Persefoni, Patch, and the companies betting on ESG

Hi everyone 👋

If rules proposed by the SEC last month become law, about 3,000 of the biggest public companies will have to start tracking and reporting data on their greenhouse gas emissions.

That will be a huge tailwind for SaaS companies automating the time-consuming, manual workflows associated with carbon reporting and offsetting, from carbon accounting ERPs like Persefoni to API-based carbon credit providers like Patch.

Global demand for sustainable assets is growing rapidly. Last year, total ESG funds under management hit $2.74 trillion.

Companies and funds use carbon accounting providers to quantify their total carbon footprint, and then they use APIs like Patch to programmatically navigate the project marketplace and pay for the right amount of carbon offsetting.

These kinds of companies could be prime picks and shovels for a world where companies and funds have to prove they are run sustainably—rather than merely assert it.

For more on the SaaS stack emerging around decarbonization, check out our interviews with Brennan Spellacy, the CEO and co-founder of Patch, and Ryan Miller, VP & GM of Private Markets at Persefoni.

Thanks!

Jan & team

Financial planning & analysis tool Pry was recently acquired by Brex for $90M just six months after leaving beta. That’s a big win for a team of 10 that raised just a $4M seed round.

In case you missed it, we interviewed Pry CEO and co-founder Andy Su back in February about the FP&A space and the digitization of the SaaS backoffice.

We raised the possibility with Andy that companies like Brex and Ramp would eventually want to build out their own FP&A capabilities to further capitalize on the powerful point of integration they own in the corporate card:

This acquisition is a strong sign that Brex is looking to expand the back-office side of its business, and it amps up the competition between them and expense-management focused corporate card Ramp.

Read our full interview with Andy Su for more on why second-time founders have been gravitating towards founding FP&A startups, the challenges in building something that replaces Excel, and more.

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