Earlier this week, we were invited to pitch for our startup Oceans, a deep social network for scuba divers, in front of some 700 people at #Sthlmtech, the monthly meetup for startups in Stockholm. On stage, we were also joined by one of the largest European VC firms.
We did this pitch a bit differently. Oceans core business is a digital logbook where scuba divers share experiences from their dives; imagery, data like coordinates, depth, visibility and temperature, but also observations such as wrecks, fish, corals and environmental reports.
We are using this data in citizen science efforts to map the problems facing the oceans today. In the last decades, 90% of the shark population is gone, and 50% of all reefs are suffering from ocean acidification, and are dying. And with Oceans’ crowdsourced data collected by tens of thousands of divers around the world, we can visualize what is happening in the global ocean, over time and between locations.
In this public setting, we focused the pitch on the social impact part of Oceans. And we got some questions about that. Why are you focusing on two separate things?
The answer is we’re not. Combining business with social impact is not necessarily two different business areas. While this example is covering our startup, we believe that it can be applied to many others, too.
Divers, our core user base, are perhaps the best ambassadors you can find for the oceans. They see first hand what is happening to our reefs, lifeforms and the plastic polution we are filling the oceans with. And they are passionate about it.
The global ocean is also the platform we are ultimatly building our company on. Without a living ocean, our business would be gone (of course, we would have much bigger problems, too). Not enabling our users to be a voice for the global ocean would be a failure on our part.
So, when we are looking to add additional partners and investors to our company, making sure that we are aligned on both the business, and the social impact part, is key for us. And talking about the latter, is a great filter to make sure that those alignments are there.
Finally, did you know that half of all oxygen in the atmosphere are produced by corals and microscopic plants in the oceans? Every second breath you take depends upon a living ocean. Let’s give it a voice and start protecting it. And we’d love to hear how you’re working on social impact in your companies.
Team Oceans
Read more about Oceans on Medium.
About Oceans
Oceans (oceans.io) was founded in 2014 with a mission to make the underwater world universally accessible to anyone, everywhere. Together with our ambassadors and tens of thousands of ocean champions, we are co-creating the number one community for divers and ocean explorers around the world.
Oceans is available for iOS and Android as a free download.
On Social Impact and Businesses. was originally published in Team Oceans on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.