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Tuesday, July 20, 2010
The Pitch: Sustainable Minds focuses on a green product life cycle
By Lynette Cornell
Carbonrally joins gaming with cutting carbon emissions
Sustainable Minds LLC
HEADQUARTERS: Cambridge
URL: www.sustainableminds.com
EMAIL: terry@sustainableminds.com
PHONE: 617-401-2269
EMPLOYEES: 5
CEO: Terry Swack
YEAR FOUNDED: 2007
THE PITCH: $500,000
In the company’s own words:
“Sustainable Minds is a greener product design software and information company dedicated to bringing environmentally sustainable product design into mainstream design and manufacturing in an understandable, empowering and credible way. The challenge is that 75 percent of manufacturing costs are committed by the end of concept design. Design decisions about materials, energy, recyclability and longevity will lock in a product’s environmental life cycle performance and are costly to change later. Life cycle assessment (LCA) can be used to assess the ‘green-ness’ of products. However, the cost, time and expertise required for full-scale LCAs exceed the reach of most product teams. Operationalizing green product design starts with bringing life cycle thinking and a whole-product systems approach to the front of the design process. The results are more sustainable, innovative products, lower costs by eliminating re-engineering, and greater competitive advantage.”
The technology:
Sustainable Minds is a web-based software service that allows product development teams to estimate, evaluate, compare and track the life cycle environmental and human health effects in the earliest stages of product design. Sustainable Minds developed its intellectual property based on integrating publicly available scientific research and methods from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
The people behind the company:
Terry Swack is the company’s co-founder and CEO. She most recently served as the CEO of of The Beam and GreenBuildingBlocks.com, two companies she founded as consumer resources for ecofriendly living. She is also the founder of Clean Culture, a cleantech consulting company.
Keith Lehman works as the company’s CTO and chief architect. His cleantech background includes his previous role as chief architect and director of application development at WebGen Systems Inc., a company developing energy management software.
Greg Canavera, who is the director of software design, previously worked for Swack as a freelance designer at The Beam.
Kimi Ceridon directs sustainability services and is also the founder of Kalepa Tech, a company focused on designing environmentally sustainable products.
Joep Meijer is a life cycle assessment technical expert. He is also the owner and president of theRightenvironment Ltd. Co., a product sustainability consulting company.
Partners:
Their current partners are Autodesk Inc., Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA), Manufacturing Advocacy & Growth Network (MAGNET) and CA Inc.
What’s the market size being pursued?
Swack estimated that there is a $1.26 billion untapped market opportunity for digital prototyping and a $1.2 million market for life cycle assessment. Their target market includes both small and large businesses and includes educational institutions.
The Competition:
Sustainable Minds sees two types of competitors. The first includes computer-aided design and lifecycle management software vendors, but Swack said many companies designing products do not have the financial resources to build a team to learn the technology. The second includes the other companies developing ecodesign and life cycle assessment tools. The information necessary for ecofriendly product design is primarily used for education, said Swack, and not easily accessible to professional designers. Furthermore, she said, the life cycle assessment vendors are expensive and are not useful for concept design.
Sustainable Minds Pitch:
Sustainable Minds is seeking an additional $500,000 in seed funding in the second and third quarters of 2010. It needs an additional investment of $4 million to reach cash flow breakeven. It will use $1.5 million to launch the multi-user version of their product six months after the institutional investment.
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