Bend - 1 click carbon accounting for startups

Oh hey PH! We’re Ted and Thomas from Bend (YC S22). We help companies measure their carbon emissions by connecting to your corporate bank account (Brex, Mercury, or any other financial institution on Plaid) and then estimating the impact of each purchase. Thomas and I found our way to this project via our background in fintech. Prior to Bend, I was a co-founder of Abacus (YC W14), a spend management company. At Abacus, we noticed that finance teams are increasingly paying attention to the climate impact of their purchase decisions, from travel policies, to cloud hosting, and beyond. We believe this 'spend based' approach is the key to unlocking scalable carbon accounting. Today, most carbon accounting is manual, conducted once a year, and takes weeks or months to complete. It's like doing your taxes. Fortunately, in the last couple years, we’ve started to reach a critical mass of good merchant data. It used to be that only a handful of companies tracked and disclosed their emissions. Today, 70%+ of Fortune 500 companies disclose their emissions in annual sustainability reports, and 1/3 of the entire global economy is now covered by a Science Based Target (and this coverage is accelerating). The spend-based approach is fully automated and starts working the moment you connect your bank account. Measuring and reducing your company’s emissions is of course good for the planet, but it also prepares your company for upcoming regulations and investor requirements. We help you create a 'climate profile' that you can use to close sales as the sustainable alternative to your competitors (you can share your info with prospects, customers, employees, investors, etc.). And we just rolled out the ability to purchase carbon removal credits, powered by Patch, to offset some or all of your remaining emissions (optionally opt-in to automatic monthly purchasing). Our pricing is $100 / month per company, and you can try Bend for free for 14 days: https://app.bend.green/sign-up Bonus points: if you’re building a fintech app, Bend data is also available via API (email us for API keys and docs). And if you work at a large / public company that already measures emissions, we encourage you to claim your company profile on Bend (for free!), and ask your vendors to track their emissions (after all, your vendors’ emissions become your emissions). 🙏 we’d love to hear your feedback and we’re excited to answer any questions!

Just wanted to jump into the thread and say hello myself :) Where my fellow night-owls/disregulated-sleep-schedules at tonight? Ted and I have been working HARD on this all year, but we kicked it into high gear when we got into Y Combinator, and I could not be prouder of what we're launching with today. Definitely watch the demo video Ted recorded—you'll be shocked how easy (and affordable) it is to start measuring and offsetting your corporate carbon footprint! Oh, and we're based in New York! 🗽 Excelsior!

Congrats on the launch! Love the simplicity of the UI and the ease of 1-click onboarding. We're starting to see dozens of carbon accounting startups pop up. What do you are think are some ways that your product is differentiated in the market?

Love to see this. It's one thing to get companies to recognize the value of measuring their carbon emissions, but making it as easy as possible will go just as far if not farther in making carbon accounting a common practice.

Looks amazing both! How's your foreign currency (£) support? Would love to give this a try if you support non-US banks

Great launch! Congrats team!

What a great idea and great implementation. Especially in a world where sustainability is a most pressing topic. @tedp you mentioned in the brief about your background and how this all started, may I suggest adding a About Us page on the website with your profiles and the story behind Bend. It would go a long way to building trust.

Congrats on the launch! Looks awesome :)

Congrats Ted and Thomas! This looks pretty awesome - carbon emissions tracking down to the transaction level sounds like a major win for companies prioritizing climate impact. I'm curious, you mentioned "scalable carbon accounting" - does the end product of Bend (for companies that are Net Zero) look like a QuickBooks/Xero system of double entry accounting for carbon emissions, where a company would "close the books" on their carbon emissions?

this is amazing - congrats Ted and team!