How Resilient to Change is Your Startup Business?

 

 

For 11 years, Fishburners has welcomed a wide variety of early-stage businesses and business owners from all spheres of society.

This has included businesses that help us live simpler lives, such those that can provide pet-friendly lodging or let you avoid the line to purchase coffee. Additionally, it has included businesses engaged in somewhat “sci-fi” endeavors like automated cybersecurity, radiography powered by AI, and EV charging stations.

But regardless of the sector the company operates in, these businesses need to take more steps to secure their future.

Working on how your company can address the most important environmental, economic, and social problems facing the world is necessary to achieve this.

Because the health of the society, economy, and natural ecosystem in which your business is based is inextricably linked to that of your company.

And if your company is affecting any of the aforementioned, it will soon pass from this earth.

 

Starting point: UN Sustainable Development Goals

 

The Sustainable Development Goals, or “SDGs,” of the United Nations are a terrific place to start when trying to future-proof your firm.

Gender equality, poverty, consumption, sustainability, clean energy, strong institutions, climate action, clean oceans, and other social justice issues are all covered under the SDGs.

The SDGs’ large, insurmountable issues are also the best possibilities for businesses to solve them.

These issues are major, widespread, and not likely to go away very soon. They give enormous commercial potential for companies looking to make a difference and future-proof their work, in addition to the moral need to address them.

Recently, we’ve been inspired by startups that have adopted this sustainable, future-proof strategy. These companies have taken on a variety of global concerns and shown that entrepreneurs can both make a difference and sustain themselves over the long term.

Here are three examples.

Case Study 1: Addressing Climate Change’s Effects

A wonderful example of this is the Brisbane-based business FloodMapp, which is addressing the effects of climate-related natural disasters like floods.

Emergency management can now understand the effects on particular people, properties, and vital infrastructure before, during, and after flood events thanks to real-time intelligence produced by FloodMapp. This makes it possible for swiftwater rescues to be more organized and focused, and it also makes it possible to direct traffic around flooded roadways.

A firm created to reduce the financial burden of natural disasters caused by climate change on the earth and its inhabitants will have a sizable addressable market for a very long time to come.

Twenty million people are forced to relocate each year due to flooding, which also causes $9 billion in damage in Australia. The cost of our floods in 2022 is more than $11 billion!

A startup that addresses these problems and reduces or avoids these costs has a very promising future.

Case Study 2: Positive Events

Another illustration is Humanitix, a company that utilizes scalable technology in a 100% for-purpose business model to disrupt already established for-profit sectors and address pressing social challenges.

A non-profit ticketing company called Humanitix has cheaper booking costs that all go to good causes, upending the US$3.7 billion worldwide ticketing market.

The for-profit sector is now ignoring a wide range of critical social challenges, according to founder and CEO Adam McCurdie. Therefore, scalable technology can be used to disrupt a variety of businesses by giving a great service and reinvesting earnings in charitable endeavors.

In McCurdie’s vision, every organization, structure, and system functions to best serve the needs of the people and other living things who share our planet.

It’s a strategy that the general people will always find appealing. In fact, we think that the need for ethical methods of carrying out everyday tasks, like making event reservations, will only grow among consumers and businesses alike.

When choosing between two equally convenient and seamless event booking options, one of which donates to charity and the other doesn’t, it’s truly a no-brainer.

Case study 3: An understanding “dairy”

Compassion Creamery is one startup that is aggressively taking precautions against potential problems. It thinks that entrepreneurs need to be concerned with where demand is going in the future, taking into account that what is acceptable now could not be to future generations.

According to estimates, 75% of people worldwide have a lactose intolerance. But even among those who can tolerate lactose, there could be some who would prefer to eat cheese without having to separate a lactating mother cow from her calf.

A plant-based, lactose-free, and vegan-friendly oat crème cheese with great flavor has been created by Compassion Creamery.

Oat milk production consumes 80% less water, land, and emits 70% fewer greenhouse emissions than milk production, therefore using it to make dairy products has significant environmental advantages as well.

Founder and CEO Sarah Qian thinks people are becoming more aware of the negative effects of ingesting animal products like dairy on the environment, ethics, and health.

Qian thinks there may come a day when younger generations would reflect on the consumption of animal products now and be as appalled by it as we are by slavery or other injustices that were formerly acceptable.

Compassion Creamery is a great illustration of a startup that has prepared for the future from the start and may be serving an expanding future addressable market.

Source: SmartCompany