🎙️ Podcast Ep #5: One Concern CEO Ahmad Wani

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Happy Saturday! Hope this morning has got you feeling something like this.

Another week, another fresh perspective on Doing Well by Doing Good. This time we’re chatting with CEO of Series B climatech company One Concern, with a focus on building planetary scale resilience. In this episode, we touch upon the journey so far, the mission / culture dynamic, making money and shareholder value, making a positive social change, and of course advice for the listeners.

Full Disclosure: I currently (and proudly) work at this company for many of the reasons we discuss in this post and this company served as my initial inspiration for this newsletter.

Check out the links below, or subscribe and find it in your favorite podcast service. If you’re more of the reading type, check out the transcript below with links to each segment (along with a quick TLDR; on the top if you’ve only got a few minutes). Listen to the episode

TLDR;

• Journey: Much like other DWDG companies we profiled, One Concern thought about being a nonprofit, but decided the nonprofit could not achieve a global mission the way a for-profit could by attracting investment, talent, and partners.
• Mission: One Concern’s mission is planetary scale resilience and at One Concern, as in other mission-driven social enterprises, mission and culture go hand-in-hand, where mission is driven by culture and visa-versa in a virtuous cycle.
• Doing Well: One Concern makes money through software subscription revenue and transactional revenue as the maintainer of a marketplace for climate related solutions.
• Shareholder Value: Ahmad shares how climate change affects us everyday and disproportionately affects marginalized communities, but sustainability needs a business model to be — shall we say — sustainable. The market is large providing direct shareholder value for One Concern, meaning that making money and achieving the mission are intertwined.
• Doing Good: One Concern aims to leverage that business model to incentivize the right capital investment to bridge the gap between marginalized communities and well-off ones.
• Advice for Listeners: Ahmad advises prospective founders of DWDG companies to surround themselves with people who give honest feedback and push you to be better. And for professionals, finding the perfect combo of what you care for, what you’re good at, and what you enjoy doing.

Founding Journey

Anand 0:29 So why don’t we just jump right in. Tell us a little bit about your founding journey. How did you get to where you are today?

Ahmad 0:37 Okay, so I’m an entrepreneur by complete accident. And I came to the United States to pursue my Master’s and PhD in something called Earthquake Engineering, which is a real field. And One Concern was kind of my future PhD project. And me and my colleagues, Nicole, and Tim, ended up starting this full time as a company. And it was a complete accident that I was visiting back home and I got caught in a flood where I happened to be one of the lucky ones to survive and tell the story. But really, it kind of opened my eyes in terms of a the global nature of how disasters really cripple societies and economies. And then also the opportunity, which lies ahead of us, especially with the advent of digital and AI.

Anand 1:39 What advice did you get along the way? Any resources that help you what challenge? What were the major challenges that you faced up until this point?

Ahmad 1:49 Oh, that’s an interesting question. At this point, okay. I think every day there are so many challenges. So let me break them down a little bit. So, before founding the company, you need to be convinced that you are good enough, and the idea is good enough. And then you know, you have an Indian background, so you have to have the ability to call your parents and convince them that you’re not going to get a PhD from Stanford, but instead you go rogue.

Anand 2:24 That’s a tough one.

Ahmad 2:29 Right, exactly. So, but that was a that was a big hurdle. But when we when we did get started, I feel we’re not in a very traditional market. My initial instinct was the people, when I was on that rooftop in Kashmir trying to trying to figure out whether I can live or die in this flood in 2014, I was seeing these helicopters. You’re trying to rescue people. So my initial instinct was governments are going to be the primary user. So my initial pitch deck was focused on Gov tech, and governments being the only user. And so I distinctly remember a meeting where the venture capitalist, a very respected one who ended the meeting in need about four and a half to five minutes, and quite literally threw us out of the office. And so as soon as I used to utter the word, earthquake, or disasters and government, they used to basically say you are a disaster, and please leave. And there is no business and there is no market. So I feel like initially figuring out and getting the right set of people to believe in the vision and the mission was key. So that was I feel a big hurdle.

Mission and Culture

Anand 3:51 All right. Yeah. Well, I think that’s a great segue into the next question, because I know it sounds a bit silly coming coming from me, obviously, I work at the company. But what is One Concern’s mission?

