“I want to spend my time solving problems,” says Iggy Bassi, founder and CEO of Cervest, a platform that uses climate data, science expertise and data modeling to help companies predict their climate risk. It measures the potential damage a company’s assets, like buildings, factories and property, could suffer from their surrounding weather conditions, and the potential resulting financial loss. With this data, it helps companies not mitigate risk, but adapt assets over time. Though it’s not just real estate firms or manufacturers that have to worry about extreme incidents like flooding or storms. As Iggy points out, all businesses across all industries are at risk from the everyday effects of climate change.
Iggy considers this his driving mission—to democratize this data and get it into the hands of decision makers in order to serve the greater good. He talks about the process and necessity of marrying the mission to the method, that to achieve its noble ends, a company must still follow a capitalistic business model and make itself competitive in the market. Both are equally necessary and as Brendan points out, making money and doing good works are not mutually exclusive.
It’s a matter of deciding what you want to invest your time in. It also means choosing the right people to be part of your mission. Iggy emphasizes the amount of time he spent and continues to spend considering his investors and encourages listeners to do the same.
Quotes:
“Most of our losses actually came because of these extreme events, we just couldn’t predict them. We couldn’t control them. So I think in 2014 I sort of picked up a climate model. It helps to think about climate modeling. I said, `I want to know what’s going to happen to my facility, for my $6 million factory and tell me what’s going to happen to this.” ([8:14]-[8:38] | Iggy)
“I think there’s a more fundamental question about, ‘Where do you want to spend your energy as well. I want to spend, personally, my energy on solving problems. So that’s what really drives me is ‘Can we make an impact because we’re all going to work hard, whether you’re in for profit, or social sector, what is the purpose to the work?” ([12:10]-[12:31] | Iggy)
“We are a B Corp that allows us to marry the mission with raising capital, creating a certain type of culture, which was all driven by a central mission. Can we take the power of plant intelligence into the hands of decision makers? Can we democratize this complex data? So people like me are not stuck on the farms going forward? People can get answers when they need them, how do I protect my assets? How do I adapt my assets? So we want this intelligence to be democratized as fast as possible at the lowest possible price point, potentially, with a freemium model as well, so that people can get a certain level of climate intelligence on their most critical assets for free. And then the larger banks, insurance companies and governments will actually pay for this.” ([12:51]-[13:31] | Iggy)
“Even at the height of COVID, most global surveys, when they asked citizens the number one concern, it wasn’t COVID, it was still climate. And climate is a number one concern across the world, when you ask the citizens, particularly the younger generations.” ([25:21]-[25:37] | Iggy)
“I’m always always careful about who my capital partners are. I spent a long time focusing on choosing the right investment partners, because if you don’t have that alignment, it can be catastrophic later on.” ([33:53]-[34:05] | Iggy)
“I think there is a combination of mission driven people who are technically good, and people who’ve got method. So you have to marry mission with method. Because at the end of the day, it is a competitive business, it’s a competitive market, you have to be able to sell this stuff into the marketplace, build a brilliant product. And you have to be a commercially orientated organization over time. So mission is great, method is also great. But you need a combination of the two, particularly if you’re solving this type of problems.”([36:40]-[37:10] | Iggy)
Connect with Brendan Dell:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendandell/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendanDell
Instagram: @thebrendandell
TikTok: @brendandell39
Buy a copy of Brendan’s Book, The 12 Immutable Laws of High-Impact Messaging: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780578210926
Connect with Iggy Bassi:
Twitter:@IggyBassi
https://cervest.earth/
Check out Iggy’s recommended books:
Hothouse Earth: An Inhabitant’s Guide by Bill McGuire
https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781785789205
Nutmeg’s Curse by Amitabh Ghosh and Sam Dastor
https://www.indiebound.org/book/9798212010450
Origins: How Earth’s History Shaped Human History by Lewis Dartnell
https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781541617902
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About the Author
Brendan Dell
Brendan Dell is an author and the founder of The Daily Creative. As a freelancer he's worked with clients like Expedia, Cvent, Panasonic, Brother, Windstream and 100+ more to build unignorable tech brands. At The Daily Creative, he shares advice and lessons to help freelancers level up.
