series B in funding led by Coatue, and they've raised over a hundred million dollars in aggregate in a little less than two years.

In this conversation, Cody and Rachel discuss her journey, how Sweep views the market need, how companies source scope 3 emissions data, the potential role of regulation and carbon reporting, and whether or not recommending offsets or contributions creates any incentives. Rachel’s story is great for people looking to make the transition, but not quite sure where to start.

Get connected:
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Rachel’s Twitter
Sweep
MCJ Podcast Twitter
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*You can also reach us via email at info@mcjcollective.com, where we encourage you to share your feedback on episodes and suggestions for future topics or guests.

Episode recorded on September 2, 2022.

In this episode, we cover:

[2:27] Rachel's financial background and climate journey
[8:51] How she took existing skills and applied them to carbon
[18:14] Sweep's approach to building a diverse team of experts from the carbon, tech, and political backgrounds
[24:19] Rachel's views of carbon accounting vs. carbon management
[29:15] An overview of scope 3 emissions
[33:09] How companies are accessing accurate emissions data
[38:32] The role of carbon management platforms in accelerating regulations
[41:17] Sweep's success with companies so far
[44:27] Future targets vs short-term reality in emissions reductions
[48:59] Rachel's interactions with sustainability teams and financial directors
[56:29] Where global climate justice fits into Sweep's solution
[1:01:19] How Sweep balances customer reductions and credits
[1:05:02] What's next for Rachel and Sweep

Jason Jacobs (00:00:01):
Hello, everyone. This is Jason Jacobs.
Cody Simms (00:00:04):
And I'm Cody Simms.
Jason Jacobs (00:00:05):
Welcome to My Climate Journey. This show is a growing body of knowledge focused on climate change and potential solutions.
Cody Simms (00:00:15):
In this podcast, we traverse disciplines, industries, and opinions to better understand and make sense of the formidable problem of climate change, and all the ways people like you and I can help.
Jason Jacobs (00:00:26):
We appreciate you tuning in, sharing this episode, and if you feel like it, leaving us a review to help more people find out about us, so they can figure out where they fit in addressing the problem of climate change.
Cody Simms (00:00:40):
Today's guest is Rachel Delacour, co-founder and CEO of Sweep, which provides business intelligence tools to companies to help them understand and model emissions data, and build actionable plans to reduce emissions. Rachel has a background in business intelligence, having sold her previous startup in the business intelligence space to Zendesk, and she felt that she could best contribute to the climate problem by leveraging the skills and expertise she and her team already had around data management, modeling, and forecasting, and applying it to the carbon problem.
Cody Simms (00:01:11):
I was interested to learn from her how she views business intelligence around emissions as distinct from carbon accounting, which is a term we all hear often. She had a very clear perspective on this, which made sense to me. We have an extended conversation on her journey, how Sweep views the market need, how companies source scope 3 emissions data today, the potential role of regulation and carbon reporting, and whether or not recommending offsets or contributions, as she calls them, creates incentive misalignments. Sweep recently announced a sizable Series B in funding led by Temasek, and they've raised over a hundred million dollars in aggregate in a little less than two years. So, I was eager to hear where she thinks all of this is going. Rachel, welcome to the show.
Rachel Delacour (00:01:56):
Thank you. Thank you, Cody.
Cody Simms (00:01:58):
Well, I'm very excited to understand about your background because from what I see, like many of us, myself, Jason, Yin, Thai, the whole MCJ team really, you come from, I would call it, a pure-play software entrepreneurial background, and have moved into the climate space. So, maybe start at the top. How did you get involved as an entrepreneur, and how did that lead you ultimately to work in climate?
Rachel Delacour (00:02:27):
Yeah. You are definitely right. Until two, three years ago, something like that, I had no clue really about my own carbon emissions, about my big carbon debt, because I was flying a lot. So, just to sum up. First, I have a financial background, and I was incredibly frustrated by the business intelligence solutions I was using as a young financial exec in this space. I decided to really revamp, revolutionize the business intelligence. So I had no clue about the fact that I wanted to... Actually, I was trying to start a startup because we were in Europe as well, so far less educated than you guys in the Silicon Valley, but still I started to try to build the tool of my dream. So yeah, indeed we were coding something that was a cloud business intelligence solutions. So it was a time where we could see that Salesforce was already becoming kind of profitable model with this success addressed to B2B and to businesses.
Rachel Delacour (00:03:32):
And actually it was pretty working. So yeah, okay. We could see that it was already ticking a box. And then there were this some AWS, cloud infrastructure that were powerful enough actually to support what the business intelligence tool need in the cloud. So we started with my co-founder, and we started. We created bio analytics and it was all about cloud business intelligence. For this, we went back to our parents' house. Great. When you're 28 years old, it is a fantastic journey. But yeah, we stayed in France. But actually, we had a reach. Mostly our customers are coming from the US. So we were into all those readings of the Silicon Valley [inaudible 00:04:13], and we raised fund. We did the startup journey in Europe, and actually we've been acquired by Zendesk in 2015. So Zendesk, the customer support company. And it was a fantastic journey, also, plus acquisition because we've learned a lot also from a fantastic company.
Rachel Delacour (00:04:31):
I always mentioned that it was an elegant acquisition because everything was super smooth. There were a real culture hit. And I really loved the founder, Mikkel Svane, the CEO of Zendesk. And we stayed, I would say something to... For four years working for them, it was great. As an entrepreneur coming from a smaller company, leaving that IPR growth plus IPO journey of a tech company based in the Silicon Valley, wow, for a European company. For me, it was fantastic to learn from them. I've met with great people that I managed to hire back for my second company, but I'm not supposed to mention that too loud. I also realized that, at some point, I had some big carbon debt because sometimes I was flying first to San Francisco for two days. But by this time, for me, it was absolutely not a problem. It was just, "Oh, I will be tired," but nothing more. Okay. I had no clue.
Rachel Delacour (00:05:30):
And this is also when I've been acquired by Zendesk, I was also pregnant of my second child, second baby. And I must acknowledge that I really missed that baby that I didn't really meet because I was always traveling and working hard. And at some point, after four years, I said, "Oh, my God. I just need to regroup just with my kids." And I took some time for me, and I spent time with my two kids and the oldest one was recently asking me for climate change and stuff like that. And I felt completely designed that I had no... I just didn't know anything.
Cody Simms (00:06:04):
Wow. So the initial questions about climate were coming from your kid. That's incredible.
