#349: Brennan Spellacy of Patch, on Value-Driven Category Creation, Strategic Hiring at a High-Growth Startup, and Enabling Trust through Transparency

Brennan is the Co-Founder and CEO of Patch, the platform for negative emissions and scaling unified climate action. Patch is building the infrastructure for a sustainable economy by enabling gigatonne scale carbon removal. With Patch, companies can embed climate action into their own products, neutralizing the carbon impact of everyday transactions like shipping, travel, and financial services. From an API-integration to direct purchase, Patch is the carbon removal platform for businesses and consumers to seamlessly contribute to trusted removal and reduction projects at any scale.

Prior to founding Patch with co-founder Aaron Grunfeld, Brennan worked in a range of product & engineering roles at Sonder and Shopify. He received a degree in chemical engineering from McGill University.

Topics Covered by Brennan Spellacy in this Episode

• What Patch is and how they’re helping companies achieve their environmental goals

• Patch’s origin story

• Deciding to found Patch with his co-founder Aaron Grunfeld after a collaborating on a challenging project at Sonder

• The early days of Patch and the benefits of starting right at the beginning of the pandemic

• How they tackled the challenge of fundraising

• Using their $1.2M pre-seed raise to build their founding team

• Patch’s original platform

• Category creation and their values-centric sales pitch

• Getting approached by Andreessen Horowitz for investment

• Patch’s product evolution and the three facets of the problem they’re solving

• Leveraging PR to fuel Patch’s growth and shifting their strategy

• The logic behind their slow-to-hire approach

• Vetting in the carbon credit marketplace and enabling trust through transparency

• Patch’s business model and how it has evolved

• Interesting climate solutions Brennan has seen

• The strategic timing of their rebrand

• What’s next for Patch and where to connect with Brennan and his company

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