Ubuntoo

Ubuntoo is a digital collaboration platform to scale sustainability solutions 

1. Following the adoption of the UN SDGs, an increasing number of corporations are making significant sustainability commitments. In parallel, the world is witnessing an unprecedented groundswell of social entrepreneurs, generating new technologies and business models. To make an impact, those solutions need scale. Unfortunately, important information and collaboration asymmetries remain: large corporations have limited visibility to the most promising sustainability innovations, while the majority of sustainability innovators have limited access to the scale of large organizations.  
2. Ubuntoo is a digital collaboration platform to scale sustainability solutions. You can very easily search scalable innovations and connect with their founders, tap into the crowd expertise of our members, or learn about scalable best-practice solutions.  
3. Our goal is to vastly increase scale and reduce implementation time of the most powerful sustainability solutions, starting with the issue of plastic pollution. 

With Ubuntoo, we are committed to solving the core issue of sustainability solutions: lack of scale.  

The UN Development Program is estimating that the pursuit of the UN SDGs can generate a $12trillion economy by 2030, generating 380million new jobs.  

In the wake of this:  

1. Large corporations are stepping up their commitments, investments and search for solutions.  
2. Entrepreneurs, academics and researchers all around the world are trying to leverage this opportunity with new innovations and business models.  

To make an impact, those solutions need scale. Unfortunately, important information and collaboration asymmetries remain: large corporations have limited visibility to the most promising sustainability innovations, while the majority of sustainability innovators have limited access to the scale of large organizations. 

We have chosen the specific issue of plastic pollution as first “proof point” for the following reasons:  

• Only 9% of plastic has ever been recycled  
• It is estimated that by 2050, there will be more plastic than fish in the oceans  
• Over $80 billion plastic wasted annually  
• Microplastics are being found in food chain, soil, water and ice  
• There is growing legislative and public pressure pushing (large) corporations to address issue  

Sources: WEF, Ellen MacArthur Foundation, McKinsey, Ocean Conservancy, European Commission 

Indirectly, our intent is to touch the lives of everyone affected by the issue of plastic pollution.  

In order to have a positive impact, we work directly with 2 types of key stakeholders: 

a. The innovators / entrepreneurs, academics and researchers developing solutions to plastic pollution. Through 100+ interviews, we learned about their core needs. It boils down to visibility and access to  

ii. partnerships to scale their solutions 

iii. funding  

b. Professionals at large organizations (especially corporations, and their suppliers) who are looking to scale such solutions. Since there is no “one stop shop” repository for the most promising and impactful solutions to plastic pollution, they tend to revert to traditional suppliers and philanthropy approaches instead of driving a more progressive innovation agenda. 

We have been heavily inspired by the power of 2-sided marketplaces, and asked ourselves a question: “How come that in today’s world it only takes a few minutes to book your next AirBnB or Uber? But for sustainability solutions, there is no such marketplace!” The Ubuntoo platform allows this marketplace interaction for sustainability.  

We continuously analyze the needs of our members and get recommendations as to how to improve our value-add.  

The Ubuntoo platform allows an effective and efficient marketplace interaction: members can very easily search scalable innovations and connect with their founders, tap into the crowd expertise of our members, or learn about scalable best-practice solutions. 

For any question or issue related to solutions to plastic pollution, there are 3 ways members can use Ubuntoo: 

1. Ubuntoo Solutions: Search for an innovation & connect with their founders. We have a database of more than 600 solutions worldwide, adding 5-10 every week. We believe it is the most extensive database in the world on the specific topic of plastic pollution. Our search engine uses a combination of dynamic search + filter options (by type of solution, stage of development, type of organization, geography) 
2. Ubuntoo Forums: Ask the community of experts. 3 months into the launch, we now have more than 1,000 members from 120 countries. They are all professionals and experts in this field: innovators, academicians, experts at corporations, NGOs and expert organizations. So the opportunity to tap into the crowd expertise is significant.  
3. Ubuntoo Knowledge & News: Learn more about the issues and their solutions in the Ubuntoo knowledge section that includes 2,000+ pieces of content: news, academic papers, industry reports, information about legislation, etc.  

Our product development pipeline also includes a “Funding Marketplace” to allow for a better alignment between investment offer and demand.  

We have also started to expand the visibility of the Ubuntoo sustainability solutions beyond the platform itself – for example by creating video content about sustainability innovations. Our recent social media posts achieve between 50,000 and 250,000 views on Instagram and other 25,000 – 75,000 views on LinkedIn. Our “Rise of the Ecopreneur” podcast features sustainability innovators.  

Ubuntoo applies the proven principles of search, empowered social media platforms and 2-sided marketplaces and applies it to the world of environmental and social action which has been driven in a very top-down approach - dominated by legacy philanthropy partnerships between large corporations, NGOs and governmental organizations.  