Rachel Delacour (00:06:08):
Yeah, because at school they learned about that. They had those conversation with their teachers, and I felt a little bit frustrated, of course. I decided to take also this time off just to ramp up on a personal level, to educate myself on those topics. I knew that if I had to read something, I had to read an IPCC report, so I picked one. I didn't start it with the first one, but I picked one or on the internet and... Oh, my God... it was what we can call a cold shower because I definitely realized that we are completely screwed, if I may say that. So sorry for all of you to use that word, but I'm French. So I have few vocabulary. And you know what was the super, I would say, stressful for me is that I thought that post acquisition, I was safe. And I saw that my family was safe because I had money, and I saw that everyone was safe around me, and my sister, my mom.
Rachel Delacour (00:07:06):
But actually, I completely realized that I had worked for nursing because I didn't put my family in a safe place because of what is coming, and I must say that I had a very bad night. And I also realized, reading those IPCC reports, that solutions do exist. So I realized all this at the same time. So it was pretty disturbing. And this is when we were already... It's like if we had that haha moment with my co-founders, with my current co-founders at Sweep, because we're all coming from the same world. We have more than 30 years old. But the two other ones, they are in their 30s. So they were already much more concerned. And we talked about all this and we said, "Okay, we can't reinvent the wheel. We know that solutions do exist, with peoples who are doing great jobs already. How can we do our part? We are privileged people because we have access to capital. We have access to..."
Rachel Delacour (00:08:03):
Because we are supposed to be successful entrepreneurs... I don't know what is a successful entrepreneur. But in the mind of many people, it's because you have been acquired once. Okay, anyway. So still, because we have this experience, it means that we have a network of people, of financial possible partners. We had access to lots of our former customers that we could interview also. We had access to [inaudible 00:08:28] kind of credibility also just to start to hire talents that we have identified worldwide at Zendesk also, I must say. So we were privileged people with time, with money also to start definitely, but still we couldn't go back at the university, spend time to ramp up, become a scientific chemist. I'm not that smart.
Rachel Delacour (00:08:51):
And we knew how to... What was our skill sets? Not a sexy one, super boring one. But that a platform distributed infrastructure, scalable infrastructure, knowing the cloud, working on AWS, blah, blah, blah, blah, analytics, analysis, data visualization. We knew how to do BI. So okay, at least we knew that we had something to do in the digital space because we were coming from this space. And when we started to interview, at first, we had this idea of connecting large accounts because we wanted to focus our energy not on B2C, but on B2B. Because B2C, we are not coming from this world. So let's try to answer the urgency, also, to start a right away, massively. But B2C, we don't know how to do that. B2B, what is happening with B2B? So we started to call our former... our portfolio of company [inaudible 00:09:44], CEOs, and we told them, "Okay, how can we connect you with... Solutions do exist. How can you fund them?" Et cetera.
Rachel Delacour (00:09:50):
And they told us, "Rachel, that's cool to buy offsets, and that's cool to buy contributions. Okay?" Depends of the word you are using, we are using contributions with the... a combinations anyway. But they told me, "That's cool. We want to do so, but we want to do lots of things in parallel because there is this urgency. And at the end of the day, just help us to start, and to start our climate journey." And the reality is that we absolutely have no clue on where to start, what it is to start, what it is when you are with big company. We targeted those guys because they're already the ones who are the big agents of change. So let's target those guys first, the biggest emitter, hashtag, maybe the dirty ones, but still we have to help them definitely. And they told us, "Look, we are live organisms. We are acquiring. We are changing. We are restructuring ourselves, redefining our business at some point. So how do you help us to map our complexity and to be accurate when we are defining our carbon baseline?"
Rachel Delacour (00:10:52):
They were even not mentioning anything about carbon footprint. It was more about, "There is this carbon recruiting exercise, very static one. But once we have done that, help us to organize the way we are reducing our emissions. Help us to do that automated exercise on a regular basis so that we are really able to track how and what we are doing great at the scale of live organisms, huge, live organisms, which is a big company, and in an accurate way with the right layer of carbon methodologies compliant with regulations. We have a big organization, so help us to be incredibly secure." And the more they were speaking, the more we were connecting the dots with my co-founder saying, "Oh, my God. They're asking us to do BI for carbon, actually, business intelligence for carbon."
Rachel Delacour (00:11:45):
This is just what we've done for the last 15 years while we try to reinvent the wheel. At some point, "Oh, my God, we will have to connect again all the SAP and other [inaudible 00:11:56]," et cetera, because it's carbon. And it was so crystal clear for us that carbon, it's a data problem and it's a network problem. And once you have understood that carbon is a data problem, it's all about looking within the information systems of the company, transforming all those data points. I'm always calling that the pixel, because my life today is a nightmare, because I live in the metrics world where everything is carbon around me. You are carbon, Cody. And I see you as carbon pixel, carbon data. Oh, my God. I need to encode Cody as a carbon, a business need to understand every pixel of carbon around, what they're producing from a logistic standpoint and the [foreign language 00:12:45] in French, but downstream, upstream and everything.
Rachel Delacour (00:12:49):
It's such a complexity because you have to map it. So you have to collect it. You have to organize the data. You have to collect the data. You have to automate that data collection. And then you have to apply rules to transform that data into carbon, with the right rules. And then you have to organize the way, what are you doing with that? Then you need to organize the way you will... You need to do business intelligence on top of that. You need data analytics components, every stakeholders of your company to drill down, drill through, zoom in, zoom out, and map all that complexity in one single system, so to organize, to understand where are the odd spots, what you can reduce. We were back to school, actually. Not back to school, but we were back to our first business. We saw that we would've escaped our first business, but actually it was all about doing that again with the right carbon experts.
Rachel Delacour (00:13:47):
But we were acknowledging that, of course, we needed to have that layer of carbon expertise, et cetera. So we are lucky enough to be in France. You know, Cody, for my first company, I was never bragging about the fact that I was a French company. I was hiding it. My accent is pretty unmasking it. But what I mean is that you're never bragging being a French tech company even 10 years ago because it's so more cool to be a US one. But I must say that in the carbon management software world, I'm absolutely, maybe not bragging, but a little bit, "I'm French," kind of [inaudible 00:14:26] at the end of the day. But still I'm super proud because what you have to understand is that when it comes to carbon, we have a fantastic legacy in France, in Europe, but very great in France. We have a legacy of carbon knowledge.
