Collaborative Innovation: How an industry made sustainability a reality
Today Scope3 announced an oversubscribed $20MM round led by GV. In this challenging fundraising environment, this raise is a testament not only to the incredible progress that the team has made over the past 21 months, but also to something special that happened in the advertising industry at the same time: a groundswell of collaboration and innovation. The creation of a new software category - one that we expect to be hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue within the next few years - doesn’t happen in a vacuum.
When I started thinking about Scope3 in 2021, I knew there was a massive carbon problem in the digital space. I also knew that most companies were thinking of sustainability as part of an ESG or corporate social responsibility initiative, not as part of the core business. The question I posed to my co-founders was simple: how do we help the industry integrate sustainability data so that companies make more money and drive systemic decarbonization?
Through this lens, we began to innovate and we began to collaborate. On the innovation front, we started building a comprehensive “digital twin” model of the digital ad supply chain that we could use as a foundation to integrate a multitude of data sources to drive unprecedented accuracy and depth in a global, complex, and opaque supply chain. On the collaboration front, we shared our data with early partners who, like Matt McIntyre of EssenceMediacom, encouraged us to develop APIs; who, like Benjamin Davy of Teads, went through the methodology with a fine-toothed comb to help us improve it; who, like Krystal Olivieri and Ollie Joyce of GroupM, helped us align our work with the year-long project that they had been leading to develop an omnichannel methodology.
At the same time, the industry was starting to take sustainability seriously. Trade association leaders, like Allison Pepper, Arthur Millet, Helene Chartier, Stephan Loerke, and Stephen Woodford, made sustainability a top priority. Climate advocates, like Duncan Meisel and Clean Creatives, pushed the industry to look in the mirror. Influencers, like Ruben Schreurs of Ebiquity, used data to show the environmental impact of made-for-advertising content. Corporate leaders like Marcus Mauermann of Axel Springer set the bar for how companies could be both granular and comprehensive in their sustainability reporting. Consortia like DIMPACT helped bring the best climate science, like Carbon Trust’s work on measuring streaming video, to the forefront. Agency leaders, like Martin Bryan of Mediabrands, made brave public commitments to reduce their programmatic emissions. All of these things were foundational in creating an environment where sustainability was a tailwind for commercial opportunities and for innovating.
As the industry was starting to lean into sustainability, Scope3 continued to innovate and collaborate. Early brainstorming sessions with Laura Wade about launching a green marketplace led to the development of Green Media Products. A challenge from Raja Rajamannar and Bob Liodice to prove that buying more sustainably would actually help performance led to a concept tested, proved, and productized as Climate Shield. Collaboration requires being in the room with people that care about climate and are willing to do something about it, and we have been incredibly fortunate to be in the room with wonderful people from day one.
Equally important to the influencers were - of course! - our commercial partners. I think back to Gurman Hundal’s hand-scrawled signature on our first signed contract and the joy and terror we felt that day. Today, with over 70 customers, I still feel that intense sense of excitement and opportunity as we expand and innovate.
When I think back to those early days, a quote from Georgia football coach Kirby Smart comes to mind: “We are elite at getting better” - in other words, at learning. I think that is the most important insight that I can share about how we went from a blank sheet of paper to raising a series B in less than two years. We have kept notes on almost every external meeting we’ve had since the beginning of the company - 4,471 so far - and learning from this knowledge base is our superpower.
Raising this round is the next step in our journey to build a collaborative sustainability platform that drives better media outcomes and accelerates systemic decarbonization in the digital media ecosystem. I have so much gratitude for the 36 ScopeThreeps that learn together every day. With committed investors, a supportive industry, and an incredible team, we are poised - together - to imagine and create a more sustainable digital world.