🌎 Welcome back to the CleanTechies PodLetter, founder edition.
Today, we are talking to Leise Sandeman from Pathways
Shoutout to Leise and the Pathways team for their recent fundraise 🚀🚀🚀 You can find her announcement of it here and the Axios article here!
We had the chance to talk about this off the record and are so happy to be putting this episode out at the time of their announcement 🎉
In this episode, we discuss…
How Pathways develops software for material manufacturers' environmental impact analysis
What an Environmental Product Declarations (EPD) is and how it aids in carbon reduction
Why success in startups requires relationship building, understanding perspectives, and audacious goals
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The Guest: Leise Sandeman
Leise started her career as a consultant at McKinsey and a project manager, exercising skills in information synthesis and team management that became crucial in how she handles her co-founder relationship
She started Pathways in grad school at Harvard, finding it the optimal time and place to launch a startup in the built environment
The Startup: Pathways
Materials, Manufacturing, Construction, Software
One-liner: Pathways is a platform for manufacturers that simplifies the creation of product life cycle analyses.
Pathways is developing AI-enabled technologies that integrate across operations, ingesting supplier data and giving manufacturers insight into the environmental emissions impact. They’re like the environmental nutrition facts for materials. But instead of calories and carbs, we measure chemicals and carbon.
This enables product decarbonization through emission hot spots, material life-time trade-offs and creation of environmental product declarations.
📝 Show Notes:
Topics
01:28 Introduction
03:18 What is a Life Cycle Analysis
06:12 Environmental Product Declarations
09:02 Deciding to Start a Company
21:24 Finding a Co-founder
30:48 Growing Interest in the Built Environment
44:47 Landing the First Customer
46:50 Receptiveness of Manufacturing Industry
47:50 Building Relationships Across Differences
53:39 What Attracted Investors
55:27 Navigating an Oversubscribed Round
58:45 Building Audacious Goals
59:36 Reflecting on the Journey
Links
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Asks 👋
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Somil: I’m currently seeking to connect with founders in the built environment space for a project I’m working on. If you’re in that space, schedule a chat here!
Silas: As many of you know, my day job is solving people’s hiring headaches in climate - do you have a hiring headache? Well, let me be your Advil. (booking here)
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🙏🏽 Thanks for tuning in, and see you all next episode!
#156 Digitizing Supply Chains, Finding the Right Investors & an Oversubscribed Round, Important Materials in Climate, & More w/ Leise Sandeman (Pathways)