Corporations are increasingly becoming concerned about their environmental, social, and governance impacts as investors, policymakers, and other key stakeholders believe it’s a way to safeguard against future risk. It also helps organizations lower costs, attract new talent, manage liabilities, and access new revenue opportunities. Cedara is an automated carbon intelligence platform for the advertising ecosystem to actively manage, monitor, measure, reduce, offset, and report its carbon emissions. While not obvious, a single digital advertising campaign can produce 323 tons of carbon dioxide according to Fifty-Five, a marketing consultancy, putting brand advertisers at odds with their stated carbon reduction missions. A consortium within the advertising industry has set a target of real net zero emissions by 2030, dubbed ‘Ad Net Zero’ to address these challenges. Cedara is poised to enable the industry to achieve this goal by focusing on the entire media supply chain from business operations to advertising production, media planning/buying, and awards/events/recognition initiatives.
AlleyWatch caught up with Cedara CEO and Cofounder David Shaw to learn more about the business, the company’s strategic plans, recent round of funding, and much, much more…
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
$2.7M Seed round from prominent angel investors who were successful entrepreneurs in the enterprise marketing software industry, as well as executives from private equity, publishing and advertising technology companies.
Tell us about the product or service that Cedara offers.
Cedara has developed the only carbon intelligence platform built for companies in the advertising ecosystem, and enables them to comprehensively measure, report and reduce carbon emissions across the media supply chain, including, but not limited to, media distribution, advertising production, events and business operations.
Cedara enables ad platforms, publishers and vendors to easily share carbon data to media agency account teams and brands, so they can seamlessly track their overall carbon footprint from campaign activities as well as their reduction efforts towards net zero.
What inspired the start of Cedara?
The founding team at Cedara had spent decades in media and ad technology, and were fortunate to have experienced a few successful exits at previous startup ventures. Sustainability has always been a passion of the team, so we decided to start Cedara to leverage our experience and make an immediate environmental impact in an industry that we know well (and is already pushing towards sustainability with the Ad Net Zero initiative).
How is Cedara different?
Cedara is aligned with the principles of Ad Net Zero, which is promoting a net zero target year of 2030 for all participants in the advertising industry. This target encompasses all aspects of the industry, spanning business operations, media planning and distribution, advertising production, events and business travel, etc.
Cedara is the only platform designed to comprehensively measure and reduce carbon emissions holistically across the media supply chain, in any channel (digital, print, broadcast, etc.), through software and automation.
What market does Cedara target and how big is it?
The advertising industry, which is forecasted to reach $1 trillion in global revenue by 2030.
What’s your business model?
Depending on the partner-type, our business model consists of SaaS platform fees, transaction fees and/or data sharing fees.
How are you preparing for a potential economic slowdown?
Climate change will not slow down in an economic downturn, so we believe that companies will still need to invest in their ESG initiatives due to government regulations (on carbon emissions reporting), cost of capital considerations and, ultimately, consumer sentiment.
Climate change will not slow down in an economic downturn, so we believe that companies will still need to invest in their ESG initiatives due to government regulations (on carbon emissions reporting), cost of capital considerations and, ultimately, consumer sentiment.
That being said, we’ve developed a unique business model that will require a low financial and resource lift for most of our partners while also driving higher ROI from sustainability investments.
What was the funding process like?
We bootstrapped the company for over a year.
While public markets experienced a downturn, we found that when we came to market for investment, investors and VCs continued to remain very engaged and looked at this challenging period as an opportunity to invest in the next phase of innovation.
What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?
The time commitment needed during the fundraising process was the biggest challenge as we had to balance our time between that and scaling the company quickly.
We were fortunate to have significant investor interest (which required more time dedicated to investor meetings), as we were at the intersection of climate tech and media, but this also required us to carefully consider which investors to partner with in this funding round.
What factors about your business led your investors to write the check?
Our investors were also entrepreneurs that had successfully deployed an enterprise software platform across brand, agency and publisher clients in the media industry. They quickly recognized the value in automation to tackle the immediate challenge of collecting (emissions) data at scale and making it actionable across the media ecosystem. And of course, they were big supporters of the founding team and our track record for developing and growing businesses at a global level.
Our investors were also entrepreneurs that had successfully deployed an enterprise software platform across brand, agency and publisher clients in the media industry. They quickly recognized the value in automation to tackle the immediate challenge of collecting (emissions) data at scale and making it actionable across the media ecosystem. And of course, they were big supporters of the founding team and our track record for developing and growing businesses at a global level.
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
We’ll have multiple pilots with some of the world’s largest brands and agencies launching in the next couple of quarters. Our solution will enable them to start tracking and measuring all of their suppliers and distribution partners as well as the impact of carbon emissions across their media investments.
What advice can you offer companies in New York that do not have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?
Stay scrappy and maintain grit and persistence. Be prepared for lots of rejections from investors. Leverage your extended network of friends, family and colleagues for short-term funds if possible. Prioritize building your product, optimizing your client pitch, and growing your client base as this is the best path to close investment capital.
Where do you see the company going now over the near term?
Cedara will be expanding its commercial presence from the US to the UK and EU in early 2023. We’re already scaling the business quickly in anticipation of a Series A funding round within the next 12 months.
What’s your favorite restaurant in the city?
In a city with such diverse cuisine and tens of thousands of restaurants, it’s nearly impossible to name a single favorite restaurant. That being said, Fat Choy in the Lower East Side currently ranks high on my list with their unique vegan, Chinese-inspired dishes.
