How can LLM be used to analyze climate impact and build competitive advantage? The scale and urgency of the transformation required to fight climate change has never been more clear. Building hardware and software products, acquiring the funding and creating a diverse community to enhance talent capacity and to drive innovation, is essential to tackling this global environmental crisis. In this podcast, Silicon Valley Bank (a division of First Citizens Bank) Climate Tech & Sustainability SVP Maggie Wong will be interviewing Upright Founder & CEO Annu Nieminen to discuss utilizing LLM to analyze the climate impact and cost of global products and services and to build competitive advantage, as well as importance of “product first” approach and staying focused on the product vision.
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Show Notes
- Upright is building a model to quantify the net impact of companies, looking at both positive and negative impacts.
- Upright’s approach is unique in focusing on the product level, not just company-level data.
- Upright uses a big data approach to assess impact without needing input from individual companies.
- Investors use Upright’s data to build new funds and screen investments, while companies use it to measure their double materiality.
- Building Upright’s model was a challenge at first, as the founder didn’t start with a business model in mind.
- Upright learned from customers to develop its product and business model over time.
- Upright uses natural language processing and machine learning, but emphasizes the importance of human structuring and definition.
- The founder sees diversity and new role models in tech as important for solving big problems.
- Regulations are driving more corporate focus on understanding and reporting impact.
- The founder is concerned about “lazy thinking” in sustainability and a lack of focus on actual outcomes.
- Upright’s data helps investors find financial performance correlated with impact.
- Upright’s data helps companies quantify financial risks and opportunities related to their impacts.
- The founder recommends starting by identifying a company’s top negative and positive impacts.
- Upright provides open-access impact data to encourage exploration.
- The founder encourages founders to be stubborn about their vision, not just listen to customers.
- Building resilience and believing in your vision is important for impactful products.
- Upright serves over 200 top investors and corporates in Europe and the US.
- The founder has a background in classical music and data/analytics.
- Upright was founded 7 years ago in Helsinki, Finland.
About the speaker
Annu Nieminen is founder and CEO of Upright, an impact data company building a new type of a NLP-enabled quantification model to measure the net impact of companies. Upright has built a unique macro model of the global private sector and links findings in scientific papers to a database of 50,000 companies. Upright's impact data is used by 200+ customer organisations ranging from EQT, Permira, Pictet, APG, Nordea and LGT Capital Partners to Nasdaq and European Investment Bank.
About the host
Maggie Wong is an accomplished product management and capital markets leader with over 15 years of experience in driving product strategy, delivering global products, fundraising & capital allocation, and leading cross-functional teams. Outside of her role at Silicon Valley Bank to support New York / East Coast based climate tech companies and investors, she is also experienced in increasing program impact, growing community reach and implementing DEI initiatives at travel and fintech non-profits. Maggie is passionate about making a social impact for the next generation, tackling climate change and traveling. She is fluent in Mandarin and Cantonese and a beginner in Spanish.