Unveiling the Power of Tech for Environmental Regeneration with Mathias Boissonot

Hello and welcome to this episode of The Unnoticed Entrepreneur. Today you might be feeling a little bit warmer because we're going to Bali. Actually, we're going to talk to Matthias Bossenot, a Frenchman who grew up in Polynesia and who has a very interesting company called handprint.tech. We're going to find out why it's called that. And they're working at the intersection of sustainability and technology and helping now over 200 companies attain their sustainability targets. We're going to talk about how they're using lead magnets, how they're using a calculator, and how he's got over a million views to a LinkedIn post. Mateus, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me, and I'm super excited to participate today to share, you know, more on the tactic side, what we do in terms of growth, because typically podcast interviews are more about like, you know, Selling, uh, selling our product and all. And I'm super passionate about growth and tactics in particular. So thank you for having me.

Yeah, Mathias, thank you for taking the slight reorientation because this show really is about how an entrepreneur builds a business as much as the business they're building now. But it will create context if you can just explain what business you are building, because then, you know, my fellow unnoticed entrepreneurs know what you're doing. So tell us, what is the company doing?

Absolutely. So you, of course, know that we are living a huge environmental crisis, right? And so we develop a technology platform that enables companies to make a positive impact that is verified, quantified, et cetera, while growing with the planet. So while creating business value out of it. through different techniques, like mostly engagement, engaging with stakeholders, engaging with users. So typically our clients are in the advertising space, in the banking space, integrating in iBanking and so on. And so that's what we do. The company is called Handprint. Handprint is also a scientific word, right, that describes the sum of your positive impact, as opposed to your footprint, which is the sum of your negative impact. I'm sure you've heard about carbon footprint, water footprint, etc. So we enable companies to make that positive impact, to grow their handprint, and to quantify it in real time.

I love that. And you're doing it from Bali, which is, you know, a beautiful place to do that. But also, because of what's happening from a sort of global point of view, it's, you're reaching out to customers and clients all over the world. So, Mathias, tell us, how have you been building the handprint brand. You've got over 200 companies now and big ones as well using your technology. So let's just talk about how you're doing that. How have you been introducing what is really an innovative solution to a very complex problem?

Absolutely. So first of all, in terms of context of who our clients are, so our— we're a marketplace for positive impact, right? So our demand side, are companies that are purchasing that impact, so that are funding restorative impact in the form of reforestation, ocean plastic cleanup, coral reef reconstruction, habitat protection, et cetera, to reach, for example, biodiversity targets or restoration target, the UN 30 by 30 targets or net zero targets, et cetera. Those companies are mostly in the Global North. Right, in countries in North America, in Europe, Japan, Australia, Singapore, for example. And our supply, which is project developers on the ground, NGOs doing the groundwork of restoration and protection of nature, they are mostly in the Global South, right? So a lot of the most critical ecosystems, the most vital ecosystem for planetary health, are in the Global South, especially in the Southeast Asian region. So being in Indonesia for us is very critical because one of the most vital ecosystems is the mangrove ecosystem that spans from Myanmar to Indonesia. And so most of our beneficiaries actually are in that region. So we need to be here. Our HQ is in Singapore. We have operations in Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh, in Lisbon as well, soon in the US for sales. But yeah, it's also important to be close to our partners that are doing the work on the ground and for which we basically, we help them to digitize their impact reporting, how they are conducting their activities. so that they level up their reporting game, I would say, to have access, to get access to that international funding from which they used to be excluded, right? So that's the problem we solve for the supply side.

That's really, really great work. And as you say about being in Southeast Asia, it's such a hotbed really of work that needs to be done. How are you helping, first of all, those to get in touch with you and to get onto the program? Because Presumably there's a sort of a skills and awareness issue, language barriers maybe that some of these people that are doing work in these remote areas, you know, they're not necessarily part of the global technology revolution. So Mattias, how are you finding and I feel like skilling the community that are actually providing the programs?

