This document contains a question and answer session about sustainability and telling your business story. Some key points discussed include: - When providing a software or app, consider the sustainability of your data centers and supply chain, such as using renewable energy. - Both customers and large partners increasingly care about sustainability, so addressing issues like your supply chain is important. - There are now many investors interested in sustainable and impact investments, so having a mission beyond profit will not necessarily turn investors away.

1. 1 Cleantech Open Confidential Information – All Rights Reserved
Webinar Q & A Session –Sustainability ~ Tell Your Story
Sell your Story
Worksheet 8
Tuesday, August 27, 2013

2. 2 Cleantech Open Confidential Information – All Rights Reserved
Q & A Session 1- Sustainability
• Q 1. How do we incorporate sustainability in our supply chain if our product is a software app?
– If you provide a service, a software or an app, make sure that any time something comes into your
office or into your product (for example data center, office products) you will find out where it
comes from. For example whether your data centers are energy efficient or use renewable energy
or where they are located. So any decision you make can be assessed with the LCA guidelines.
•
Q 2. Please describe more how one assesses the sustainability of "profit".
– It is a delicate balance to consider, the triple bottom line. Definitely put as much weight to people
and planet as you to profit. Do not sacrifice one over another, find the vendor that gets you the
highest rating of all 3. B Corp. have the assessment tool that gen help you with this. So try to weigh
them evenly.
•
Q 3. How does one address the conflict between VC's sole focus on profit, with our values around
people and planet?
– There a lot of funds that are interested investing in sustainability bases (the triple bottom line
concept). There is growing financial market for these type of investments.
•
Q 4. How do cleantech VCs view B-corporations? Doesn't answering to more than shareholders turn
away investors?
– That is certainly not the case. There are now well over 800-1000 B-corporations in the world and
many received external private investments. There is a section on B-corporation website, how to
maintain your mission and that link provides you with legal language. The answer is no, it doesn’t
turn away investors.

3. 3 Cleantech Open Confidential Information – All Rights Reserved
Q & A Session 1- Sustainability
• Q 5. Which companies take sustainability issues into account when choosing partners?
– It is all of them. For examples if you want to partner with Apollo Group, you will go through a
supplier survey, where you are asked to tell about your sustainability assessment. IBM has pretty
stringent sourcing criteria. If you are interested in getting large firms as clients, sustainability issues
are critical to think of. Same thing goes for individual customers, you will see that consumers also
like to feel good about where they spend their money.
• Q 6. Are there any resources more specific to services/software?
– One company to check on the East coast is FMYI.com Take a look at this website and check their
examples. It is always good to be proactive of what is important to you. If you provide a service or a
software, then look at the environmental performance of your suppliers.
•

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Q & A Tell your Story, Sell your Story
• Q 1. Do you prefer three slides with headlines or one slide with three bullets?
– It depends on the point you want to make. For examples if you don’t want someone to read ahead or any
other reason. So the number of slides you are using is not so important as the clarity of slides and the
strategy behind.
•
Q 2. I have one in mind: Phase I, Phase II, and Phase III of your business's growth - on one slide or spread out
over 3
– Take a look at slide 113 at the presentation. You could put them all to one slide. You can put a lot of
information on one slide by organizing vertically, horizontally or colorfully.
•
Q 3. Is there a font that you prefer for PP. What is the font you are using on your PP - looks good
– Use Calibri font. Arial can also look good. Save your presentation as a pdf ‘s.
• Q 4. Where should we place the team on the slides if we don't have any big names?
– You will not be alone in not having big names. The role of each member of the team needs to be very
clear, not necessary the photo. Also, some teams don’t have a very well known brand name yet, many
team have mentors who to mention.

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Q & A Tell your Story, Sell your Story
• Q 5. What is the preferred number of presenters - 1 or 2?
– I don’t think it matters. Presentation can be effective both by 1 or 2 presenters. But if you have 2
presenters, you do want to have a designated lead. Think thought why you would like to have 2 presenters
instead of one. Anybody representing your company should be able to present alone.
• Q 6. Have had mixed input on show "pain"/"solution" early versus show "what you have; what you do" early
thoughts?
– The “pain point” needs to be right up front. However do not spend too much time speaking about it,
because that might create impatience.
• Q 7. You mentioned it takes a minute to absorb a slide. A minute is a long time. I take it you did not mean
one minute per slide
– I would not say it takes always 1 minute to absorb, but that’s an average. If you show a visual slide, then 1
minute is way too long, but if there is a graph or a text, it might take more time to absorb. So if your slides
are easy to absorb, you can have more slides.