Buy with Impact
Built out the team, product strategy and distribution for one of the first carbon offsetting credit cards on the market with a feasible business model and distribution. The team/product joined RBC US Ventures in 2020.
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How to win
Before writing a single line of code, I ended up testing a few concepts through Instagram campaigns and getting a read before committing to build anything
This helped us amass a huge waitlist really quickly and distill messaging
Some learnings:
- Calling something the “first” wouldn’t work out for us — too risky for some investors and too risky for consumers
- Most people’s consumption behaviour didn’t change that much (read: their carbon footprint didn’t change too much month to month) so introducing some sort of marketplace to slowly shift behaviour worked the best
- 2/3s of cashback or credit card rewards doesn’t get used
- Users like the option to direct interchange, cashback or other rewards to CO2 offsets, planting trees or leaving it in a digital wallet
Creating an ecosystem of complimentary apps was the way to go for BWI: Most of financial services is about upselling and it’s relatively straightforward to upsell based on consumption behaviour, data and interests
Monetization presented itself in two ways:
- Merchant partners (moving advertising from FB/Instagram to BWI)
- Margin on CO2 offsets
CAC was roughly $6/signup
Building a brand was much more important than building a product for BWI (solving for trust)
Use a new channel to build an audience (see TikTok screens below)
Instagram DMs are way more powerful to build trust than most people realize, by the end of a few conversations I could get anyone to connect their bank account to BWI (through Plaid)
Working on solving climate change can (and will be) profitable — not everything in climate has to be a B Corp or a non-for profit
Aligning incentives with money is fruitful (I’m sure you know this already)
If you want more of my learnings/research, get in touch on Twitter or contact me
