Initial Startups: Behind the Scenes - CarbonStory

We’ve heard about ‘Crowd-Funding’ a lot. How about ‘Crowd-Offsetting’? A Singapore-based Startup launched a portal to fight climate change! Now, you can do your part and support Green Projects via this Startup!

Yes! It’s CarbonStory!

A Brief Introduction: A social startup giving users a fun and informative way to become part of the solution to climate change by purchasing carbon offsets in a new way!

We spoke to the Founder and Pioneer Employee, Andreas and Victor on the initial stage of CarbonStory.

Interview Dialogue with CarbonStory Co-Founder, Mr Andreas(Photo: Right) & the Techical Director,

Mr Victor (Photo: Left).

Interview with Co-Founder – Mr Andreas

1) What went through your initial thought process on forming your initial core team? How did you go about attracting your core team members? If there were challenges faced, please elaborate.

It was a combination of finding people I wanted to work together with and who had the right skills for the job. For the senior team members, I reached out to my personal network for great people I had worked with in the past. That way I knew both what they could do in a professional capacity and I knew that I enjoyed spending time together with them.

2) What were your initial plans for these pioneer employees when they first joined you? How is the execution different from you initial plans, and in what ways?

I actually didn’t make any plans for the team members. Instead we got together and made plans for the company. Everyone took responsibility for different areas such as general management, finance, product development, operations and design. So rather than a top-down industrial hierarchy, we work in a more egalitarian way as professionals with different domain expertise.

3) What will you advise to budding founders if they are looking to form/hire their initial core team?

  I think the old adage “hire for attitude, train for skills” goes a long way. Most startup environments are fairly chaotic and you suffer from chronic resource shortages. So you can clearly not afford to have players on the team who don’t have the right attitude. My advice is to look for people with a high degree of energy and a willingness to step outside of their comfort zone. While it is good if someone has prior experience from a domain, it is even more important that they are willing and able to learn new things really fast. 

And next, we move on to the side of the story with one of the Pioneer Employees – Mr Victor.

1) In your case, what make you join a Startup like CarbonStory full-time?

I've been helping SMEs develop their online strategy, building sites, campaigns, SEO etc. I like this job but I felt I wanted to put my skills to work for a good cause. Carbonstory and its fun approach to climate change tackles a problem that is very critical for all of us. Being able to make Carbonstory provides me an extra satisfaction that I rarely get participating in other commercial ventures. 

2) Being one of the pioneer team member, what are the kind of initial challenges faced?

When I started here, Carbonstory was only an idea, and a very innovative one! Normally when you approach other projects (say making a product catalogue or creating yet another social network) you can check how others have confronted the problems you need to solve. But getting users to measure their carbon footprint, then engage them with environmental projects so they can participate in a game where everyone is trying to do good but at the same time be competitive, that was totally new! With Carbonstory, there was -and still is- a lot of trial an error. 

3) Has your role differ from when you first join? If yes, please elaborate. 

Yes. I first had a more pure technical role. But Carbonstory is not just a web app, it's a whole life changing proposal, so as we started modelling and implementing the project, I started getting more involved in other aspects of the proposal, to the point that we even tried to ensure that the service was running in on carbon neutral servers! 

4) Challenges are inevitable in a startup environment. Prior to join CarbonStory, are you ready for these challenges? Or did you know what you might have to face? 

I've participated in other start-ups, so somehow you know your job is not going to be like a established office job. In a start-up environments there are lots of sudden ups and downs and you're expected to have a good attitude, to be flexible and to be able to cover almost any position if needed. If you rather go for a more predictable job you better don't get involved in a start-up!     

With that, we round up our 1^st interview! If you want to know more about CarbonStory, click on this link -> More About CarbonStory

Startup Jobs Asia’s next interview will be revealed next weekend! Stay tuned!

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