SUST4IN completes 10 years: lessons learned and its future in an unsustainable world.

SUST4IN completes 10 years: lessons learned and its future in an unsustainable world.

• From the original idea, to mistakes, and achievements.
• SUST4IN has served more than one hundred organizations and thousands of people.
• What can we learn, and how we keep learning?
• How to find motivation in an unsustainable world?

Madrid, 21^st March 2024. SUST4IN, the “micro-multinational” of sustainability experts, completes 10 years serving more than one hundred organizations and touching thousands of people. A note of gratitude and a reflection on its history, achievements, mistakes, and its future in an unsustainable world.

THE IDEA

In 2014, the idea of creating an independent company to respond to the sustainability demands of the private, public, and NGO sectors was not exactly new.

However, SUST4IN may have been one of the first companies to go beyond “green”, “eco” or “climate”, to stop talking about CSR and to mix 1) environmental responsibility, 2) social justice, 3) good governance and 4) economic development. Naturally our logo could not be green either!

From those four pillars and our four main services: information, training, consulting, and assurance, comes the “provocative” number 4 in the name of SUST4IN, which is pronounced sustain, /səˈsteɪn/.

The other “innovation” was the understanding, from the beginning, that regulation, the financial sector, and especially investors were – and are – changing the game. The so-called Non-Financial Reporting Directive, the Green Bond Principles, the Sustainable Development Goals, the Water Footprint standards, and the Paris Agreement were still being drafted or piloted.

Our mission, or purpose, remains to kindly push and strongly support our clients on their sustainability journeys.

THE BEGINNINGS

The beginning was difficult as for most startups, but we were lucky to have local support in the nascent Madrid startup ecosystem. We were joined by mentors and colleagues who contributed ideas and constructive criticism, always with a lot of motivation to be developing, not only products, but a new company.

More importantly, despite our passion for sustainability, it was vital to “get out of the building” and find clients. It took us six months to issue the first invoice and almost another three to collect it!

THE MISTAKES

The biggest mistake was our inability to develop “GAIA”: a software to help companies collect and manage sustainability information just like they do with financial information. Something other startups and some big companies did quite well later on but remains a challenge for us.

In any case, we learned a lot and, paradoxically, that “mistake” made the startup spirit forever roam at SUST4IN – namely, the appetite to try new ideas, products, channels and even business models.

THE ACHIEVEMENTS

It would be great if we could mention the sustainability performance improvements our clients achieved over the years, and there were many, but that is hard to measure and even harder to attribute them to our efforts.