Ahmad 4:05 One Concern’s mission is to make disasters less disastrous. The way we plan to do that is by what we call as planetary scale resilience with three lenses of safety, sustainability and equity. Fundamentally, what we believe is that in the advent of an ever changing world, we are now witnessing one of the biggest disruptions the world has ever seen. COVID-19. And we are going to witness even more ramifications of climate change, which is a chronic stress which the world is now undergoing and is going to continue to undergo in the next few decades. We feel that there is an ability for, for One Concern, to be able to educate the end users, whether it’s private companies, whether it’s cities, or whether it’s somebody walking on the road, to be able to understand what it means for them, for their business, for their city, for their livelihoods, for their safety, and how can they then take the necessary actions to get ahead of that disruption and all that risk?

Anand 5:16 Okay. And so, and we’ll get to this a little bit later into the Doing Well, and Doing Good part of the podcast. But sticking on the mission part, how do you create a culture that embodies that mission everyday?

Ahmad 5:32 I think it’s getting to live your mission everyday, of course, right? And it starts with people. So you need to be able to surround yourself with the right people and making sure that you’re able to clearly communicate what your core values are. Now, a big part of what we do is trust and building trust with our customers. Because the systems which we provide can have huge and far reaching implications on their short term, but as well as on their long term decision making, which can affect both their business but also their safety. So we want to be able to embody, for example, a mission of being intellectually honest and embodying trust in our systems. And that is just one of the many things where the core values, which we embody, can have far reaching implications to the customer, and the decisions which they make. So I feel it starts by sort of having a set of clearly defined core values, which are aligned with your product with your market with really what you’re trying to do in terms of your mission. And really making sure that you have a clear set of communication, as well as accountability, to make sure that your team members live by those core values.

Anand 7:04 Right. And so in that case, these are the core values that you look for in candidates and in partners, and people that that you work with, as a whole.

Ahmad 7:15 Yes, I feel to be honest, COVID-19 has put a mirror in front of all of us, and our core values. And really, the focus on people and customers is going to be more important than ever. I feel like that the last few weeks to months, has clearly shown how it’s not necessarily that the tech companies lack some of these core values in the way they operate whether it’s inequity, whether it’s lack of diversity, but I feel tech companies might be the inequity creating machines, or industries where inequity actually is created. So I feel it is our responsibility to really hold a mirror in front of ourselves, and really take a deeper look, in terms of how do we actually operationalize these core values, because everybody has core values, but only a few companies are able to sort of really deeply operationalize them. And recruiting is one of the areas that we can operationalize it. Performance goals is another way you could actually operationalize that.

Anand 8:36 Like making sure that performance goals aligned with the mission. And then making sure that that continues.

Ahmad 8:42 Yeah, I mean, open question like how many companies do you know where your variable comp is actually tied to you actually, adhering to some of these core values. Whether your team feels that you are actually a good manager, and you are exemplifying some of the core values which are written on the walls, I don’t know of many companies who are actually trying to do that. I would like for One Concern to be doing that.

Anand 9:14 Make sense. So then embodying it requires operationalization. And by operationalizing it you can then embody that mission continually.

Ahmad 9:23 Right! You need to put the money where your mouth is right? Like, actually, the core value would rather start by operationalizing them and it starts from the people within, then you can figure out how to operationalize them with your customers and the broader set of stakeholders, thought leadership. I feel that’s secondary. First we need to end up fix our shops because I feel technology might be a big cause of these inequities.

Anand 9:53 Yep. Yeah. I know we could go on we can go on forever on this.

Ahmad 9:59 Might be an unpopular opinion but that’s the opinion I have.

Anand 10:06 One thing that just stood out to me was, being an employee at One Concern, I think one thing that stands out to me is being resilient. Right? And right now, during COVID, being resilient is such a big part of every single thing we do, right? I mean, if we’re not resilient, we won’t be able to survive, we won’t be able to get through life. And so that’s one of the values that certainly I hold very dear. And I know that that’s one of the examples where you say, here’s the mission of the company, which is to be resilient, and planetary scale resilience, but then kind of flipping it and saying, okay, now how do we embody it? Well, we embody it as people by being resilient. And this time, especially during COVID, it’s more important than ever.

