Not everyone will remember the 70’s Energy Crisis when the real price of oil trebled - yes, trebled! - in less than three years. For Europeans, memories will include rostered blackouts, greatly reduced travel and clunky Tech that needed back-up power.. For North Americans, the abiding memory will be the 55 mph speed limit.Fast forward half a decade and we’re there again, but this time in...
Not everyone knows where Ukraine is or how big it is. Geographically it’s wedged between Poland to its North West and the Black Sea to the South. Russia is on its Eastern flank. And Ukraine is big. Were it a US State it would rank number 3, just behind Texas but well ahead of California.The Soviet Union has tried invading a similar sized country before and retreated in defeat 10 years later....
Why Snark Hunting is the new obsession of Health-Tech VC’s.Not everybody will have read The Hunting of the Snark, a nonsense poem by Victorian writer and Alice in Wonderland creator, Lewis Carroll. In it a hunting team, including a Barrister, Butcher, Baker, Banker and Broker - just the crew today’s working-from-home VC needs! - pursue the far-away and elusive but much prized Snark whilst...
Not everyone can recall the crash of 2008 and how banks on both sides of the Atlantic crumbled like Pringles for want of spot cash; but if we’re in Europe we’ll surely be aware, right now, of how spot markets are affecting energy prices, as they did the price of money back in 2008.Companies whose business model is based on spot markets can quickly build a business with a client base in the...
ESG, Environment, Social and Corporate Governance is an investment hot topic. Although there’s been massive inflows into ESG-targeting funds over the last two decades, their performance has not been measurably superior to other funds out there. As we’re a start-up we’re going to bake-in our Governance as we grow and prosper and build our Social framework as we go (there must already be some good practice out there), but it’s our environmental credentials that we’ll be watching most closely.
Tech, in general, has good environmental credentials. The 5 biggest US Tech companies have a combined carbon intensity (net carbon emissions per unit sales) of slightly less than 3% of the S&P 500 average. That’s impressive and has been achieved by doing absolutely nothing; in fact, just being. If you’re a Tech start-up like Health-AI, you’ll want to build on Tech’s credentials.
The way we think that best serves the environment, as well as our passion for data and measuring stuff, is to adopt Zero Based Environmental Budgeting (ZBeeB). The idea’s straightforward:
• If you’re a start-up, get to minimum viable size where you’re making sales, have a working team and hopefully are generating positive cash flow. If you’re an established business choose a year in which to start • Set this as the base line year and work all additional net environmental consumption from that point • Choose what can be measured whenever possible and estimate what cannot. When there’s data there’s a discussion to be had. Where there’s none there should be silence • Examine the contributors to net consumption and ask the obvious questions: do we need it? Could we do it a better way? Note that we’re not budgeting here so the Can we get it for cheaper question doesn’t count, though the Can we source a greener version e.g. Electricity, most certainly would • Each time a new base line is established, publish the budget results on the Site.
If you’re an accountant, you’ll recognise this as Zero Based Budgeting for the environment and you’ll immediately recall those poor souls at Kraft-Heinz who are forced into ZBB every year to little useful effect. So learn from them and reset the base line every few years. Perhaps every five years for a public company and two for a young business.
And the business benefits? Openness and possibly new ways of digitally measuring consumption. Businesses that openly publish their internal data are usually better run, managed and trusted. Data driven Tech businesses that are often opaque in the data that they publish would benefit greatly from the trust created here. Ones that can devise new digital ways of measuring environmental consumption as well, will be afforded a magnanimous approbation.
What’s not to like?
@DewhurstLeslie
Leslie
The regulatory burden varies. We're pursuing both UK and US but US is more important to us.
Not everyone gets a second chance at life.For me it came when I was diagnosed with Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD), put on dialysis and told that I’d need to wait three to five years for a new kidney. Depressed at the thought of five year wait, thrice weekly dialysis and the likelihood that I might die, I’d revised my will, walked into my local coffee and asked in an embarrassingly loud voice if...