Rachel Delacour (00:14:41):
It's crazy. When you are digging, when I was scratching the surface of all that, I said, "Oh, my God. We have such legacy in terms of carbon knowledge here." And it means what? It means that we have public institutions who've been there for several decades, more than 20, 30 years ago. The [inaudible 00:14:58], for example, and they're providing public data related to carbon, 12 companies, for so many years. We have, for example, our engineers at school, they have that common classes about carbon. It's important, Cody, to mention that because it means that I have access to a very local talent pool of very knowledgeable persons. When it comes to carbon finance, when it's come to carbon for corporate, this is crazy, the number of talents we have in France. I'm not bragging, but a little, but the concept of carbon footprint has been invented in France by Jean-Marc Jancovici, but it's something we have to mention. It means that the people I'm working with right now, coming from that carbon world, they have 15 to 20 years of experience.
Rachel Delacour (00:15:50):
So unfortunately, I'm not telling you that my startup is a... We are a young company, but we are not so young ourselves. I think we are in our 40s, barely in our 30s. Mostly, we are 40s, 50s, but lots of experts. And we know that the challenge for this is really to have those two worlds to meet, the software tech, the code life, what it is to code the product, the delivery for this, and that carbon world, injecting all that knowledge for our customers. So the company Zoom, but working altogether. And for the tech part, we've been working together for so many years on data analytics complexity. So our role is really to mask that complexity of the data platform and mask the complexity of the carbon knowledge we are injecting in Sweep. So yeah, this is the journey. Sorry, I'm super talkative, but this is where we come from and where we are aiding with large customers today.
Cody Simms (00:16:52):
Rachel, what an amazing story. And I want to acknowledge how much of it resonates with me, in particular, the idea of how do you take the skillset that you already have and apply it to the climate problem. So the fact that you were able to recognize pretty quickly where your own background could be kind of turned slightly sideways to plug in and solve a key pain point, I think, is to me the most powerful unlock any of us can do when trying to figure out how we can make a difference, right? Because you acknowledged, it's like, "I'm not going to go back to school and get a PhD in climatology, or-"
Rachel Delacour (00:17:31):
I have no time. I have no time for that. There is such an urgency that when I will get my diploma-
Cody Simms (00:17:38):
For sure, the problem will already be too big for any of us. But applying what you already know how to do, which is business intelligence and data management and building software for large corporations, can make a big difference. And my big takeaway from your story and from so many like you that I hear is, for anyone listening to this who's still trying to figure out how to leverage their own for the best impact in the climate, start with what you're already good at and think about ways to apply that, as opposed to thinking you need to make some huge leap.
Rachel Delacour (00:18:14):
Definitely. What's important also is to understand that you started with what you have, but of course it's not enough. I'm a strong believer that technology, digital can be really... and distributed infrastructure, multi-tenant infrastructure to be more complex, but it's a way to connect, and organize, coordinate that collective climate action. If you are not using technology, it's impossible to scratch the surface of that vertiginous problem, which is to organize that collective climate action. The fact that we're coming also for 15 years of this world of distributed cloud infrastructure, multi tenancy [inaudible 00:19:01], it's really allow us also to organize that distributed, decentralized dialogue, carbon dialogue, that all companies at different level of maturities need to have altogether. So we count first on the big guys to organize this, to organize this dialogue at the scale of their value chain and that complex distribution infrastructure to connect all those dots, and it's super important. But what I mean is that you have to start with what you know, but you have to be incredibly open to onboard different skills because you can't ramp up yourself quickly enough.
Rachel Delacour (00:19:43):
So it was also difficult for us to adapt to people coming from 15 years of NGO. I'm someone who's been acquired in the tech world, incredibly privileged world, incredibly privileged world. I'm working now with people who've spent their life with other people who were a victim of climate injustice, but I need those two worlds to come together. So from an operational day-to-day standpoint, of course, there is some you have to adapt. Everyone has to understand that there is different time of development for our product, but there is also a time to onboard those discussions. So we are a member of the World Bank's Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalitions. So we really try to scale also our network of different mindset, who are joining us, that we are also part of just to be sure that we are addressing the best way that vertiginous, multidimensional problem that we have.
Rachel Delacour (00:20:43):
And for example, Cody, let me talk to you about the third world that we are welcoming right now in this company. So you have the NGO/carbon world. You have the tech world. Since the beginning of this week, we have welcomed the pure political world at Sweep because we are super proud to have a new colleague, Julien Denormandie. And that person was the former minister of agriculture and food in France in the first presidency of president Macron. So Julien is a 42-year-old guy, four kids. And coming from that, he understands very complex multidimensional intricacies systems. So for me, and for my team, we are convinced that it's an incredible force to add to that skills that we have already set up around the table to build Sweep, the best way to help companies understand that vertiginous, complex and multidimensional problem that we can solve. So yeah, now we have to deal with someone also coming from just before Sweep.
Rachel Delacour (00:21:50):
So today, he is joining a company of... we are 80 people at Sweep, we will be around 100 by the end of this year, but still the size of the company right now, when I'm talking to you, Cody. That person was running a minister of 30,000 people just before joining us. So this is crazy when you think about it, and I feel incredibly privileged to have that kind of very smart mind who is betting his next move on a climate tech like ours. I'm super proud also of this, and I am also super confident on how we'll be able to deliver on our mission. Because of that open attitude we have, hopefully, it'll work to really onboard very different profiles. Because the problem is not a tech problem, the problem is not on carbon methodology problem, it's not only a public sector problem. You know what I mean?
Cody Simms (00:22:47):
I think of it as climate change is a systems problem, and solving systems problems requires interdisciplinary points of view and requires breaking down silos and leveraging the best of expertise that everyone has. At least you've lived this, but the big difference between building a pure play tech business and a climate tech business is the fact that so much of climate tech touches real world. It's not just optimizing bits, it's optimizing bits in order to move atoms or in order to change how things are created or transported or manufactured. And that's a very real world interaction that is more tangible to me than just pure play software.
Rachel Delacour (00:23:33):
Incredibly [inaudible 00:23:35], but technology can definitely help. So technology is one of the key factor. It's like the oil to coordinate that discussion, that dialogue, and data is the real language we have to speak actually.