Ahmad 10:47 Absolutely, I mean, like any other company at our stage, we’re trying to right now figure out our “remote strategy”. An easy option could be, hey, we are at the behest of the San Mateo Health Department. So let’s extend the three months, and then another two months and another three months, until we feel convinced that we can go back to the office. But if you think about it, from a resiliency standpoint, we might want to actually figure out like, hey, if there is a, forget COVID-19, but what if there is a COVID-2021 you’re gonna be still down on our knees and locked in our homes, with safety, but also psychosocial implications on our team and our customers. So, getting ahead of it would really entail thinking about how do you now set up processes that, number one, help you get back on your feet as it relates to reopening, but then also make sure that going forward, and you’re not backward looking. But now you are foreseeing some of the different things which could happen in terms of disrupting your workforce, and coming up with a with a remote work strategy would therefore require us to first be resilient as a company, and then profess the mission of resiliency more broadly.

Anand 12:13 Yep. So it’s like, each individual is resilient, then the company becomes resilient, then we can make other people resilient.

Ahmad 12:19 Right, then we can claim to make other people resilient.

Doing Well and Shareholder Value

Anand 12:23 All right. Cool. Well, I think we can move on to another part, which is, again, the podcast is Doing Well, by Doing Good. And so we’ll start actually with Doing Well. So, you know, One Concern is a venture backed business. And so, one question that I always ask is, what makes the business of One Concern sustainable, both in the short term and long term? And what is the business model?

Ahmad 12:50 So One Concern’s business model is being able to sell what we call as resilience as a service software or solutions to end users or owners of the risk. The risk, which we measure is called business interruption risk or business resiliency. And the owners could be anybody, like the City of Seattle, or the Government of this Western Japan city called Kumamoto, or it could be a large Fortune 10 oil company.

Anand 13:24 And so in terms of making money, you would be selling a software product. And then, is there any other revenue stream or another way that One Concern would make money?

Ahmad 13:37 So One Concern creates both supply side systems as well as envisions creating sort of demand side systems. So we basically are able to not just be a part of the problem by pointing out all the flaws an enterprise has, but also help them sort of partner with the necessary folks who can actually help them become more resilient.

Anand 13:59 Right. Okay. So then in that case, it would be definitely subscription revenue, but also perhaps transactional revenue that you can get from being part of the supply and demand side. Okay, that makes sense. As a next step, then, how do you balance shareholder value with your mission and culture because naturally, you are a venture backed business looking to grow and make money?

Ahmad 14:27 So there’s a few things, so I’m kind of thinking while I’m speaking, so please excuse me. If we wanted to be a nonprofit, and take that route, and sort of raise venture capital, I feel we could still execute on the same problem set. But we will be able to sort of make Palo Alto resilient rather than the world resilient. And that’s not necessarily our mission. Because you feel like this problem is very, very global, and very much so affects different communities around the world. And so just solving it for a particular location or a particular community is not necessarily the end game for One Concern. And so maybe there is an app, which might be specifically suited to like high schoolers in California or something like that, it would be great in terms of monetizing a particular vertical, a particular location, but our mission is more global. And so we need to take that mindset. And what I found was, in order for us to be able to actually scale this globally, and thereby serve our mission, we have no other option, but to raise money, and actually figure out business model. Now there’s another perspective, which is, I feel that if you look at the different things which I could be doing, right, I could be working on, let’s say, five problems right now. And I’ve chosen one of them, which is solving this issue of AI natural disasters, resiliency, in this space, but could work in other things. I feel like, if you look at the basic needs in Maslow’s hierarchy. For many of, and those keep changing the COVID is kind of all these things, but fundamentally, I feel that for some of those things, we are further ahead, but for certain others, we are still lagging behind. And if you are focused on technology to be able to better provide those services more broadly, across the world, there can be very, very lucrative businesses that could be built. So I feel like you don’t even have to actually validate your problem statement. Because the problem statement is like, these many people die of hunger every day, and these people don’t have access to power or water or internet. So I feel like you have a much higher probability of success, if you are a mission-driven company, a) from the standpoint of having a validated problem statement, which is being approached by century old methods. And now we have the luxury of internet and technology and data, digital, etc, which gives us a unique ability to maybe look at it slightly differently. The second aspect is, if you are mission-driven company, you are able to, because the part of startups is being able to attract the right set of people to work on this. You’re able to attract, like an A team and that really I feel increases your odds of of success. I feel because of those reasons, I feel we have a better hit that success rather than a different company.

