At Lightspeed, we strongly believe in the power of technology and unique founding teams to attack the most important challenges our society faces today. Climate change is clearly one of these most pressing topics and so we are incredibly excited to announce our investment into Plan A as part of the company’s $27M funding round.
Plan A has positioned itself as Europe’s leading platform for carbon accounting, decarbonisation, and ESG reporting, paving the way for its customers and the entire ecosystem towards a vision of end to end decarbonisation.
A casual coffee in Copenhagen
We’ve been following the journey of Plan A closely since inception and it was quickly clear to us that Lubomila was one of these special CEOs that we like to work with. But it was really over a very spontaneous and casual coffee in Copenhagen around 9 months before our investment that we both connected more deeply. Since that day, Lubomila continuously blew me away on an almost weekly basis with her ability to move and execute with unmatched ambition, speed and decisiveness.
Over these past months, I not only had the chance to get to know Lubomila deeply, but also spend time with the rest of her exceptional team that is driving Plan A. You’ll be hard pressed to find another team that is not only as hard working and deeply embedded into the climate tech ecosystem, but also truly passionate about Plan A’s mission in driving climate change and impact every single day.
End-to-end decarbonization
A few years ago, we’ve seen companies rather slowly start to rethink their carbon footprint, mainly driven by end consumer awareness as well as an anticipation of regulatory pressure. But that has changed significantly now.
In 2021, The European Union introduced the European Climate Law, also known as “Green Deal”, under which it aims to reach carbon neutrality by 2050. It’s an ambitious but very important goal, and especially corporations as well as our governments will have to shift gears significantly.
As both regulatory and consumer pressure has intensified, we’ve seen companies from small to large quickly establishing dedicated teams, budgets and urgency to find the right partner to support them on their own journey towards net zero. In fact, by 2024, all private and public companies that meet at least two of the criteria: 1) 250+ employees, 2) €40m revenue and 3) €20m balance sheet will be legally required to disclose their Scopes 1-3 carbon emissions, use of carbon removal offsets, and climate targets in Europe.
Both Plan A’s highly sophisticated platform as well as its deep expertise and strong brand in the space have led companies across continents and sectors to trust Plan A to be their partner of choice on this complex journey.
A highly flexible and advanced data platform
Carbon accounting by itself is not a trivial task, especially with the ambition to move towards Scope 3 reporting (e.g. incl. result and activities from assets not owned or controlled by the reporting organization). As a result, businesses in this space traditionally carry a larger service component as soon as they move slightly upmarket due to the high complexity of ingesting and accurately mapping data points from countless different sources, as well as aligning them with national emission requirements in a highly fragmented environment.
Plan A is the first platform we have seen that was able to build a highly sophisticated data engine and dashboard that allows customers to get started within hours instead of weeks and customize their reporting requirements.
But that is not where Plan A stops. The company’s goal is to support its customers to move away from simple offsetting that ultimately does not drive the right impact. On the back of its data findings, the company empowers its customers to set science-based net-zero targets and achieve them through 1,000+ decarbonisation solutions and activities as well as best practices. Only this way, we can move towards a carbon neutral future.
Moving upmarket and towards a global vision
The last puzzle piece of our excitement for Plan A is the incredibly quick journey towards becoming a business that can service companies from small to large and across the globe.
Already today, some of the leading companies and brands in each industry choose to work with Plan A – including leading fashion brands such as Ganni or Chloe, leading financial services institutions such as Visa, Deutsche Bank or BNP Paribas, as well as exciting fast growing technology companies like N26, Personio, Sorare or Trivago.
There are not many other platforms in this space that are able to serve both such a caliber and diversity of customers and industries, and it is a true testament to the flexibility and sophistication of its platform as well as the team’s deep expertise and customer dedication.
We could not be more excited to go on this journey with Lubomila and the whole Plan A team as they are building the most holistic platform and ecosystem for end-to-end decarbonisation.
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