Cody Simms (00:23:49):
Yeah. So I'm really interested, you defined your background as being heavy in business intelligence. The box I put Sweep into in my mind is that of carbon accounting. And so I'm curious how you think about business intelligence for climate and carbon slightly differently than just what I would call carbon accounting. What's the kind of additionality factor that you think Sweep brings to the table in that regard>
Rachel Delacour (00:24:19):
Yeah. So I will explain you how I articulate that. When you are talking about carbon accounting, Cody, it's already existing for a while. For decades, there is plenty of software who already did that. But carbon accounting, it's incredibly static. Okay? Carbon accounting, for me, it's a punctual exercise. It's like when you are doing your accounting, you are asking your accountant to put figures in the right format, and the accountant is done. Then you have your analytics colleagues, your controllers, who are analyzing those data, who are playing with those data, and who are building dashboard for the CEO to make better decisions on top of those data. So you have your accountant who is done when you have collected the data and put that in some boxes, if I take it very simply [inaudible 00:25:16]. And carbon management, it's absolutely, for me, different from carbon accounting. Carbon management is really about using your platform that is dynamic, dynamic because the exercise of collecting the data is done on a regular basis and it's not the most important part.
Rachel Delacour (00:25:38):
It has to be done the right way, but the most important part start when you are able to analyze, "Okay, from one month to another, from a year to another, what is happening in my reduction path?" Okay. I committed, X years ago, about the fact that I will be SBTi, using SBTi in compliance with [inaudible 00:25:59]. As a CEO, you know that they were mentioning in the newspaper that they would do this, this, this, this, this. They would commit to be aligned on Paris Agreement, blah, blah, blah. Okay. Now it's time to track progress. How do you track progress if you don't have the right platform to understand the numbers, to scale the numbers the way your company is scaling as well? What it is to think about carbon intensity, what it is to think about absolute figures, value, what it is to understand the... And when you are analyzing it for geography department or the product maybe, you need the data platform, you need the right data platform and the right backbone.
Rachel Delacour (00:26:41):
You shouldn't care about that. This is my role to bring you that analytics capabilities, to play with your data so that you are really able to organize your reduction scheme, you are able to allocate reductions to some departments, you are able to not very completely blindly ask everyone in your company to reduce their carbon emission by 20, 30%. You can't ask that to everyone because some department will tell you, "You know what? I can't because I already..." This is not the kind of department you can ask for, but maybe there is some department where you can ask for 50% of decrease, of reduction. So we are giving you the platform, the data visualization, and the data visualization platform, tooling, calculation capabilities, to organize that like if you were using Tableau Software to name a few or business objects or else for your carbon initiatives, so for your carbon reduction initiative.
Rachel Delacour (00:27:45):
Carbon accounting, for me, it's super restrictive. It's already good to do so, but it is the first step on the [inaudible 00:27:50]. The most important is to organize the reduction, and it's about having your data platform with collecting the data outside of your borders, outside of your own information system. And I've seen large companies in Europe, large companies, who are the big emitters, they're super educated about carbon. You can't fool them with a quick and dirty exercise or monetary factor emission exercise. They are smiling at you if you are doing so.
Rachel Delacour (00:28:22):
When they see Sweep, they like them. The capacity, we have to [inaudible 00:28:25] very precise. But still, I have seen some large companies being incredibly good at scope 1, scope 2 internally. They were doing a fantastic job, and why we are meeting them? Because when you see that, you say, "Oh, my God. You're so good. What you're doing is already some magic. Your team there, internally, are great." They've built some very, very good internal tool. And actually you understand that when it comes to scope 3, they have no clue how to go outside of their information system models, boundaries.
Cody Simms (00:28:56):
Just in the spirit of helping people transition into climate, I'll take a minute to describe scope 1, scope 2, scope 3, just in case people don't know that. Scope 1 being your owned and operated emissions, scope 2 being the energy you use to power that, and scope 3 being the emissions of your suppliers. Is that accurate?
Rachel Delacour (00:29:15):
It is accurate. And the fact that everyone realized now that your scope 3... I mean, your extended responsibility as a company, that scope 3 is actually representing for some of them. 80 to 90% of the world emissions of the company means that you absolutely need to click about your responsibility and you have to show the numbers about your responsibility to better reduce it. But we are talking about going outside of the boundaries of your own information system. So you need to be able to interconnect and to collect the data, and do the same exercise with your supply chain, with your value chain. So this is where Sweep is. This is where we have the Sweep, a fantastic sweet spot and a different [inaudible 00:29:57]. Because with this model of scalable, distributed, multi-tenant infrastructure, we are able to help companies to do that exercise of reduction at the scale of a value chain. And this is something that is super cool, just cool for [inaudible 00:30:14].
Cody Simms (00:30:14):
We're going to take a short break right now, so our partner Yin can share more about the MCJ membership option.
Yin (00:30:21):
Hey, folks. Yin here, a partner at MCJ collective. Want to take a quick minute to tell you about our MCJ membership community, which was born out of a collective thirst for peer-to-peer learning and doing that goes beyond just listening to the podcast. We started in 2019, have since then grown to 2,000 members globally. Each week, we're inspired by people who joined with differing backgrounds and perspectives. And while those perspectives are different, what we all share in common is a deep curiosity to learn and bias to action around ways to accelerate solutions to climate change.
Yin (00:30:50):
Some awesome initiatives have come out of the community. A number of founding teams have met. Nonprofits have been established. A bunch of hiring has been done. Many early stage investments have been made, as well as ongoing events and programming like monthly Women in Climate meetups, Idea Jam sessions for early stage founders, climate book club, art workshops, and more. So whether you've been in climate for a while or just embarking on your journey, having a community to support you is important. If you want to learn more, head over to mcjcollective.com and then click on the members tab at the top. Thanks, and enjoy the rest of the show.
Cody Simms (00:31:23):
All right. Back to the show.
Cody Simms (00:31:25):
So what I'm hearing you say the biggest difference in accounting versus business intelligence around carbon-
Rachel Delacour (00:31:32):
That is management. Yes, management of it. Yeah.
Cody Simms (00:31:34):
Yeah. Accounting is really basically... Thinking about it from a pure financial accounting perspective, it's looking at your actuals. And with the business intelligence side of things, it's really your ability to forecast and model and create a plan.
Rachel Delacour (00:31:57):
Exactly. From simulations of your reductions plan, it's really about navigating that complexity in one single place to understand what's happening, what's happening. It's really to help the CEOs to make decision. Those CEOs, they are paid. The responsibility they have is to help their companies live forever. They have this responsibility to make companies forever. So Sweep, we help businesses track and act on their carbon, so they can become forever companies, period.
Cody Simms (00:32:25):
And obviously, your secret sauce is your ability to manipulate and manage data very fluidly. Access to accurate data is still hard. So how are you seeing companies get better at actually accessing emissions data? Particularly, what I hear is that accessing scope 1 and scope 2 data, most companies, for the most part have their arms around that at this point, but it's still that supplier data that's really, really challenging. So what are you seeing in terms of some of the latest ways that companies are accessing accurate data? Because I'm guessing your system is only as good at forecasting as the quality of data that's going into it.
