Conventionally, ​‘data-plays’ take the form of a tech start-up. Start-ups are effectively pilot schemes, like See Through Carbon’s Pilot phase.

See Through Carbon follows the tech start-up playbook in key procedural respects, but as an ​‘ecosystem’, rather than a business, also diverges in certain critical aspects.

Proof of concept

Like a tech start-up, See Through Carbon’s 7 Pilots are structured to demonstrate Proof of Concept (AKA Proof of Value).

POC/POV are basically feasibility studies, designed to:

  • Showcase the Concept’s uniqueness in the real world
  • Test the Concept’s value in the real world, exposing its strengths and weaknesses
  • Improve the Concept with real-world experience to make it viable/​robust at scale

Conventional start-ups are funded by private investors, venture capital funds or other financial institutions.

Contributors to See Through Carbon’s ​‘ecosystem’, whether as an administrator, carbon accountant expert, AI specialist, IT guru, web designer, storyteller or indeed participant, can be seen as employees/​investors/​advisors working pro bono to measurably reduce carbon.

Their rewards come not in share certificate, but less tangible, but equally powerful, tokens, such as:

  • Metric tonnes of emissions reduced as a result of contribution/​participation
  • Regulatory Compliance with legislation requiring evidence of commitment to carbon drawdown
  • Reputational gain and/​or personal satisfaction of proven contribution, as a business or individual, to the See Through Carbon ecosystem.

Investors/​contributors/​participants

Conventional start-ups use stock percentages to quantify each contributor’s perceived ​‘fair’ reward, and perceived’ reasonable’ risk.

There are many different types of investors, and types of shares, but their contributions are typically divided into two categories, each reflecting the different natures of their contributions:

  1. Founder: the Concept, their expertise, experience and energy in running the start-up/pilot. Typical metrics include: Intellectual Property (‘IP’), working hours, research.
  2. Funder: the start-up/pilot’s ​‘hard costs’. Typical metrics include capital, data, in-kind professional services, office space, data storage, data processing, equipment etc.

The See Through Carbon ecosystem’s equivalents approximate to:

  1. Contributor: i.e. people or businesses who invest their time, expertise or resources into creating, maintaining, and developing See Through Carbon. Typical metrics include: Intellectual Property (‘IP’), working hours, research.
  2. Participant: i.e. people or businesses who use See Through Carbon’s services, either by contributing their data to the public database, or analysing the data to speed up carbon drawdown. Typical metrics include

Both business start-up and ecosystem Pilots evaluate the contributions of their investors/​supporters using similar metrics.

  1. Founder/​contributor: intellectual Property (‘IP’), working hours, research.
  2. Funder/​participant: in-kind professional services, office space, data storage, data processing, equipment etc.

Exit strategy

Conventional start-up Founder/​Funder investors think carefully about their ​‘Exit Strategy’. These are clearly-defined circumstances, with precise metrics, to trigger the point at which it would be:

  • Optimally beneficial to ​‘cash in’ if the start-up works, i.e. sell as close as possible to the top
  • Limit the most damage to ​‘bail out’ if it doesn’t, i.e. sell as far away as possible from the bottom

In See Through Carbon’s ecosystem model, the equivalents for contributors/​participant are:

  • ‘Cash in’: when Earth reaches a sustainable climate as close as possible to pre-industrial conditions.
  • ‘Bail out’: when human civilisation can no longer sustain the elaborate online infrastructure required to sustain See Through Carbon or any other entity that conducts its business online.

Profit/​loss

For Founders and Funders alike, potential profit/​loss is reflected in their percentage of the start-up shares, denominated in fiat currencies like dollars, euros, etc.

Investors extract the value of their investment in the form of operational profits or dividends while they own the start-up, or capital gain with a private sale or IPO when they sell their shares.

See Through Carbon follows this model with the following equivalents:

  • Metric: Instead of fiat currencies, See Through Carbon’s success/​failure is measured in metric tonnes of carbon dioxide reduced or sequestered (‘CO2e’), the unit climate scientists use to measure global heating.
  • Founders: any Pilot contributors, from the formal governance structure of its Advisory Board of specialist experts, to the administrators/​contributors/​collaborators who run the Pilots, and the Pilot Participants themselves.
  • Funders: to date, the Pilot phase’s only hard costs have been the website hosting costs, donated by its founder Chair.