“business is business” is dead. Good is the new cool and why we invested in Deed.
When was the last time that your employer did something good for the community they are part of?
What was the last volunteering project you did?
What good cause did you and your employer support this year?
If you don´t have good answers to these questions, maybe you and your employer need Deed.
Today we are very proud to announce that we led a Series Seed round in Deed together with a band of great angels. Deed develops an enterprise-grade software solution for CSR and sustainability departments. Here below we shed some light on why we decided to invest.
🏭 🏭🏭— companies are being held responsible for their community impact
As Marc Benioff, founder and CEO of Salesforce, puts it: the days of “business is business” gone, businesses must take care of the world and not just of their own shareholders. Benioff and Salesforce has a remarkable standing a track record in social impact (Link)
Companies are being held accountable for the impact they have on the communities they operate in from multiple angles:
Customers care about the social impact of brands, surveys show that more than 9-in-10 Millennials would switch brands to one associated with a cause.
Employees would prefer to work for a company with a well-defined and credible CSR strategy and exposure (sources).
Shareholders and large asset managers are also signalling their willingness to get out of businesses with dubious CSR and Sustainability profiles. Larry Fink, Blackrock´s CEO, summarizes the points above beautifully in his annual CEO’s letters (Blackrock CEO´s letter):
“Ultimately, purpose is the engine of long-term profitability.”
🌱🌿🌳 — helping some of the best companies in the world to do good
Deed works. Deed´s tech platform supports some of the best companies in the world and helps them to drive up their social and sustainability impact.
👷♂️👩🔧👩💻 — authentic and intrinsically motivated team
Nobody likes bandwagoners and certainly, we don´t. When we looked in the CSR and sustainability market we looked for teams that have a deep motivation and understanding in the fields of NGOs, volunteering and non-profits.
“How comes that with 2 taps on my smartphone I can get literally anything delivered at my doorstep but if I want to volunteer in my city I don´t know where to start?” With this question in mind, Deevee, the co-founder and CEO of Deed, started the company about 4 years ago as the “place to go, if you want to do some good”.
Fast-forward to today and the company is helping companies like Adidas, Stripe, Sweetgreen, Timberland and American Eagle to manage their CSR programmes and to engage their employees by donating their time, skills and money to causes they care about. Everyone in the Deed team cares about doing good and many of them got to know the company firstly through volunteering.
Btw here below a picture of Deevee during a plastic clean-up project :-)
📊📊📊 —finally a CSR report with some real numbers
We assume that companies who use a data-driven approach to other business areas would want to apply the same principles to their sustainability and community support efforts.
By offering an integrated, mobile-first platform, Deed allows companies to have real-time data on their impact on communities at their fingertips. Now you know that numbers in CSR reports are not BS.
We can´t wait to see what the future unfolds for Deed and we are thrilled to be part of a company that literally helps to make the world a better place.
If you think that your company would benefit from partnering up with Deed, you or your CSR/Sustainability/HR manager can request a demo here -> Demo
Also if you want to know more about Deed and their purpose, Forbes published a very insightful double interview with Deed´s CEO and Adidas head of CSR (Link)
That´s it, folks! if you have feedback feel free to ping me at federico@pauaventures.com; also if you are starting a company in the sustainability/ CSR space, I would love to know more!