Rachel Delacour (00:33:09):
Of course, garbage in, garbage out. When you are running a BI project, it's always natural, garbage in, garbage out. So when addressing scope 3, to try to get the accurate data of the suppliers, this is also where it's our responsibility as a software vendor to mask that complexity. You can mask that complexity first by being able to invite those suppliers in the Sweep platform. If the supplier doesn't want to be invited in the Sweep platform to perform also his own information system and a disease, et cetera, it can populate an online survey and customize by the large accounts. And for this, our responsibility is to make it as super well-designed as possible, super fast, sexy as possible. The fact that we are reinventing the relationship between large accounts and the long tail of the small accounts they're working with, we are reinventing that relationship because it's not about the large accounts being super boring, annoying, and time-consuming on the second time on the shoulder of their suppliers with financial data, et cetera.
Rachel Delacour (00:34:23):
It's how do you reinvent that relationship? Because [inaudible 00:34:27] through carbon for good to fight climate change. So it's our responsibility to work on the design on the tricks, on the technological tricks to allow that dialogue, to allow data to be interconnected. So some suppliers, they want to do that exercise even for themselves and for their own suppliers, which is cool because this is when you are already starting to map a wall that you chain. So that's cool. I will skip [inaudible 00:34:56] if I can tell you that in the future about, "Oh, yeah. We've mapped that world industry." Cool. So that would be great, but we have to reinvent that, interconnect them. And when there is question marks for some companies that are really far, that doesn't want to play the game with the large companies-
Cody Simms (00:35:14):
Or maybe they're just so small that they don't have the capabilities or capacity, or they don't know. Right?
Rachel Delacour (00:35:21):
If the technology that we are giving them, while it's already doing a very good job to help them, even if, when they're quite data agnostic, they are not data savvy, I would say so. Yeah. We are helping companies also to use benchmarks, CDP benchmarks, also to assess the emissions of the supplier. So it's a balance, but at least this information resides also in the consolidated view. So you understand, you know what part of your scope 3 is coming from CDP estimates, benchmarks versus reality. And then, Cody, of course it's... and it's the same way for when you are doing that financial exercise to consolidate data coming from your industry, garbage in, garbage out. So same for climate. But the key thing, it's really to make that platform or the table, Cody, if the data is granular enough to allow precisions. But if the platform is allowing auditors to make their job, if a company can open the books super easy at a granular level and doing so with the suppliers and what they have collected, it's the key.
Rachel Delacour (00:36:36):
Like financial books, why do you have financial auditors? It's just to be sure that there is not too much garbage in. So the auditing space, thanks to the regulators as well, is organizing... That auditors are organizing themselves on the extra financial part. It's my role as a software vendor. I'm not saying that I have the truth on how it should be absolutely done, et cetera. I'm just saying that I need to give the capabilities for an auditor to audit the books on extra financial coming from my software on the safe way. And it's the safest way for the company to start their climate journey. They can do bad thing. They can do mistakes. "Okay, that's fine. I opened the book. I made some mistakes. Come on, guys. We are all starting. But at least I have the granular data." And maybe it's so, "Okay. I didn't [inaudible 00:37:31] this in the right box. Okay, let me change it. But at least I have the data. I have the story of the data."
Rachel Delacour (00:37:37):
And if the report stand out, you auditors or you regulators, you're asking me who are changing because it's still a [inaudible 00:37:45] in terms of standards. When you're asking me, as a company, to change those standards every two years, we still don't know what the ICC will ask, et cetera. At the end of the day, if you have the raw material, if you have the raw data, it's only lipstick that you are putting from a reporting standpoint. The reporting part is not the... it's important. We need to give the right frameworks per countries, per industry, et cetera. But for me, this is absolutely not. Where is the complexity? The complexity is about being sure that we are having the right raw material, the right raw and granular data so that if the standards are changing, if the company is restructuring itself or else, the data is following and the data can be managed and audited.
Cody Simms (00:38:32):
How far away, do you think, we are from regulation that requires carbon reporting in a quarterly fashion, alongside earnings reporting, and that is essentially a regulated report that companies need to both provide and have auditable proof? So some form of surveys [inaudible 00:38:55], like standards around carbon.
Rachel Delacour (00:38:58):
Yeah. I think in Europe, we are definitely closer to that date compared to the US definitely, just an example about that. Actually, I think that that kind technologies that we are building and other carbon management platforms, definitely I'm the only one, but I already think that we are showing also the regulators that they can ask companies now to report precisely on their data. I see my company, my team, myself in a virtual circle where I am showing the regulators that the tools exist, to ask company to be much more demanding towards companies to report being accurate on a regular basis, "And now guys, track your progress." "Oh, no, no, no, no. I can't." "Yes, you can. There is carbon management platform for that. So now do the job." So I see myself, hopefully, as an accelerator also, as a proof of acceleration for regulators to regulate faster. And you know, Cody, I've been contacted by European parliament member, member of parliament.
Rachel Delacour (00:40:09):
I've been contacted already. And while my company is... it's a new market, but I've been contacted with a European member of parliament, several ones, to be honest. And they told me we are confronted with lobby in certain industries, and they are telling us that we can't regulate on [inaudible 00:40:29] because they won't be able, absolutely never able, to understand what's happening, to organize that multidimensional data collection. And I tell them, "This is not true anymore because many tech companies are injecting digital technologies to participate and to solve that problem, to connect that multidimensional problem." So it's not true anymore. And I have dialogues with our politics as well, just to be sure that they understand that now there is a new part of the ecosystem that is allowing that. So they are less at risk regulating. And hopefully, I would love to... I'm not the only one of course, but if we can participate positively to regulations, because we are showing that technology is helping.
Rachel Delacour (00:41:17):
You know, Cody, the fact that we're working with large companies in our software today after only plus two-years-old of company creation and after only plus-one year of public availability, we are already mapping 500 million tons of CO2. This is huge. We are working with bigger [inaudible 00:41:36], but still we are already mapping that. It means that the more customer we have, the more that baseline, that amount of CO2, is growing. So it means that we are already able to... what's happening in terms of emission reductions. And yeah, this is a joint effort that we have to do with our customers or so to tell them, "Show your progress. And then if you want to be a forever company, this is what you have to do actually."
