I moderated a panel last week at the Net Impact Conference and came away inspired by the energy of 2,600 people from 40 states and 23 countries who attended. Net Impact is a membership organization of 15,000+ emerging business leaders committed to using the power of business to create a better world. Being surrounded by change agents and meeting Al Gore in our office building today has put me in a reflective mood about why sustainability is important for a startup.
Earlier this year in my blog series on Economy 2.0, I wrote about how sustainability is an approach to sustaining innovation. For startups (either new businesses, small enterprises, or new initiatives within larger organizations), holistically integrating sustainability from the beginning is a competitive advantage for bottom line savings, building your brand, and finding new business opportunities. I won’t be talking about the definition of sustainability or a process for embedding it (refer to this great Natural Step PDF for an introduction). Instead, I’ll be focusing in on a basic sustainability innovation framework you can use that we’ve developed over the years here at FMYI:
SUSTAINABILITY TRIPLE CROWN
Operational processes
The purpose here is to establish a sustainable foundation for your day to day activities. You could call this “corporate practices” and compare the mindset to efforts like Six Sigma and Lean Manufacturing. But this is much more holistic and should touch upon all aspects of your day to day operations. Laying the groundwork for attracting and retaining innovative employees and customers is crucial to sustaining a culture of innovation, and having a commitment to sustainability has helped us do that. By having this kind of culture, the results you enjoy are innovative and sustainable product/service features which lead to new business opportunities. It’s a continual learning process and an opportunity to get ideas from employees, customers, and all your stakeholders. For some ideas, here’s what FMYI is committed to putting into practice each day:
• Sustainable transportation options for employees (free mass transit passes for employee commutes, covered bicycle parking, showers, car sharing and bicycle access for company travel, and telecommuting opportunities)
• Energy conservation (lights off at night, computers off when people leave, monitors turn off after 20 minutes of inactivity, purchase Energy Star appliances and EPEAT Gold computers, compact fluorescent light bulbs, linear florescent lighting uses T8 or T5 bulbs with electronic ballasts, emergency exit signs have LED or similar low wattage bulbs, outdoor lighting is on a timer or photosensor, renewable energy purchased
• Minimize use of paper and disposables (digital collaboration on FMYI, printer paper contains 100% post-consumer recycled-content, marketing materials printed on at least 30% post-consumer recycled paper, durable plates/silverware/cups)
• Recycling (paper, bottles, cans, toner, batteries, food scraps)
• Climate change (business travel renewable energy offsets)
• Education (all employees attend sustainability training and have the opportunity to participate in discussion courses at work)
• Community engagement (headquartered in an office building with a sustainable community, employee volunteer time with nonprofits, grants to community groups)
• Corporate commitment (FMYI’s corporate responsibility written into our Articles of Incorporation)
Product/service features
Once you’ve laid the foundation for an operational commitment to sustainability, next up in the triple crown is embedding sustainability-related features into your product or service. This is all about gaining a competitive advantage by increasing the differentiation between you and your competitors. Frequently, I get questions from people about how a software company or a service-based firm can be sustainable. At first glance, your internal footprint may be smaller than consumer products companies for example. But the greater impact is with your clients. As a software or service company, you have a major impact on helping your clients on a day to day basis, and on a strategic level. Here’s some of the features in FMYI related to sustainability:
• FMYI platform helps enable paperless offices and reduces shipping (if you do have to print, we display a view that minimizes ink/toner and pages).
• Commuting tracker embedded into each account.
• Renewable energy offsets as you work on our site through CO2Stats.
• Preference to work with clients with a sustainability committment.
• Discounts on FMYI Pro Direct for nonprofits, government agencies, and schools.
• Sustainability info included in most template sites.
• Advertising on FMYI Free is only from organizations with a sustainability commitment.
• Newsletter features sustainability-related opportunities and discounts for our community.
New business development opportunities
This is a big one. Everyone wants to find new business development opportunities, right? It’s an essential part of starting any new venture, especially bootstrapped ones solely relying on customer revenue for growth. This could mean going deeper with existing customers, finding new ones, or creating new sales channels and products/services. To tap into these new business leads, you could prepare marketing materials explaining your sustainability commitment, blog about trends in the sustainability you’re studying, hold a webinar about your sustainability product/service features, partner with sustainability organizations to help educate others about the competitive advantages with integrating sustainability, or find a sustainability-related need with your customers and release a product/service that addresses it. Our clients often mention that our sustainability commitment and features are a unique differentiator in the collaboration software marketplace. And we’ve created a new sales channel with our unique social platform for sustainability employee engagement.
Companies like Hyatt are leveraging our template to help educate stakeholders about sustainability while giving them tools to share best practices and track results. Seeing more corporations, universities, NGOs, and government agencies use FMYI for their sustainability-related activities inspires so much. It’s the reason why I started FMYI five years ago based on my experiences with sustainability employee engagement at Nike. FMYI’s growth strategy is firmly rooted in the “sustainability triple crown” and relying on the support of so many people that make up the FMYI family. Thank you.
Onward and upward!
-Justin
Next blog post in my series on bootstrapping a startup: Do you focus on marketing or sales?
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This week, we celebrated FMYI’s eighth anniversary. I started the company on January 28th because in Chinese, eight is good luck. I can still remember that first morning working out of Urban Grind Coffeehouse here in Portland’s Pearl District, which became FMYI HQ for much of the first year. Urban Grind owner Kevin Crawford created a thriving coffee shop for artists, knowledge workers, and the tech community in Portland. The irony is I don’t really drink coffee. I soon became a “social coffee drinker.“
