RALEIGH, N.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--GreenPlaces, an all-in-one sustainability platform, today announces $13M Series A, led by Redpoint Ventures along with Felicis, Tishman Speyer Ventures, and Bull City Venture Partners. This investment fuels GreenPlaces on its mission to bring sustainability to the mass market where over 83% of global emissions, or an estimated 39 billion tonnes of CO2e, live.
Business leaders today are under an enormous amount of pressure, facing declining profitability, rapidly evolving regulation, and an ever-more environmentally conscious consumer and workforce. Despite rising requirements and expectations, most sustainability teams and budgets are small and increasingly squeezed as businesses are forced to make cuts and focus on the bottom line. GreenPlaces understands that businesses desperately need a practical, straightforward sustainability solution, and in order for it to work for the mass market, it has to be good for business and the planet.
“I empathize with business leaders. On one side you’re facing declining profitability, and on the other you’re staring down ESG requirements and climate regulation. Not to mention, topline pressure as customers shift their spend to reflect values,” says Alex Lassiter, Founder & CEO of GreenPlaces. “We built GreenPlaces to tie business and sustainability objectives together, making it easy for businesses to reduce their carbon footprint and increase their bottom line.”
Industry giants like Meta, Microsoft, and AT&T today practice a “good for business, good for planet” approach to sustainability–investing heavily in experts and custom-built tools to tackle their carbon footprint, and benefit their bottom line. GreenPlaces is helping the mass market adopt this approach, to move beyond viewing sustainability as a cost center, reframing it as a smarter way to do business–translating sustainability into ROI.
“We realized that businesses like Amazon, Starbucks, and Meta were achieving sustainability goals while also saving millions in operational efficiencies,” says Lassiter, “Shouldn’t every business have access to these sustainable strategies?”
GreenPlaces makes sustainability possible for all businesses–connecting the dots between business benefit and climate impact. Practical and easy to implement, the all-in-one solution is purpose-built for business leaders who need to adopt sustainability practices, but lack the resources and expertise of corporate giants.
GreenPlaces’ platform marries customer’s operational data with sustainability benchmarks–through integrations with thousands of existing business tools (such as utilities, HR, and accounting platforms) – to create visibility into their carbon footprint, as well as actionable insights to reduce emissions and achieve cost savings. The platform also includes templates and tools such as an ESG policy library and a branded sustainability website, making it easy for customers to reach compliance and share their story.
GreenPlaces supports fast growing businesses across a range of industries–from restaurants and hotels to tech companies and more traditional businesses like law firms and service providers. Leading brands including bartaco, Graduate Hotels, Zuora, Salesloft, and Network Wireless Solutions (NWS) choose GreenPlaces as their trusted sustainability partner.
“In our minds, if you want to work with large corporations in any sort of commercial capacity moving forward, you are going to need to both track and report on your emissions footprint and sustainability practices. We believe that similar to what we’ve seen with other compliance trends like GDPR and SOC II, the vast majority of the market needs a simple, prescriptive, set-it-and-forget-it solution for sustainability – and that’s what GreenPlaces offers,” says Meera Clark, Principal at Redpoint Ventures. “Alex and the GreenPlaces team have shown unparalleled customer empathy, which we believe to be a huge competitive advantage in meeting the needs of a customer set who has historically been misunderstood and ignored by Silicon Valley.”
“We are so excited that companies of all sizes are turning to GreenPlaces to drive sustainability efforts and improve their bottom line,” says Viviana Faga, General Partner at Felicis. “Environmental standards are fast becoming a norm, and GreenPlaces is the perfect integrated platform to reduce the complexity for organizations. Their customized reporting and tailored carbon reduction playbooks are features that every modern company needs. We're thrilled to support Alex and the team in their efforts to create a world where all businesses prioritize sustainability with GreenPlaces.”
To learn more about GreenPlaces approach, solution, and impact, visit greenplaces.com.
About GreenPlaces: Founded in Raleigh, North Carolina in 2021, GreenPlaces is on a mission to democratize sustainability with its all-in-one solution–providing the tech, tools, and team for businesses of all shapes and sizes–to launch, scale, and share sustainability practices that are good for business and the planet. GreenPlaces supports leading businesses from restaurants and hotel groups to tech companies and service firms. The GreenPlaces team is made up of passionate and empathetic sustainability and business experts. In support of the community, GreenPlaces hosts the Open Source Sustainability podcast.