Here is how Ubuntoo is unique compared to other players in this market: 

• NGOs & Governmental organizations: Ubuntoo includes these stakeholders but does not start from a top-down donation-based model. Rather, our mission is to scale the “bottom-up”: the groundswell of innovations and solutions.  
• Startup Accelerators are set up to support startups with specific capabilities needed for early stage growth. But they are not issue-specific. Ubuntoo’s intent is to gather a community that is bound by its desire to solve a specific issue: plastic pollution (as first proof point) 
• Innovation database providers (e.g. CB Insights /Crunchbase /Cleantech) are closed databases rather than open platforms. And unlike the Ubuntoo platform, they do not provide the opportunity to engage with other key stakeholders working on the same issues.  
• Sustainability conferences: some conferences are focused on sustainability innovation. But because of their physical nature, and requirement to invest in time and travel, they leave out a large portion of the key stakeholders.  

Ubuntoo applies the proven principles of search, social media platforms and 2-sided marketplaces and applies it to the world of environmental and social action.  

On the Ubuntoo platform, we apply: 

• Dynamic search + filters to allow intuitive and easy search for solutions 
• Crowd interaction indicators to show indications of interest: e.g. number of views, number of follows by solution 
• Forum discussion technology 
• Big data:  application of big data learnings related to search & interaction behavior  and exploration of social media behaviors related to the issue of plastic pollution (GDELT project) 

The Ubuntoo platform also includes multiple innovations that use new technologies in the space of waste management & recycling: blockchain, AI & machine learning, Robotics, IOT, object recognition, biomimicry. For example: 

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Our mission statement is to accelerate the scaling of sustainability solutions by providing a platform for global visibility and collaboration. But the important social and environmental issues, like plastic pollution, are extremely complex and multi-dimensional in nature. So, they can be overwhelming and disempowering.  

And because of that, we have chosen a multi-dimensional approach, allowing rhizomatic connectivity and action: 

1. Solving thousands of tangible issues from the bottom-up rather than gunning for a few top-down “silver bullets”. Some good examples can be found in the forum discussions. When one member asked about alternatives to single-use nitrile gloves, it might seem like a “small” problem. But when the community provided him with solutions, he was able to make a difference by implementing a more sustainable solution. 
2. Mapping out solutions across the whole value chain: raw materials, product & package design, waste recovery, separation, recycling, upcycling, and waste-to-energy. It allows our community to find holistic solutions to an issue using a variety of complementary technologies and business models.  
3. Providing our members with Information (e.g. how-to guides) + Innovation (solutions) + Inspiration (best practices); all leading towards action.  
4. Using the crowd expertise of our members. The “bottom-up” approach also requires both decentralization and connection of knowledge. Applying Swedish waste management technologies and approaches in Ghana will probably not be effective, for example. But there is a lot to learn in this case from best practices in Kenya, Brazil and India.  

In the first 3 months since our launch in March, we have had 11,000 platform users.  

Our goal is to achieve 50,000 users in the first year.  

For the next 5 years, our plan is to expand to other issues beyond plastic pollution, into  

• Other types of waste: textile, food, electronic 
• Water sustainability 
• Climate Change & Energy 
• Potentially other SDGs 

Our goal within the 5 years is to achieve 500,000 platform users.  

In the next year our platform will have an impact on the total amount of plastic waste generated in the world. Our goal is to help implement solutions that reduce, reuse, and / or recycle at least 100,000 tons of plastic within one year, 1 million tons within 5 years, and 10 million tons by 2030. In addition, we plan to expand into topics like Food Waste, Sustainable Fashion, and more in the next few years, each of which will have its own metrics.  

Given the complex nature of the problem, the exact measurement of impact will be hard to achieve in the short term. In the first year we will depend on reports provided by member organizations that implement solutions presented to them by Ubuntoo. We will only count those use cases where we can prove with reasonable certainty that the impact was enabled directly as a result of information and expertise traded through our platform.  

In the future, we will introduce Blockchain technology to measure impact more accurately and reliably. 

Since we launched in March 2019, we are still a bootstrap startup supported by a small funding round from friends and family. We think we are getting the most out of our limited resources but are not yet set up to pursue the ambitious impact we aim for.  

Essentially, we see 3 opportunities: 

1. A game-changing partnership in the area of tech-driven impact measurement in the area of (plastic) pollution. Governments, corporations and NGOs are all committing to aggressive goals to cut down on plastic waste. But there is no common and agreed-upon measurement system that allows for unduplicated and verified impact measurement.  
2. Top-level endorsement: we have been piloting, launching and expanding the Ubuntoo platform from the ground up and have not yet have the bandwidth to pursue top-level endorsements. 
3. Financial bandwidth to expand the business, hence its positive impact, through more aggressive marketing efforts, and into more areas than plastic pollution. 

1. Game-changing partnership for impact measurement: plan still to be developed.  
2. Top-level endorsement: We plan to establish a top-level advisory board 

a. A select group of sustainability leaders that are representative of our eco-system: i.e. academic world, business, governmental organizations, NGOs.  

b. Leverage the advisory board for strategic guidance, introductions and visibility 

3. Financial bandwidth: we have launched the business with capital from the founders + angel investors. We are planning a new funding round by the end of 2019 to complement initial revenues.  Because of the nature of our business we are planning to apply for grants, not just equity.  