So for the supply side, so the project developers on the ground, we started by My 2 co-founders are, one is a PhD in climate policies. The other one is a PhD in digital sustainability. And they already, when we started Handprint, they have, they had an existing network in the NGO space being former founders of a very successful NGO. So we started with, of course, direct personal connections from them. And then what's super interesting is that we experienced a very organic growth in that part of the business because we were solving a very pressing problem for those organizations. Number one, those NGOs mainly rely on either corporate philanthropy, which is a one-time event to fund their activities, or if they are a forestry NGO, if they do forestry, conservation of forests, restoration of forests type of work, They would rely on the voluntary carbon credit market for which you actually give, you need to pay upfront fees to certification agencies. And this excludes de facto the small, the small NGOs, right? So we arrived in that market and we told all of the small players, look, you don't need to pay any upfront fees, use Handprint for Impact Partners application. So we We give their staff a mobile application to report on a daily basis on their activity, basically, in exchange of what we give them recurring funding. So it solves a huge problem for them. And we, after a few months, basically, we set up a waitlist that NGOs could just like access and list their project on. And now we have a— A growing list of projects that are on our waitlist. And we curate, so we quantify relevance, alignment, and urgency. So relevance to the United Nations SDGs, alignment in terms of what the country needs, what this specific territory needs to assess if the money is well allocated on that project, and urgency because there are some vital ecosystems that are much more urgent to to restore and protect than others. So once we quantify this, if the NGO reaches a certain threshold, we are able to onboard them. Otherwise, we give them a list of recommendations on how to score higher in terms of impact. It's called theory of change quantification, basically how much they are going to be able to move the needle. And now we really have a very organic growth on that part of the that part of our marketplace, also because the NGO world is quite small and NGO managers speak to each other.

Yeah, that's wonderful because in any marketplace you've got to have, if you like, the supply side, haven't you, first? So you've been working on building out the supply side. Now let's talk about how you, if you like, educate the market, because I can see you've got clients like Uber Eats on your website, for example. Tell us about how you've gone out, because you've got to build the credibility of the platform as well, haven't you? And the nature of the problem. So this whole crossing the chasm is really what I'm interested in, Mattias. How have you and Handprint been managing that part of the process? Because that's really where the activation of the work takes place, isn't it?

Absolutely. So what we've always tried to do is to go beyond just offering companies, the demand side, a way to easily make a positive impact. Because otherwise, we're only tapping into the sustainability budget, which in companies is quite limited, right? So we wanted to transform this into accessing more strategic budgets from companies. So we always try to make it a lever of growth for companies to invest in the restoration of nature by implementing use cases where they could like communicate around their positive impact to their users, engage with them whenever there is a positive story. I just give you an example. So last week in one of our largest restoration sites in Situbondo in East Java in Indonesia. The team on the ground witnessed a very rare species of crab, of mud crab, coming back to the restoration site. So they took pictures, they geolocated the picture, they explained why it's so important. They uploaded that on our platform and instantly all of our clients received that impact story. They could send that to their employees, they could provide this to their users, to their different stakeholders. And this provides companies with a way to engage with their audience through the angle of what they are doing good for the planet. So it's a way to create value out of sustainability commitment, right, while being super quantified, science-based, trustworthy to also avoid accusations of greenwashing.

Look, and I can see, you know, on the website as well, which is handprint.tech for everybody that's interested, you've got success stories and about us and impact education publications. Can you just tell us also a little bit about, you talk about quantification, you have this calculator because For many companies, it has been greenwashing. And it seems as though what you're doing as a really a group of, I think it was engineers, Meta, as you mentioned before, you're giving this, the company something for their investors to say, hey, not only do we make a difference from a CSR point of view, but from an impact and profitability point of view. How are you doing that work? How are you demonstrating profitability?

So it depends on the use case. So typically profitability is established with a data analysis. Basically, we've done it for 2 major use cases. We are doing it for a 3rd one. The first 2 were for e-commerce and the advertising industry. E-commerce, we demonstrated that Handprint integration through A/B testing increase by 16% the cart conversion. So it increases sales directly of the company using Google Optimize, A/B testing, completely available data. There is a secret sauce a bit in all of that, which was the subject of the paper, one of the research papers of my co-founder Ryan, who with this paper actually he won Best Sustainability Paper of 2022 by the Financial Times, very prestigious award in our industry. And he really like studied the secret sauce on how to integrate regeneration into a customer experience so that it creates virality, it creates engagement, a sense of making action together by making the impact tangible, right? And that's really the big difference. So we've done it for e-commerce. We've applied the same scientific findings also to the advertising industry with our partner Teads, which is a large advertising technology platform that computed plus 9% of ad recall plus other metrics that are very specific to their industry. So I wouldn't remember, but like from their world, it was really a success to integrate regeneration into a marketing campaign and demonstrate in real time how much is being created on the ground to engage with users. And we are doing it now in the banking space. So we are integrating into the iBanking environments of 4 banks. And we will be collecting data and see How we can make it really ROI positive for those banks, knowing that those banks, they really use our technology to acquire and retain younger audiences, right? For that are otherwise going to digital banking and they don't really know how to engage with them. So they are creating these climate action programs and they are using us among other technology platforms. to make this happen.

