Downsizing successful!

Downsizing successful!

After re-evaluating the original idea, we arrived at the conclusion that we have to find something else. Now, we have 3 weeks to make the idea come through, instead of the original six. Challenge accepted! The idea is to create an online marketplace for recycled materials. Basically, eBay/Amazon for recyclables. The idea came after a meeting with Christopher Pett from Makers Co.

A rough draft of how the design would look has been developed. Now we need to go hunting for a computer scientist who can make this real.

But first things first. We are setting up meetings, both telephone and real life meetings, with recyclers, industry experts and businesses/manufacturers in and around London. This is to get a feel on the market for recyclables. We have asked ourselves (and made some preliminary assumptions and findings based on these questions):
1. Who are the suppliers and buyers of recycled materials? How does the supply chain work?
2. Is the quality of the recycled material the only determinant of price? We need to delve into the exciting world of plastic science to figure this out.
3. When a company buys materials, how long is the timespan between needing materials and actually using materials. We need to figure this out in order to choose the best online sales method (auction/fixed price/discounts?).
4. When materials are bought, how are they delivered? What is the cost? Who pays for the delivery? Who delivers it?

To make this realizable, we are starting off with just plastics. Metals, fabrics and electronics can potentially come later. We are also trying to not wander too far outside of London.

After a really good meeting with Hafeez Bana, CIO of Sirius Minerals, we took the idea and twisted it a little. Or more specifically, made a two step grand master-plan to take over the world. To instantly create an online marketplace, with very many suppliers and buyers (which would be required for it to work) will be very challenging, as we don't have the contacts needed for it to be successful. We will focus first on creating some kind of SaaS for recyclers/intermediaries to streamline the supply chain process for both the recyclers and the businesses.

Terrific design: Instead of working straight towards a marketplace, we go through a halfway step.

To simplify, picture this: We sell some kind of framework/interface (say, similar to implementing an online store on a website) to each recycler/intermediary, which they can upload onto their website/server. This is fully customizable for each induvidual recycler. If they have plastic in stock, they will upload that onto their website with details on quality, background, quantity etc. Potential buyers can then see that, click it, maybe specify quantity, then purchase it. Simple! We keep selling this solution to many different recyclers, all of whom probably have their own set of regular customers. When we've sold this package to enough recyclers, we would have the option to use all this data transferred in order to create a full scale market place. Then we take over the world.

Monday and Tuesday are going to be important days for us, as we hope the assumptions we have made this far can be either verified or rejected. Whatever outcome, it's going to help us.

How Big Green Data started

Our team came together during the Invent the Future workshop day. The theme was resources and all three of us wanted to create a social enterprise that influenced people’s behaviour to use resources more sustainably. I wrote up the experience of coming up with ideas in the workshop in a previous blog for Createlab.

The idea we were put through to the Venture Catalyst Challenge with was Big Green Data: harnessing existing data about consumer products (such as data on what that product is made from, how many air miles it has travelled to be in the consumers hands, etc.) and making that information more available and useful for consumers. If we created a way of getting that information out in an effective way it would act as a pressure on companies to make greener products. In whatever scenario this plays out in we would own data (which we have started finding but have not got yet) and we would have a positive green brand that companies would want to be associated with.

How would deliver this was the big question we kept coming back to. We could create a rating system of “how green” a product is, but that has been done so many times with so many rating systems it’s now just confusing and unhelpful. Say we did come up with a rating system that worked well and influenced behaviour. Our plan to make money from this was to allow companies to buy their data and the green rating we have given it.

We kept going round in circles trying to figure out how to make what is essentially an abstract idea happen and find ways to test whether it would actually work.

So now we are downsizing.