Cody Simms (00:42:01):
And I would assume, to some extent, the companies that are already working with you obviously are on the more progressive end of wanting to track this and report on it and make progress on it. But should regulation happen, they also already have a leg up on the laggards and the resistors and the companies that are lobbying against it because they're proactively taking the right steps to already start understanding it and optimizing on it.
Rachel Delacour (00:42:31):
Yeah, and of course there is that regulation threat, but there is also a big, big [inaudible 00:42:37], that threat is the reputational threat. And that reputational threat means that those companies, while they're already doing the job of becoming forever company, being on track of their carbon [inaudible 00:42:50] et cetera, it's because there is this reputational threat and they want to show the numbers to their customers and to their employees. So those companies, those CEOs are, for me, they are really paid for something. They're just doing their job, and this is important. So yeah, reputational risk, regulation risk. So of course they have to start right now. The sooner, the better. Whether we left to show the data, to deal with details, et cetera, if the sooner they start, the better for all what we just mentioned, reputational, regulation risk, of course.
Cody Simms (00:43:25):
And I heard on the product side of Sweep, I heard you say, obviously, companies are setting big multi-decade level pledges for emissions reductions right now. And then Sweep is helping you then model down to what percentages of reductions each individual business unit or division may need to start setting targets against. I'm really interested in understanding the gap between a 30-year pledge and quarterly level progress at the division level in a company, because that is a huge gap to overcome. Most employees at a company aren't going to be working there 30 years from now. So it's one thing to set a big target in the future, it's another to operationalize quarterly goals and KPIs inside a division and get everyday workers in middle management to start taking the steps necessary to hit reductions in real time. How are you seeing that play out right now?
Rachel Delacour (00:44:27):
There is the long-term vision, definitely, with the reduction. But there is also the short-term operational reality. You know that it's very, very, very complex to move a big boat, [foreign language 00:44:42] in French, a big boat. It's super difficult. So first, even organizing the company, it's not an easy task. At Sweep, we are, for example, helping them just mirroring hierarchy that you have in an ERP, already in your information system, just to help you to organize that. But organizing, collecting the data, or start with just a parameter to start, we are easy-ing that task, definitely, and it has to be easy. But if you are serious about the problem, this is something that you want to make. This is something that is part of your... it's a tech strategy within your climate strategy that you are in the bottom.
Rachel Delacour (00:45:27):
So that long-term vision, but also the reality that the time that it takes to organize the world company, to print a new DNA of reducing their emission and just understand what it is, understand at the scale of a large company, at the scale of a value chain, of course you have to start now and you have to already understand if you are able on a quantum basis, for example, to reduce your emissions. Every victory on a department, when you are reducing, you want to communicate internally. It's great. It's a great way to start actually. So of course, they want to already look at it on a short-term basis and where we are also masking that complexity so that quarterly exercise, or even that monthly exercise, is not a pain. It's because we are working with our customer to already automate that data collection and that the incremental changes are not a pain to deal with. So this is where the technology is helping, definitely.
Cody Simms (00:46:34):
I mean, the way I see it is, at the end of the day, businesses are organizations with incentive structures and understanding your incentives around P&L or around growth or around cost reduction, those are things that business managers are used to dealing with all the time and their bonuses are tied to those things. But emissions, it's so new to all of them. They've never had to deal with it before.
Rachel Delacour (00:46:58):
When you are running that monthly financial exercise, why won't you be able to organize that monthly extra financial test? Today, it's still difficult because you don't have the work team for that. So far, they didn't have the tools for that. But now, there is the tooling that is coming. There is the data, the extra financial data team that is also... You don't need that army because technology is trying to help for that. But of course, you will need your extra financial data on a monthly basis, and companies have to understand that. So when they don't want to invest a lot in those platforms or else saying, "Oh, no. We will still run that with the Excel sheet." Okay, I don't think that you have understood the difficulty of the exercise. But it's a component, doing...
Rachel Delacour (00:47:44):
For example, with a very large emitters in our portfolio of customers, we are automating the carbon footprint exercise on a monthly basis on more than 500 worldwide sites, seeds, plants, worldwide with their EV emissions on 70, and I'm talking about 70 countries. This is something that is becoming true now, that became true for them. And they can add their [inaudible 00:48:16] right now, onboarding, and their supply chain, upstream, downstream as well. So the extra financial, the fact that they are able to show the numbers on a monthly basis for that part of their extra financial data, it's huge.
Cody Simms (00:48:31):
And how are you seeing sustainability teams start to engage here? I mean, obviously, one sustainability team can't push all this down into an organization of 200,000 people. Are you seeing sustainability teams be more the organization that might contract with the service like yours and run an implementation program across the org and be sort of almost consultants internally? I'm curious how that's evolving in very large corporations today.
Rachel Delacour (00:48:59):
Yes. So we've seen that when we are prospecting those teams. They don't really believe in the fact that everyone can use Sweep. When we are telling them, "Hey, guys. You definitely need a tool to engage your different stakeholders internally, externally. But you need to engage them because the closer you are to the emission, the best opportunity you have to reduce it." Okay? It's not when you are in your golden tower, I don't know, in New York that you have the best idea for the plants that you have in Brazil. So when we are telling them, "We've built that platform to engage all the stakeholders to help you." At first, it's, "No, no, no, no. We need your product. We need that kind of software, but no, no, no. We will deal with that ourselves."
Rachel Delacour (00:49:46):
And when they realized the task actually to collect the data and when they start to invite another department collecting the data, doing the job at the department level, when they see the fact that, "Oh, wow, yes, indeed. It's a relief that this department is dealing with that themselves and they can consolidate all that data in Sweep. Let's invite another department." And then very quickly, they tell us, "Okay, now actually let's build it within Sweep so that I can really engage with everyone because if it's doable..." And the less information you are asking, the more people engaged, the less information you are also asking or the less information you are able to collect, manually or automatically.
Rachel Delacour (00:50:26):
This is where you are. You are on the past to be precise, to really understand your scope 3 with no... Of course there will still be estimates, but it's such better to organize that whole discussions with your world company, your world stakeholders, because this is the only way to organize that carbon dialogue, to coordinate that collective climate action. Without that pervasive engaged action, I would fool myself if the guy in the golden tower in New York or in Paris can solve the world problem of the world company just by himself.
Cody Simms (00:51:06):
It's a good lesson for, I think, any startup trying to do business development with a big corporation. It sounds like the sustainability team is your ally. But at the end of the day, you need to find a business unit that's going to implement you from a pilot perspective or whatnot, and then keep the conversation going with the sustainability team, so they can help evangelize you across the org and ultimately maybe sign a global contract. But you got to get a local implementation done first.
