Start measuring the carbon footprint of small businesses NetNada raised $200,000 in Seed funding from Skalata Ventures to make reporting easier and more affordable for SMBs.
The support of Paul Little and Darrell Wade’s Melbourne VC comes amid shift in focus from biennial cohorts to invest now on a rolling basis in up to 5 start-ups per month.
skalata COO Maxine Lee said they were listening to what the founders wanted to change.
“There were no application deadlines or program dates,” she said.
“Our new Venture Development model enables us to support more companies, more effectively than ever before.”
Sydney-based NetNada’s platform integrates directly with accounting software such as Xero. It uses AI to automatically assess a company’s data and identify the impact of spending on the environment, then suggest the best ways to reduce the impact, while also identifying cost savings and automating stakeholder communication.
Co-founders Lochie Burke and Afonso Firmo previously established the Kolkata . established River Rangers charitable and sustainable market for household products, Little Pippinrespectively, and identified the affordability of small businesses that can act sustainably as a major issue and sought to ‘democratize’ it.
“Doing your ESG reporting and knowing your carbon footprint will be just as essential as doing your taxes right now,” Burke said.
“Two million Australian SMEs want to do the right thing, but with the typical ESG consultant fees of $100,000, they are fully priced. Sustainability is a vast and complex area. Offsetting carbon, cleaning up supply chains and looking for green solutions in the midst of greenwashing is a minefield for non-experts.”
As terms like “carbon neutrality,” “net zero,” and “climate positive” become part of business language, the fundamental problem remains that you can’t compensate for what you can’t measure.
“The first step to reducing your carbon footprint is understanding how big the shoe is,” he said.
“Our focus is on making complex and opaque data clear and actionable so entrepreneurs can self-regulate.”
The team predicts 10x customer growth over the next 12 months and has already signed several customers, including: United Resource Management and renew IT.
NetNada scored a MVP Grant of the NSW Government, and also participated in the UNSW Founders and CSIRO ON programs. David Burt, who led the ON program before becoming Director of Entrepreneurship at UNSW, has joined NetNada as an advisor.
Skalata co-founder Darrell Wade, founder of Intrepid TravelThe world’s largest carbon neutral travel company, said he admired NetNada’s approach.
“With imminent changes to accounting standards, carbon accounting will become an essential part of a company’s reporting framework,” he said.
“Fortunately, companies can now do the right thing while getting ahead of the compliance curve by using NetNada.”