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After 197 pitches, Y Combinator’s Demo Day for its Summer 2020 cohort has concluded. While the fanfare, run-ins and fortune cookies were missing in this virtual session, it was still exciting to see and hear founders from 26 countries pitch their passions. Of course, some opted for a more quiet route, raising millions before the two-day pitch session even kicked off.
Members of the Summer 2020 class drew attention from nearly 2,400 investors across the world. For those who didn’t tune in, no worries: here’s our write-up of the companies that presented yesterday.
Participating startups spanned a number of sectors: we saw companies in the future of work, sustainability, no-code, consumer, edtech and delivery solutions. Several entrepreneurs aimed big at e-mail, small at socks and straight at Shopify’s recent success.
While TechCrunch reporters aren’t in the business of cutting checks or predicting success, read on to learn about the 12 startups that stuck out to us for a variety of reasons (apart from their Zoom backgrounds).
CarbonChain
CarbonChain may be the company that times the carbon market correctly. Now that the European Union and other regions are taking a serious look at penalizing businesses that fail to reduce carbon emissions, a service that provides accurate accounting for a company’s carbon footprint will be increasingly valuable.
And if the company can add marketplace and offsetting services on the back of its assessments, then its proposition becomes even more valuable. But what really makes CarbonChain stand out is the rigor with which it approaches its measurements.
The company uses independent software tools to make a digital twin of the carbon-emitting assets in a company’s business and claims that it can determine the emissions footprint of operations down to a cup of coffee (it also has models for the carbon footprint of heavy industrial equipment in the world’s most polluting industries).
For the world to address its carbon emissions, companies must understand their contribution to the problem. CarbonChain could be an invaluable tool in that effort.
