[bskinny129]

I'm working on a way to bring dollars to carbon removal, whether as simple as planting trees or investing in these more advanced upcoming technologies. It is an app with a personal pledge to balance the negative impact of your own driving and flying with a small payment. Cheap at just a couple dollars a week, with the potential to reach a significant scale through companies. In fact, I look forward to hearing back from YC later today!

If anyone is interested in keeping in the loop on progress: https://www.producthunt.com/upcoming/pledge-balance

[adamsea]

Is your app eventually meant to turn a profit, and if so how? Or, are you doing this on a nonprofit basis and planning to keep it as such?

[bskinny129]

I believe a business model helps align incentives and increases potential scale. Certainly things can evolve, but the plan is no cut from users and charge businesses a markup to balance employee commute and flights. Hopefully can make it in the businesses self-interest where they see a return on their small investment in terms of employee satisfaction and retention.

[adamsea]

I certainly agree a business model can do those things, and sometimes does.

I could see companies such as Patagonia, who have a strong reputation for prioritizing sustainability, potentially being interested in a service like that.

It seems tricky though to align the interests of your users, your customers (businesses, the ones who will actually be paying you) and the environment.

Which is not to doubt your intent, but is why I am skeptical of market-based approaches to solve a problem which is of the type (a problem of the commons) that governments can be good at (if they choose to be) and businesses struggle with.

[bskinny129]

It does seem tricky. A worthy adversary even.

Look 10 years out in the future though and I think it is easy to imagine 1) many more people care about this 2) the urgency they feel is increased. Can we start with the Patagonias of the world (there are many others) and build some traction? Can we make it something that young employees want and bring transparency to which companies participate? If it can give a slight edge to McKinsey over Bain for example, the cost is trivial.

[Update regarding above: no YC interview, which is understandable based on where things currently stand]

[gustaf]

This is great. We need a verified system where know exactly where each dollar is spend and how many CO2 tons are saved per dollar spent

[bskinny129]

For now money will be passed along to the best-in-class organizations doing hands-on carbon removal projects - I believe there are several excellent non-profits with the right efficiency and transparency. Yet even though these great organizations exist and plenty of people care about the environment, hardly any money ends up on their hands. I think there is great grass-roots potential to change this and it is equally as important as marginally improving the efficiency of carbon removal tech.

[thinkling]

Sounds a bit like what Nori plans to do.

http://rameznaam.com/2018/09/10/yes-blockchain-can-help-us-s...

[bskinny129]

I'll have to check them out, thanks for sharing. I did hear of another blockchain carbon project, but this one seems more promising at first glance.

[mediumdeviation]

Does https://www.goldstandard.org/ not do that already?