Anand 18:20 So shareholders see eye-to-eye because the success of the company is actually driven by the fact that it’s mission driven, as opposed to being hindered by it.

Ahmad 18:30 Correct, being mission driven is not like an afterthought for us. It’s not like, Oh, you know, we are kind of doing this. But now let’s actually give 20 hours of our time, or $20,000 as a donation to some other organization, and then let’s figure out whether their mission aligns with One Concern. I mean, we can do that. And we do that sometimes. But of course, more importantly, our day-to-day in advancing our mission is fulfilling that social good element, and so therefore, I feel like there right now completely aligned, shareholder value as well as doing good.

Doing Good

Anand 19:12 Yeah, and I like that you brought up Maslow’s hierarchy. Because, you know, one interesting point I’ve always thought about in Maslow’s hierarchy is the bottom part is the biggest, right, the basic needs are actually the most important. So when investors talk about TAM or total addressable market, I mean, that is it, right? You have a larger addressable market. Now, of course, there’s the argument that well, do people have the money, but it turns out, if you can find where the money is, that market can be very large. And so you’re doing good, and you’re also addressing a big need, which means that you have a large market. You actually touched upon a lot of the a couple of questions that I was going to get to anyway, so I’m glad you talked about it, because the next part of it is Doing Good. My basic question is always this: in 10 years, right when One Concern is a huge success, what global challenge will you have helped solve?

Ahmad 20:04 I think the world needs a bunch of money to adapt to climate change, and I feel One Concern would have played a tangible role in that. I feel that, fundamentally, the climate movement needs a business model. In many situations that doesn’t exist. And I feel One Concern provides that business model, we have seen in our analyses, that when we simulate these cities, and how disasters impact cities or companies, we’re able to see how the interconnected nature of of economies of cities and how much of your risk actually comes from your people getting affected from the broader community getting affected, and by the public infrastructure getting affected. I feel public infrastructure is, in the US and more even globally is, is currently in a very bad crumbling state. And it requires immediate upgrades. And I think, given we are in such huge fiscal deficit, there needs to be a business model to show returns to be able to fund that and adapt to climate change. And I feel One Concern’s modeling is able to do that.

Anand 21:36 Makes sense. So then, you touched on this already, but I just want to make sure that I got this right, because my next question is, why build a for profit versus a nonprofit? And you talked about it a little bit, you talked about growth, you talked about, you know, you can go faster, you can actually have a huge market. If somebody were to choose, right, okay, nonprofit, and I’m sure at some point, you probably thought about this. So did you and your co founders have to go through, did you guys have to go through this process of saying, should this be a nonprofit versus not? And at that time, how did you make that call?

Ahmad 22:10 That’s a good question. I think, as I mentioned previously, we were initially thinking that maybe we can be a nonprofit. We later realized that the only way to achieve our mission, which is planetary scale resiliency, is to be a for-profit company, because otherwise, we’re going to end up with a resilient Palo Alto, rather than a resilient world. And then we’ll only be able to fund the wealthy cities. So that’s, I think, the biggest realization which we had is scaling the company at a pace we really feel is urgent, given the climate crisis at the scale we want, which is global, is necessary for a company to achieve its mission. And, fundamentally, the problem is we’re trying to solve, as I said, is sustainability needs a business model and One Concern, helps show that business model and expose that out in the open. So I feel that’s really something which I would feel proud looking back, if you’re able to achieve that.

