TechTalk: Think Inside the Box: SAAS Startup Makes Business Sustainability (More) Accessible

Alex, thanks for joining me today.

Alex Lassiter:

Thank you for having me.

Janina Teoxon:

All right, to kick it off, Alex, in two to three sentences, explain your business for our audience.

Alex Lassiter:

Sure. Sustainability and carbon footprint reporting has become, frankly, a requirement for most companies. At this point, the vast majority of the Fortune 500 and publicly-traded companies through regulation in many cases require their vendors and service providers to report carbon emissions. But there's a big difference between the resources of a publicly-traded company and everybody else and it can be really hard for companies to understand how to measure their footprint and to meet these requirements. Greenplaces was built to serve these businesses. We think of ourselves as a chief sustainability officer in a box for businesses that need to meet these reporting needs but don't have teams of sustainability people that you might see at a Fortune 500.

Janina Teoxon:

Right, that's good. So I know I did a bit of research about your business, but after hearing it directly from you, I'm truly impressed by it's scope and potential impact for the businesses and small businesses that you just said. For sure you've built this platform for a reason. I know you touched upon this a little bit, but I want to do kind of a deep dive. Alex, tell us, what is that specific problem that you saw and you're now trying to solve?

Alex Lassiter:

Well, 70 to 75% of global emissions are outside of the Fortune 500. Many of those companies are not going to be able to do this if they don't have help. I just believe that if we're going to get there, if we need to meet these targets and we need to be able to meet the evolving needs of businesses, this is a really hard thing for companies to do, particularly mid-market businesses, it's hard. We started the business largely because we certainly believe in the mission and where things are going, we see the requirements coming down and the regulatory stuff. We know this is becoming compliance, but I just frankly didn't see a path for the tens of thousands of businesses that need to do this stuff, but frankly don't have the resources to do it themselves. Really our idea was to become the partner of choice with a turnkey solution that helps them get where they need to go.

Janina Teoxon:

That's great. Your articulation of the problem that your platform is trying to address just highlights that critical pain point for businesses that's striving for sustainability or navigating sustainability.

Now let's talk about the technology itself, the sustainability platform that you've built. How is that technology accelerating the solution for the problem?

Alex Lassiter:

Well, sustainability reporting and being green, so the idea of being a green place is pretty complicated, and frankly, it's a lot of manual data collection. What you're talking about is collecting what typically takes somebody five or six months to collect and analyze data to give somebody the reporting they need to say, "This is my carbon footprint and this is what we're doing about it." Greenplaces shortens that cycle by 10 times. The way that we do that is we've got thousands of integrations and a common business tools. We use AI and machine learning to be able to speed up the process of taking unstructured data and making it manageable data, we're talking at EisnerAmper. To me, this is no difference than 20 years ago when QuickBooks and NetSuite were coming out and saying, "Hey, we don't need to be managing a business's financials with a box of receipts and a bunch of people just manually transcribing data."

Janina Teoxon:

Right.

Alex Lassiter:

"There's better way to do this."

Our platform takes that exact same approach and says, "Let's build the QuickBooks or the NetSuite of the next 10 or 20 years by taking in this sustainability data, labeling it, categorizing it, making the data accurate with high integrity so that businesses can make smarter decisions going forward because they have greater visibility into where they are and ultimately meet the pretty complicated reporting requirements of their customers."

Janina Teoxon:

Is this a software that your customers can just access and do the reporting for them? Is that what it's get-

Alex Lassiter:

Yeah.

Janina Teoxon:

Okay.

Alex Lassiter:

Yeah, we think of ourselves as a platform and a service. The way that it works is when a business buys Greenplaces, they get access to our platform, which has a ton of things. It's got, like I said, you can integrate your utilities and it can tell you if you're spending too much or too little on energy. You can import your ESG policies and sustainability policies and access a library of 20 or 30 legal-reviewed compliant ESG policies that your business might need. You can set goals, add carbon credits, talk about subscriptions for renewable energy. But the platform itself comes with an annual carbon footprint. In connecting all of these things to be able to understand your business and get your sustainability data in one place, we're also going to be able to deliver that footprint once a year to be able to meet the needs that you have as a business.

Janina Teoxon:

That's amazing and that's truly compelling and it underscores its transformative potential for businesses.

Now let's talk about a favorite question that I ask my guests on this podcast. It's pivotal moments. Alex, what was the pivotal moment for you that shaped your entrepreneurial journey?

