#156 Digitizing Supply Chains, Finding the Right Investors & an Oversubscribed Round, Important Materials in Climate, & More w/ Leise Sandeman (Pathways)

🌎 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

Ask yourself this: is the content we put out valuable enough to you that you’d be willing to buy us a latte 🍵 once a month?

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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.

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📝 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

* Leise Sandeman | Pathways

* Connect with Somil | Connect with Silas

* Check out our sponsor, NextWave Partners, for all your Climate, Renewables, and Sustainability recruitment needs.

* This podcast is NOT investment advice. Do your homework and due diligence before investing in anything discussed on this podcast.

Asks 👋

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Here’s the thing: Somil and I both have day jobs, so if you’re in the helping mood, we both have an ask for you today.

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)

🚨🚨🚨 Attention Hiring Managers!!! Are you struggling to find qualified candidates? Maybe getting candidates but can’t bring them across the line consistently? Or not getting sufficient applicants? — Reach out to our sponsors, NextWave Partners today to help solve that for you.

NextWave Partners is a leading Global Renewables, Climate, & Sustainability recruitment consultancy solely focused on these impact areas. They are also B-Corp Certified.

Reach out to them today to help you solve your hiring challenges and get you one step closer to making an impact.

🙏🏽 Thanks for tuning in, and see you all next episode!

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