For-Profit (Benefit Corporation): We are a for-profit organization with (pending) B Corp certification.

Full-time: 2 

Part time & contractors: 12 

We are an international team of changemakers representing the science + art of sustainability 

• Two Co-Founders have 50 years of corporate experience (combined) spread across 5 continents, and a global professional network spanning over 100 countries 

• Team includes a PhD in polymers, expert market researchers, IT specialists, social media experts and Environmental scientists 

• Team members come from 5 continents 

• 50% female / male split 

Both the founders have 20+ years of experience as executives in large corporations, understand the inner workings of organizations as well as the scale they can provide to sustainability solutions.  >span class="TextRun SCXW201121717 BCX0" xml:lang="EN-US" lang="EN-US"> because of the urgency needed on environmental and social action.  

For an introduction to the team, you can click here: https://ubuntoo.com/about_us 

Besides partnering with corporations to accelerate their agenda on ending plastic pollution, we also work with  

1. Academic Institutions:  

• We are co-creating Ubuntoo Academy with the University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point. The mission of Ubuntoo Academy is to provide easily accessible, yet scientifically based knowledge and best-practices to our members. 
• We partner with the University of Georgia on  

• a “GDELT” project for plastic pollution. We are creating a global map of (social) media conversations related to plastic pollution to understand where it flares up, to what extent it is problem- or solutions-focused etc.  
• AI: the use of bot technology to enhance our ability to identify and solve our member’s business problems 

• We have ad-hoc partnerships with Universities on specific topics. For example, we partnered with the University of Ghent on an academic paper outlining the essence of Mechanical Recycling. And we have a program with the University of Antwerp, providing complimentary memberships to their students of eco-design.  

2. Industry Alliance 

• We have worked with the Sustainable Packaging Coalition in the US on a Challenge to find solutions to multi-material flexible packaging recovery. 

Our business is based on a “market linkage” model for the platform, combined with a “fee-for-service” model to leverage the opportunity of custom services to corporate members.  

1. Business Members (corporations, consultants, impact funds & VCs): 

     -Suite of fee based services ranging from single member paid subscriptions to enterprise wide multi-member plans that include the following: 

• Ubuntoo Solutions Search: most extensive & easily searchable database of solutions to plastic pollution worldwide 
• Ubuntoo Collective: tap into crowd expertise of 1000+ expert members to help solve your issues 
• Ubuntoo Academy: Drive knowledge and capabilities with easily accessible yet scientifically based content 
• Ubuntoo Funding Marketplace: enhance deal flow with sustainability investment targets 

2. Innovators (Free Access) 

    -Value proposition:  

• visibility & growth acceleration 
• access to partnerships, commercial deals and potentially funding 

    -Access to the platform is free 

3. Academics & Researchers (Free Access) 

     -Value proposition: 

• Visibility for research projects in the field of waste management 
• Access to a community of entrepreneurs and innovators as a practical touch stone to their academic work 
• Easy overview of “what’s new” in the world of waste management and solutions to plastic pollution - for teaching purposes 

So far, our business has been funded by the founders + a group of sustainability-drive angel investors.  

In the next 12 months, we plan to step up business revenue and complement with grants to fund expansion.  

We designed 2 business revenue categories  

• Subscriptions to the Ubuntoo platform: “market linkage” model 

• Ubuntoo Services: “fee-for-service” model to leverage the demand for custom sustainability services 

We believe that Solve can be an ideal platform to step-change our trajectory on the 3 core opportunities: 

1. A game-changing partnership in the area of tech-driven impact measurement in the area of (plastic) pollution: because of your leading-edge knowledge and access to technology, we hope to be partnering with MIT on this project.  
2. Top-level endorsement: MIT Solve can provide us with the credibility and connections to kick-start the process. 
3. Financial bandwidth: Endorsement by MIT Solve would greatly enhance our ability to find the right funding partners.  

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MIT: partnership on the development of a globally accepted decentralized, verifiable and tech-driven system for the measurement of progress on (plastic) waste.  

World Economic Forum: partnership to provide their members with access to sustainable innovations and unparalleled reach to a global network of ground level changemakers 

UNDP: build execution capability of their ground level operatives across the globe by providing access to the best available technology and business model solutions  

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1. Game-changing partnership for impact measurement: plan still to be developed.  

2. Top-level endorsement: We plan to establish a top-level advisory board 

a. A select group of sustainability leaders that are representative of our eco-system: i.e. academic world, business, governmental organizations, NGOs.  

b. Leverage the advisory board for strategic guidance, introductions and visibility 

3. Financial bandwidth: we have launched the business with capital from the founders + angel investors. We are planning a new funding round by the end of 2019 to complement initial revenues.  Because of the nature of our business we are planning to apply for grants, not just equity.  

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