Rachel Delacour (00:51:33):
We have also lots of financial directors who have been appointed to deal with extra financial data because they're already organizing the world system to perform monthly financial analysis. So now they are the ones, "Okay. You have access to the systems. You have access to the resource. Now let's do what you are doing on a monthly basis with extra financial data." So we have more and more also financial directors who are asking us for help on top of our two-years-old platform. And yeah, CEOs definitely are the ones who are doing the sponsors, and super important as well.
Rachel Delacour (00:52:06):
I can definitely tell you that, at least in Europe, but I guess maybe also in the US definitely. We have customers in the US, so we are also understanding many things. But Europe is very, very, very sharp, I would say, because of the regulation as well. We are seeing so many companies who are now incentivizing, part of the commissioning of contract, who are organizing the variable part of the salary of their high executive linked to sustainability, KPIs/achievements. Yeah, this is great. This is great. So this is also why the financial directors are more and more involved in all this. Super interesting to see how it's moving, hopefully, in the good way.
Cody Simms (00:52:46):
I want to change topics a little bit and ask about the role of offsets or credits as it relates to your platform. And the reason I ask is, going back to our carbon accounting versus business development distinction, I've observed that a lot of carbon accounting businesses help you understand your footprint and then their business model is more being an offset broker, which to me, my general reaction is that's a little bit of a perverse incentive. It's sort of like the first thing that anyone should be trying to do is reduce their emissions. And so if the accounting software's business model is selling credits to you, maybe it's not helping you find out how to reduce your emissions directly. That's a general statement, but I'm curious how you think about that.
Rachel Delacour (00:53:31):
Yeah, so we've seen that, and indeed you're right. Our first employee, [inaudible 00:53:37] and then we hired Renaud Bettin, with great carbon expertise in France. And we talked about that with Renaud, and he was the first to tell us, "Oh, my God. No, please, insist on the reduction part. You can't link just an accounting part and that contribution/offset path." So this is where we understood that. Of course, we have to use our skills for the reduction part. You're definitely right. It's not about just offsetting. Still, even with Renaud, our reflections evolved as well. And at first, we already wanted to invite our customers to proceed step-by-step, you collect, you measure, you reduce, and then you [inaudible 00:54:23] of course to your internal [inaudible 00:54:23]. And then you can contribute to projects who are really good for climate change.
Rachel Delacour (00:54:32):
But we really wanted to insist on that part, step-by-step. Months after months, quarter after quarter, what you are just seeing is that we have no time. So a company must do everything in parallel. They must reduce, but also in parallel contribute, contribute, contribute, now, now, now. But the most important thing is that they must reduce in parallel, contribute. Everything has to be done at the same time now. So you will never hear me telling you that contribution is not good. I'm not yet to laugh. We shouldn't do that. We are in a fucking urgency, so we have to trigger all what we can. But a company definitely need to understand that part of the urgency, solution is ready to reduce. But they have also to invest money in projects that are good for climate in general, but that also project who are good for climate justice. So this is also why we are offering that carbon project marketplace, where our customers can really do the world journey at the same time.
Rachel Delacour (00:55:39):
And having people who are coming from NGOs at Sweep, it means that we've been very, very picky and very critical about the project we are onboarding because it was important for us that there were lots of co-benefits, social co-benefits. I didn't want to go all in because we are tech savvy people, techy guy, geeky, data guy. I love innovations, but I couldn't go all in with just sequestration projects, new sequestration tax project. I love that. I love climate works. I know their team [inaudible 00:56:07], but you definitely need to continue to invest in cook stoves in Kenya. You need to invest in... to propose projects, which are good to avoid deforestation, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, which can seem naturally innovative, naturally cool, naturally... I don't care. We have to do all this at the same time.
Rachel Delacour (00:56:29):
But climate justice is important. And because I've heard so many things about very new, super innovative projects... and that's cool to test. We definitely need pioneers who are testing things, and they need cash definitely to test things. But I've been also pretty upset to hear some stories about data centers who are using energies coming from oil field. So I've tried to simplify it, but were using that emissions to fuel data centers. And when you scratch a little bit the surface to understand that those data centers are actually used to mine cryptos, bitcoins, it's...
Rachel Delacour (00:57:12):
50% of African people, they don't have access to electricity. For me, it's completely insane to think that we are investing so much money in that kind of sequestration. Come on, climate justice, guys. And I'm telling you that I'm super privileged, I'm living in France, I'm living in a developed countries, I am no one to tell that. And plus, I raised 100 million dollars in 12 months for my company. This is why also my battle is to help companies to reduce their remission, definitely. But my battle is also to show... If I am successful, it means that I am a cash machine first. I need to be a cash machine to show that I have impact. And if I am a cash machine, it means that also I am giving visibility to all those projects, which are good for planet with that co-benefits also attached. And I am super picky also on the kind of projects we are giving visibility to.
Rachel Delacour (00:58:17):
If I am successful, I will give as much visibility as possible to... but I don't. And Cody, I know that you love innovations, et cetera, and that's great. And thank you to give so much visibility to all the new pioneers while doing stuff. But please, think about what we already have as well, and just about climate justice. And that money I've raised, sometimes I think, "Oh, my God. So much money," but I'm happy to see that this money is not going to an NFTs. Okay, no offense, but come on. Come on. So now my role is to give visibility to those projects, being sure that they are making money out of that, and being sure that my KPI is about reducing emissions are on track.
Cody Simms (00:58:59):
So I'm hearing you say it's a matter of obviously helping companies hit reductions, but also knowing that they're not going to be able to reduce everything right away. You do have a business that exposes access to different credits or contributions or however you want to define them. And your team takes pride in trying to expose companies to reductions that have large social benefits to them, in addition to being potentially tech forward or innovative, is what I'm hearing.
Rachel Delacour (00:59:33):
Yeah. There is sequestration, new project and this is great. It has to be done definitely. But we also need to give visibility to this project of cook stoves. It's also a way for a mom to not burn hoods inside house. And the cool benefits you have from that is that everyone is breathing better, but also... So it's good from a carbon perspective, everyone is breathing better. So it's better for the house. And also the kid who is coming back from school, if he goes to school, but the kids back to school can do their homework inside the house and not outside the house because they can't breathe. We have to try to preserve what remains of climate stability, but we have also to give back or so to those guys who are so forgotten also.