So, Mathias from Handprint Tech over there in Bali. So you've described now how you've acquired, if you like, the programs that will receive the funds. And now we're explaining the benefit that you're demonstrating through education to the client base. Just turning our attention to you as an entrepreneur, How have you been building the handprint.tech brand and scaling that? Because you've gone beyond the initial startup, now you've got over 200 clients. So plainly you're doing some things right beyond the core purpose of the company.

I think from day one, because of the strong DNA of science and really challenging the status quo of sustainability, We communicated a lot on LinkedIn specifically. That has been an amazing channel for us. And creating a strong voice about, look, this is what science says we should do. And this is very different from what sustainability practice is today. Right. So there is really a gap here. What science points at is more this type of practice towards beyond carbon targets, towards like systemic thinking, system thinking around like, what is the impact of my company, but not only in terms of carbon, which is a very limiting dimension, in terms of society, in terms of planetary health as a whole, including biodiversity, etc. So I would say how we've built the brand is really around this challenging the status quo, offering a new perspective on nature rather than carbon. offering new ways for sustainability professionals to understand and take action, right? By providing them with educational content on our YouTube channel, with white papers, et cetera. So that's really from day one, what we've been trying to do is really to be this new way of thinking about sustainability. With very pragmatic and concrete examples and actionable tools.

Matthias, now if other people want to use the tools that you've got on your handprint.tech website, like the calculator, which seems, you know, a really valuable tool, can they do that? Have you got a program that enables other people to, if you like, sort of amplify what you're doing but through their own channels? Absolutely.

So this calculator is open source and also open science, meaning that any scientist can contribute to this project. What we're really trying to do with this calculator is that for the past 25 years, how sustainability has been practiced as a field of science and within corporate organizations and as a corporate strategy, basically. It's been by one, establishing the carbon footprint of the company, 2, reducing that carbon footprint, and 3, offsetting the remaining, which for the past 25 years was, I would say, a good first step. But now what we're seeing and the scientific consensus around this is that if we want corporate action to be synchronized and to be efficient, we need to go beyond way beyond this. And we need to think in terms of how to make my business operate within the planetary limits. One of the planetary limits only is related to carbon, and carbon is only one of the spheres of the planet. There is also the biospheres, right? The fauna and flora, the anthroposphere, which is human beings that are not separated from nature, right? It's the This idea that humans and nature are separated is really one of the root causes of most environmental problems today. So we are offering this new perspective of, you look at the atmosphere, but you look also at the biosphere, the anthroposphere, the lithosphere, right? How the regenerative agriculture, our soils, et cetera, is super important. And the hydrosphere, the oceans. We also need to regenerate oceans if we want to solve the crisis because all of those systems are interconnected and we cannot just isolate the atmosphere and say, my company has this much carbon footprint, so I'm going to go to zero. It doesn't work that way, unfortunately. And most calculators that you can find online today are carbon emission calculators. So they are very limiting in the approach. What we do is a calculator that tells you, okay, regarding the industry, the geography you're in, the wealth creation that you enable, and through that, the consumer patterns that you enable, you should be contributing to the restoration of nature by this much if we want to have a chance to stay within planetary limits. And it's a completely new way of looking at it. And we are offering this almost as a gift, right? Even we have some competitors now that are using it and that are soon going to integrate that, I hope, natively on their website and all to really amplify this new way of calculating. We are really in an approach of the more value we provide to our audience and our ecosystem, because sustainability is a niche and within that niche, regeneration is a micro niche, right?

Right.

We really believe in collaboration over competition. And so for that, we try to provide as much value as we can.

Yeah. And I see that you've got sort of almost an ambassador program there, Matthias, haven't you? So that people can use your API, plug it into their website and be part of the cause, which is amazing. And I've also been looking at your YouTube channel, which I can encourage people to have a look at because there you've got amazing resources are all really based around education. That's kind of a recurring theme, I think, today around what you're doing with Handprint. Mattes, is there something that hasn't worked? As an entrepreneur, I'm afraid we always have some things that have not worked. Something you'd say as an entrepreneur that you tried that didn't really yield the results that you might hope for?

