Scoping The Project - 1, 2 And 3
When Aklimate approached us they were at an early pre-investment stage, a team of two entrepreneurs with a great idea and a different name.
The brand refresh was already underway (they were previously called Club Zero) and work had been done on how to calculate Scopes 1, 2 and 3 in a spreadsheet. What Aklimate needed was a way to demonstrate their ideas to potential customers and investors.
We started by looking at the scoping calculations supplied in Excel. Although these were extremely well considered the limitations of Excel meant that before any work could be done we had to map out the options, variations and conditional settings to make a usable tool for any user with limited or no knowledge of carbon emissions or offsetting.
Calculating The Emissions
Although at AndAnotherDay we have a lot of experience in turning spreadsheets into fully functioning web applications. Each comes with its own challenges and Aklimate’s was no exception.
Formulae around different fuel types and the frequency of their usage was dependent on other factors within the application had to be taken into consideration. We had to identify elements had been entered into the spreadsheet as fixed variables, map them to arrays of options and decide how we were going to tackle them both the front-end user as well as being managed by the Aklimate team.
Mapping The Project
The original project was set up to be based on a subscription model with a single user calculating emissions of the current year. Through discussions with the client we revealed that the application also needed to be opened up to wider teams and allow historical data to be visualised and compared.
We created a Visual Collaboration area online which both teams had edit access to, where we could meet remotely, discuss ideas and collaborate to discuss the flows.
Once the direction was in place, it’s a simple case of creating a smooth feedback loop, discussing, refining and tweaking until everyone is happy with the final result.
Guiding The User
Prototyping the whole application was undertaken in a fast and powerful UI/UX design & collaboration tool. Everything we had learned in the calculation and mapping workshops, along with our User Experience and User Interface expertise, was taken into consideration in developing a fully working prototype.
The prototype allowed a ‘no-code’ approach to develop a proof of concept which allowed us and Aklimate to step through the tool to test how it would work and to identify if the user could easily reach all the areas they needed to.
Building The MVP
Timing was crucial to the project. A working demo had to be created in the shortest possible time as it was valuable in showing significant customers and investors the direction of the business with something tangible. For this reason we used the most rapid tools at our disposal, which was a common PHP framework with packages that we could install and adapt for the project’s needs. Given time, we would have selected an approach with more longevity using a JavaScript framework.
Taking Action Against the Climate Emergency
Aklimate tackles the 80% of enterprise emissions locked up in their value-chains, with a platform that empowers procurement teams to engage 000’s of their suppliers to measure, reduce & report their carbon footprint.
Supply chain emissions are notoriously difficult to abate, but are crucial in the race to net zero.
Aklimate allows organisations to gather rich primary data from suppliers, and provide them with effective tools, such as bespoke pathways & reduction initiatives, so they can decarbonise on their behalf.
To Y Combinator And Beyond
Shortly after working with AndAnotherDay Aklimate was joined by a third Founder, who has helped build an internal development team. They have also been highly active at the ClimateTech Council, Tech Zero and made the Plug and Play supply Chain & Logistics list.
Biggest news is that Aklimate has been backed by Y Combinator, the leading startup accelerator in the world, investing in the likes of Airbnb, Stripe, Dropbox, Coinbase & Reddit, Inc. With their support, they have ambitions to accelerate and massively scale up their impact.
