Currently, all activities have to consider ethical aspects, local production, sustainability, resilience, etc., and also achieve a set of environmental, social and governance objectives (ESG) public the meetings of the management committees and the annual reports of a company. Surprisingly, then, that while it is easy to define and communicate how to achieve goals, it is much more difficult to measure and track the performance of companies in relation to those goals. Tired of empty promises, and wanting to facilitate the real implementation of the established ESG objectives, it is created ESGgo. The company just raised $7 million to get going.
“The target customers are corporations, or basically any company that is already public or considering going public,” explains Orly Glick, CEO and co-founder of ESGgo.
The product itself focuses on data collection; of the first 50 companies you spoke with ESGgo, they detected that there were no tools available. Most ESG tracking is currently done in some pretty esoteric systems, mostly spreadsheets or collaborative databases. External rating agencies may have their own tools, of course, but for internal use and with few options.
“Right now, ESG is seen by some as all talk and little action; There may be hundreds of executives touting the importance of ESG, but we are still missing a universal measuring stick to clearly understand ESG performance,” wrote Bruce Dahlgren. "Without that, it's hard to tell what's right from what's wrong, or what's a solid investment from an upstart."
To fully track the ESG impact on a company, the GRI y SASB, the standards, suggest tracking hundreds of data points across the organization. Data collection is therefore particularly important, as is collating, analyzing and reporting on it. This data, combined with the comparison with the objectives of the company, is the space where it operates ESGgo.
“Even on the human side of data collection, it's just not practical to have to knock on people's doors in every department to start asking for information. So, in addition to the data itself, the tool manages the workflow. Finally, we do the analysis of all the data and we see the current situation of the company in its ESG, versus the historical performance. Gap analysis and benchmarking against the industry to see how we can improve against our peers and competitors. The latter, in particular, will be an AI optimization.”
The investment in ESGgo was led by an Israeli venture company Glylot Capital. “Glilot is not only one of the leading funds in Israel, but it is an excellent global fund. They have operational experience, rigorous operational experience, and they are real. mensches. They promote women and have a phenomenal value creation team,” says Glick. “We also have some really cool angel investors from the Valley and some of the top tech companies in the Valley that really believe in the environment and climate change.”
Glick leads a team of more than 10 people, in Israel and California. She co-founded the company with Ido Green, who trained in high-level engineering positions at Google, Netflix and, most recently, Facebook.
“We are delighted to be one of the first investors of ESGgo. Orly has an incredible track record and brilliant insight in using technology to improve ESG reporting. With sustainability and social responsibility concerns changing the way companies and investors assess risk and opportunity, the time is perfect for this disruptive solution,” said Kobi Samboursky, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Glilot Capital. “Helping companies improve their ESG posture is more important than ever, and Orly is the perfect person to make the necessary change.”
The initial funding will allow ESGgo accelerate its growth, starting with an Israel-based engineering team, and further develop its product offering.