No, absolutely. So when we launched in 2020, In the, at the very beginning of COVID actually, I think it was in April or May that we launched our SaaS platform. We decided to focus on one problem to solve for one segment of the market for, you know, one very specific problem for one industry, et cetera, which is like the, it's the playbook, the startup playbook basically that we are following to the letter. And because it was COVID, we decided to start with e-commerce, right? So we wanted to enable e-stores to easily, in a very smooth and clean way, to integrate regenerative sustainability into their e-store and show it to their audience to try to create business value. And while we had an okay traction, I would say, on this product, I think it's super important to also align the DNA of the company, the profile of the founders, et cetera, with the problem that we're solving. Because ultimately, we were focusing on trying to solve a problem that was not super aligned with the founders' profile, which Handprint really solves a problem in terms of impact curation, verification, quantification. It's very science-based. And typically e-stores, small brands that sell, I don't know, bikinis, fashion brands, cosmetic brands, they don't require that level of sophistication. And what we realized is that the companies that were contacting us, all of the inbound were from much larger companies because they care about that standard. Right? So I would say the market really proven us wrong in terms of, no, you are not solving a problem for this audience. They don't need you. Even if we spend a lot of time solving this problem, and we had significant traction by the end, but we had really to reorient our efforts towards market signals of like those big companies that were asking us like, can we use your technology? And so we had to adapt our product. We had to adapt our teams, right? The way we interact with consumers, not through, not being like a, making a shift basically from being a very low-touch SaaS platform, you know, no need to speak to any human being at Handprint. You just create an account. So shifting from this to being a very B2B high-ticket company with a lot of handholding for the big corporate. So completely different company ultimately. And I think it took us a lot of time to actually execute that shift and deliver on this new, almost this new company that we've become.

Yeah, interesting. So sort of serving a customer that actually almost wasn't the customer, the product-market fit wasn't quite right, Mattias.

Exactly.

If there's something that really has worked for you, and mindful of the time here, now I'm going to wrap up our conversation. But as the co-founder and CEO of Handprint in Bali, is there something you can say as an entrepreneur really has moved the needle for the company?

In terms of, I would say, acquisition strategies, So of course, the typical product playbook of speak to your users, ask open questions about the problem you're solving, what are the alternatives, like really understanding this from the perspective of people that are buying your service is a goldmine because then you can really replicate, scale and all of that. In terms of like what worked for us, because I think that's what really interests your audience is more at the tactic level, what we did that really moved the needle. I would say on our side, we really tried many different channels, right? From, you mentioned our YouTube channel, white papers, a lot of content on our blog, Google Ads. We also have a growth network and calculator that acts as a lead magnet. So we really have a lot of channels for acquisition. The one that really works for us is generating introductions, right? It's like we have this chance of attracting some light, I would say, in our space. So we have lots of people, especially investors, that contact us to start a conversation, for example. Now systematically, because we have identified that this is a winning tactic for us, we ask for 2 introductions. So we go through their portfolio companies. We identify 2 companies that are similar to some companies we are working with. And we draft an email saying, hey, we are working with these companies in your space. We think we can provide you with a lot of value with a short video or a short deck. And we ask these people that are willing to speak to us for 2 introductions. And then we also ask 2 introductions to the people that we are talking to. And this has proven to really generate a lot of leads for us. There is nothing better, I feel, than warm introductions from investors, or even better, warm introductions from clients that just tell someone else, look, we've been using Handprint for a year. Look at the results. It's amazing. You should engage with these guys. I know that you're starting your sustainability journey, for example. This has proven to work a lot for us. And we are trying to scale that with the growth network that I was mentioning by financially incentivizing people to make introductions through a referral agreement for ambassadors, basically.

Mathias Boissonneau in Bali. If you want to find out more about you and get an introduction to you and Handprint Tech, where can they do that?

They can go on LinkedIn where we are very active, my co-founder and I mostly. So Mathias Boissonnot, M-A-T-H-I-A-S B-O-I-S-S-O-N-N-O-T. Or you can find me also on the LinkedIn profile of my company, Handprint Tech. You will see some posts, recent posts that have had a very significant reach, over 1.3 million views on one of our latest posts. about mapping the nature tech ecosystem. And you can drop me a note, super happy to engage and talk about anything that we talked today related to growth tactics, or sustainability as well. Super happy to engage with the community.

Mathias, thank you so much for joining me. What a fascinating conversation. Thank you. And what wonderful work you're doing. Thank you so much for sharing what you're doing.

Amazing. Thank you so much for having me, James. And I'm looking forward to seeing this live.

Well, me too. So we've been listening to Matthias Boissonneau. And of course, I'll put his details in the show notes of Handprint. It's handprint.tech is the website. So if you've enjoyed this, do please share this with a fellow entrepreneur and review the show. That also really helps. And do reach out to Matthias, consider Joining up with their program. And until we meet again, I just do encourage you to keep on communicating. Thank you for listening.