Cody Simms (01:00:25):
To me, I mean, climate justice is such a rich topic to dive into. And I often feel like, honestly, it gets a little bit used, maybe not the right way, in a lot of developed countries because it loses sight of the global view of climate injustice and how... Yes, there are people in very wealthy countries that are facing aspects of climate injustice. But if you look at the global map and you look at parts of Africa, you look at parts of Southeast Asia, you look at India and you see-
Rachel Delacour (01:00:59):
Look at Pakistan or something.
Cody Simms (01:00:59):
... the size of the impact. Yeah, absolutely, Pakistan. And these are, for the most part, countries that have very small footprints relative to the amount of impact that they're receiving. So you're seeing corporate interest in wanting to support projects that do help try to balance out those injustices.
Rachel Delacour (01:01:19):
Yeah, and you know what? The fact that Sweep is engaging lots of stakeholders internally, but also externally... But when it comes to that reflection, that strategy about, "Okay, guys. Now, internally," so when the CEO and all the CSR team is asking, "Okay. Now what do we want to contribute to in terms of projects?" the fact that they have already started to engage all those plenty of departments, colleagues, employees, they can pick also the projects they want to contribute to. So what we are saying is that... Let's talk about an international company. They have different countries, many subsidiaries. Every subsidiary is able to contribute. And what's interesting is that those subsidiaries, sometimes they want to contribute locally. So with a very diverse catalog of projects, they can all... The fact that they've been engaged in the reduction path, they also want to be engaged in choosing the contribution path.
Rachel Delacour (01:02:24):
And it's super cool for them to see that they are able to be involved in that kind of choice, discussions, locally. And it's not just only the Peregian team who is picking the contribution project for the Spanish team, I would say, for example. So it's super cool. So our role is to create the best projects as possible, being sure there is as much co-benefits as possible, also diversify our offer, and also being sure that we are on as many location as possible because our customers loves to onboard that contribution discussions. And they love to have that discussion with all their employees. And it's super cool for them to understand. A French team who is able to contribute to a French project, some of them say, "Oh, but Africa, India, it's so far from us. We don't really know if it'll... what's happening over there." "Okay, guys. It's important to do so even far away. But if you already want to contribute to a project, which is good for the climate, it's a big remaining stability in France, let's do so." But at least they are acting now.
Cody Simms (01:03:34):
Super helpful. Thanks for helping me see your perspective on how you blend credits into the reduction side of things. And interesting to think of it as an employee activation tool in terms of getting people excited to find different projects that the company might be contributing to. It gives people something to talk about with friends and family, I think as well, around, "Hey, here-"
Rachel Delacour (01:03:55):
At the coffee machine.
Cody Simms (01:03:56):
Yeah, for sure.
Rachel Delacour (01:03:57):
That's cool. If you start to ring those, not that weather questions, but that climate justice question and discussion at the coffee machine, that's pretty cool.
Cody Simms (01:04:05):
Rachel, we can keep going. I have a billion more questions I could ask you. You all just raised significant amounts of funding. You've raised, I think, over a hundred million dollars in a little over a year. You've got Coatue, who led your most recent Series B. What's next? What are the big priorities? Where do you need help? And for anyone who's listening, who's motivated by what you're building, either as a customer or as a potential employee, what are the areas that are highest priority for you right now?
Rachel Delacour (01:04:32):
Priorities definitely to develop the business, to be sure that we are growing, and to be sure that we are more and more and more connecting all those dots in our industries through a world value chain. For me, this is hopefully a prophecy with auto... I don't know how to say that in English. Sorry.
Cody Simms (01:04:51):
Self-fulfilling prophecy.
Rachel Delacour (01:05:02):
Wait, wait. Exactly, exactly. Exactly. But yeah, so now we are working for that and we are... The fact that we are working with international companies who are themselves working... We are working with HP, for example, in the US, but the fact that those companies are, themselves, they want to work with their long tail of value chain and also smaller companies they're working with. It means that we are working with customers in many, many, many countries at a worldwide scale. Now it's how do we organize that? We have already people in the US, we have many customers in the US. But yeah, do you know, so far we didn't announce anything in the US. But yeah, stay tuned. So now, it's a matter of developing an LC company, profitable company. You know we are B Corp also, and it's super important for me to show that we are growing a B Corp.
Rachel Delacour (01:05:45):
And I would love to be a climate tech/B Corp, the first play pure company, just to show that you can really build a great business embracing the current codes that we... Because we all need a roof on top of our heads and you need money for that, so we have to embrace the current codes of making money, but while helping. So if I can also embrace the code of IPO, making it something. An IPO is not just about IPO for IPO. It's just because there is so many ways to fund yourself right now. We've been able, in less than 12 months, to raise $100 million dollars. So you could tell me, "But what do you want to have that pain of IPO company?" Indeed, you're right. But you are broadcasting your message when you are doing an IPO. It's so huge. You can hear that from everywhere in the world.
Rachel Delacour (01:06:36):
And my message is not, of course it'll be for my customer to help them, but my message is for other entrepreneurs. When you are starting to speak to other entrepreneurs, you can have a roof on top of your head making money, but also IPO company making it... This is something super important for new careers, new expectation also in your life that you can really make the most of those world and tend to go in the new world, tend to... Hopefully, we will learn. We will show, we will broadcast all those messages for that current generation of entrepreneurs, but the new generation of all those central [inaudible 01:07:14] who's saying that you can't live in a climate-related company. Of course, you can. Of course.
Cody Simms (01:07:21):
Rachel, thank you so much for your time today. And I'm rooting for that too. Hopefully, we'll see you ringing that bell on the IPO stage in the future.
Rachel Delacour (01:07:29):
Cody, [foreign language 01:07:30].
Cody Simms (01:07:31):
There we go. All right. I appreciate it.
Rachel Delacour (01:07:33):
[foreign language 01:07:33].
Jason Jacobs (01:07:35):
Thanks again for joining us on the My Climate Journey podcast.
Cody Simms (01:07:39):
At MCJ Collective, we're all about powering collective innovation for climate solutions by breaking down silos and unleashing problem solving capacity. To do this, we focus on three main pillars, content like this podcast and our weekly newsletter, capital to fund companies that are working to address climate change, and our member community to bring people together as Yin described earlier.
Jason Jacobs (01:08:01):
If you'd like to learn more about MCJ Collective, visit us at www.mcjcollective.com. And if you have guest suggestions, feel free to let us know on Twitter, @mcjpod.
Cody Simms (01:08:16):
Thanks, and see you next episode.