Minimum secures $2.6m seed funding round led by Octopus Ventures

Minimum, a Y Combinator backed start-up that helps businesses across all industries to make their products and services carbon neutral, has raised $2.6m in Seed funding.

The investment was led by Octopus Ventures, with Clocktower Ventures, Dutch Founders Fund, Plug & Play Ventures, and AGO Partners participating.

Minimum’s platform allows businesses to calculate the carbon footprint of their products & services and connects them to a curated set of carbon offsetting projects to neutralize their environmental impact.

Once businesses have selected the projects they would like to support, they can use Minimum’s proprietary API to embed this carbon calculation and offsetting functionality directly into their business processes or customer journeys, for example by triggering an offset at the point of sale.

Minimum takes that process and streamlines it into a SaaS solution that can be embedded directly into any business, making sustainability a natural and seamless part of operations.

The $2.6m investment will support Minimum’s progress in making carbon neutrality the new default for businesses within Europe and the USA, including: tripling the team, expanding their customer offering, and continuing to invest in their proprietary calculations engine.

By the end of 2021, with use-cases rapidly emerging in industries as far-ranging as on-demand delivery, real estate, and cryptocurrency, Minimum expects to facilitate the offsetting of over a hundred thousand tonnes of CO2e.

Nick Sando, fintech investor at Octopus Ventures, comments: “There’s a huge commercial opportunity for businesses that demonstrate strong sustainability credentials but for most, it’s extremely difficult to achieve. Minimum is a game-changer because it embeds real-time emissions tracking directly into the business itself, and businesses can neutralize the emissions they are actually accountable for, rather than an arbitrary amount. Not only can this help them make their operations carbon neutral by default, but armed with an understanding of their carbon impact companies can provide much-needed carbon transparency to their customers and are better equipped to continuously improve the sustainability of their processes.”

Freddie Evans, Co-founder and CEO, comments: “Sustainability is becoming a major competitive advantage for businesses because consumers are, quite rightly, demanding it. Every business needs to understand and reduce their emissions wherever possible, and neutralize unavoidable emissions by supporting carbon removal and reduction projects. Those that don’t will be left behind. We built Minimum to make effective climate action so accessible for businesses that there is no excuse not to embrace it.”