Alex Lassiter:

That is a big question, and this isn't my first startup. I think probably the most pivotal moment in at least my entrepreneurial journey, I started my career at Bain & Company. I was a consultant, focus in financial services and private equity, and which I loved by the way, it was a great way to start my career.

A couple years in, I had decided I wanted to get into venture capital. That's what I thought was the really cool ... Sorry for the alert. That's what I thought was the really cool ... I thought it was just the coolest business you could do. I'm 22 at this time, so I'm thinking, "This is a really great way to shape the rest of my life. I'll be a venture capital investor." Got to the final-stage round of an interview, and I met kind of the head partner and he said, "Do you have any questions for me?"

I said, "Yeah, if I come in, if I'm the first person in the door, last one to leave, I work really hard, I am your hardest worker, will I be you? Will I be able to climb? What will it look like for me to get to your stage?"

Janina Teoxon:

Right.

Alex Lassiter:

he sat back and he said, "Do you really think that I started my career as an analyst?"

I said, "No, I didn't really consider it that."

He said, "No, I built something. I started something, I took a risk." He said, "You're smart, but you don't take any risks. If you want to do something, if you really want to get to the stage of where I am, you have to go build something."

It was an odd final interview because I obviously didn't take the job, but I came home and I quit. I quit Bain and started a company. It took me a number of companies over the course of a couple of years to get to something but that one went on to grow. We sold it to Vista Equity and General Atlantic, and it still employs 2 or 300 people now across the country.

I think it was that sort of jolt that I had to get early in my career from somebody that I respected to just be honest with me and say, "If you're going to do something, you need to do it and you need to do it now, otherwise you're just going to continue on this path. You'll find yourself 20 years from now probably in the same career." He was right.

Now I'm on my second company and we're three years in, we've got 40 employees, we're growing fast. It's remarkable to kind of take a step back and say, "Wow, what would've happened if I didn't have that conversation?" I don't know.

Janina Teoxon:

Right. Well, that's amazing and I find that inspiring. For sure many of our listeners resonates with that. A lot of our listeners are entrepreneurs, for sure. It resonates with many of them that's listening to us right now. I find it inspiring, just taking the risk and really doing, just do it and build it and do it now. That's really great. You mentioned that you're a second-time founder, this is the second company that you've founded. I'm curious and for sure our listeners too, just if you can share with us if there's anything that you're doing differently, if anything, as a second-time founder.

Alex Lassiter:

It's a good question. I was sitting down with another multi-time founder yesterday talking about this, and I don't necessarily think I make less mistakes. I think I still make the same amount of mistakes I've always made. I think one difference is perspective. I think I know what good should look like as opposed to worrying about it and having less uncertainty. For example, just because you know what good looks like and what good doesn't look like, doesn't necessarily mean that you'll be able to achieve it, but it is helpful to know what you're striving towards. I think the biggest thing for me is probably just the ... I think the enjoyment this time around has been higher. I think I get to take a step back very often and just how lucky I am to be able to do what I do and I think that's much more unique.

It reminds me of having a child. You get to experience life the same experiences twice. The first time you go to the beach, you get to see that twice. You get to see holidays twice, you get to see Little League twice. You get to do those things again and the second time around, you have this added perspective of, "I remember it, but now I get to experience it one more time." I feel really lucky to get to do that because I had a tremendous amount of experiences, both agonizing, bad experiences, but also very exhilarating, really good ones. To get the chance to do that twice is really special.

Janina Teoxon:

That's good. That's really remarkable. That's a wrap. Alex, thank you for taking time to have a conversation with me today. I really enjoyed it and really find your words truly inspiring.

Alex Lassiter:

Well, thank you. We're a proud client of EisnerAmper. We're a proud partner of EisnerAmper. We're excited to work together to help businesses not only just understand how to meet these carbon reporting needs, but with EisnerAmper's help, how to provide assurance and advisory and all of these things that are absolutely needed for businesses to reach their goals. Thank you for having us and appreciate the partnership with the business.

Janina Teoxon:

All right, thank you, Alex. Thanks to our listeners for tuning into TechTalk, the entrepreneurs and innovators who turn to EisnerAmper for audit, text advisory, and outsourcing solutions to help propel their business forward. Subscribe to the EisnerAmper podcast to listen to more TechTalk episodes or visit www.eisneramper.com for more tech news you can use.

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