Enabling impact tracking – why we invested in Sweep.

DEC 14, 2021

We at Balderton are delighted to announce our recent investment in Sweep. Sweep is leading the impact tracking space, a market we have been very excited about.

We are thrilled to partner up with such an incredible team who has been building a very strong product and works with large corporations willing to reduce their carbon footprint and mitigate their environmental impact.

Reporting rules announced earlier this year suggest that by 2023 c.50k companies in Europe will have to report on how sustainability issues affect their performance, position and development, and on their impact on people and the environment. This means that an increasing number of industries will have to deal with regulatory requirements, as well as pressure from investors and customers, and more impact areas will have to be covered (beyond carbon emissions). However, today most companies work with external consultants to measure and report on their carbon footprint. They are expensive because ESG-related projects require a lot of manpower, especially to collect data and assess impact. This comes with the additional challenge of limited comparability, data storage and tracking over time. This is why we believe a solution like Sweep is a game-changer, making automation a reality and delivering insights truly actionable.

We are impressed by how thoughtful and mature Sweep’s product is. This does not come as a surprise given the team’s previous knowledge and experience in business intelligence SaaS. Sweep enables large companies to organize carbon programs, even around complex value-chains, to measure emissions in an automated way across their entire supply chain, and to reduce their impact based on scientific targets through smart goals and actionable insights. The product helps customers easily design their data structure and upload it in the most convenient format, mapping it to Sweep’s emission factors database. In the end, customers can automate their reporting following the most common standards and report on their performance to their different stakeholders.

The Sweep Leadership Team

ll this has been possible thanks to Sweep’s A-class founding team. Rachel Delacour (CEO) and Nicolas Raspal (CPO) previously founded BIME Analytics, which was acquired by Zendesk in 2015. BIME Analytics provided a large number of data connectors to enable the aggregation of data from a number of different sources. We love their energy, ambition, leadership, and combination of high IQ and EQ. This is also visible when meeting Yannick Chaze (Sweep’s CTO), Raphael Gueller (Chief Design Officer) and Renaud Bettin (Head of Climate Action). Sweep has now more than 20 employees, most of them working in tech and product to offer the best-in-class solution to its customers.

We are also particularly excited to join Sweep’s ride as their mission and vision are perfectly aligned with Balderton’s Sustainable Future Goals (SFGs). At Balderton, we believe we have a responsibility to proactively engage and build a more sustainable and inclusive ecosystem. This is why we committed to our SFGs that are intrinsic to who we are and who we would like to be as a firm. We are committed to continually improving our SFGs, and sharing everything we learn with the wider community.

Sweep is particularly exciting in this regard, especially when it comes to taking urgent climate action (by substantially reducing our emissions and offsetting existing emissions), fostering responsible consumption (adopting responsible standards for our own consumption and production), building green cities (making cities more breathable, livable and sustainable), and pushing for renewable energy (accelerating our adoption of affordable and clean energy).

Welcome to the Balderton family, Sweep!

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