Anand 23:22 Yeah and you mentioned this, which is interesting, because you say that One Concern achieves business model for sustainability. But to your point if it’s also in some ways, kind of helping with wealth inequality, a lot of the issues in sustainability is that there is a lot of money maybe in Palo Alto, but not as much money in a place like, let’s say, Dhaka, Bangladesh, for example. And so the idea is, that doesn’t mean that money can’t be used in order to help people right in other parts of the world. And so if you can build a business model, then perhaps you can actually help with some of that inequality, right, the wealth inequality that exists and help solve some of those fundamental problems in places where they may not have the means to do it themselves.

Ahmad 24:08 I mean, we don’t even have to go that far. Actually, we can just go to Palo Alto and East Palo Alto.

Anand 24:14 That’s true. Yeah.

Ahmad 24:16 You can kind of see the inequality. I mean, I was educated by one of the council members here. The local council meant that more than 50% of students are some of the school districts in in East Palo Alto do not eat two times a day, and they’re homeless. And you know, that’s shocking, because it’s like a few miles from one of the more wealthy neighborhoods. Now, if one person is able to show how an infrastructure upgrade in East Palo Alto, leading to the Dumbarton bridge is able to create business value for let’s say, businesses in Palo Alto as well as in the broader Silicon Valley, in terms of making sure that they have a more resilient business and a more resilient workforce, we could actually solve that issue for East Palo Alto, in terms of their education systems, or their infrastructure being in shambles.

Advice for Listeners

Anand 25:21 Yeah. Wow, yeah, that’s that’s a good point. All right. Well, thank you for that. That’s, that’s very helpful. You know, I think this is a perfect opportunity now to move on to advice for the listeners. So you’ve shared a lot about your story about how you’ve gotten to where you are, why you do what you do. Now, what advice would you give to either founders trying to build a Doing Well by Doing Good company, or professionals that are looking to work for one?

Ahmad 25:50 I don’t know whether I’m the right person to take advice from.

Anand 25:54 Well, whether somebody takes it or not, is a different story. But I’m sure people would love to hear your thoughts.

Ahmad 26:02 Haha that’s true. I think that when you’re starting any company, I feel like there are many instances when, you know, because every day is not happy. And it’s like two steps forward, and one step back and you’re constantly doing that. And so there are several instances when you are about to give up. So I feel persistence, is key. And having, you know, belief in your mission is important, because if it was so obvious to everyone, then everybody would do it. And so sometimes, you know, these things don’t make rational sense or logical sense even. I realized, because, we can only see a few steps ahead, the human brain, but sometimes things happen in the future, which really delight you, outside your comprehension. So, the one support system, which has really worked for me is making sure that you are able to surround yourselves with the right people. The people who can tell you the good, bad, and the ugly, the people who believe in your mission in you as an individual. And sometimes maybe they tell you, you know, you’re not the right person so step aside, sometimes they give you that much needed push, which you need, in that time of despair. And these set of people, you need to know who to go to for what advice, because most of the times, you get the wrong advice or suboptimal advice because you’re just asking the wrong person. That I realized like three years into the journey, I and I think this could be your investors, this could be your board members, your advisors, your team members, but I think all of it starts from your co-founder. And sometimes it’s almost weird. You know, I’ve been so blessed with having Nicole and Tim as my co-founders. Because in the early days, I still remember that there have been times. And I know, there have been times when I was like, I don’t know whether this is going to work, but I’m still going to try because I can’t let Nicole down. Right. And it was primarily that reason that I pushed a little more. And then I was like, oh, okay, this actually works. So I feel like surrounding yourself with the right people is one of the most important things that you can do as a founder.

Anand 28:50 Awesome. Yeah. That’s, that’s great advice. And how about for professionals? So let’s say that, you know, somebody says I, you know, founding a company is a little bit difficult, but how about working for a company that Does Well by Doing Good?

Ahmad 29:05 Okay. I think that many companies are trying to do good in their own ways, of course. And I feel many companies who have gone on to become very successful have had that strong mission and vision of democratizing big pieces of that Maslow’s triangle. So, I feel when you’re trying to figure out where you want to work next. Let me think about how would I do that?

Anand 29:40 I would say it’s been a while, I guess.

Ahmad 29:44 Yeah. So I think what I would do is I would try to figure out what are the problems that I really care for. Problems I care for, as in what the world needs? Assemble all the problems and which are the ones the world urgently needs solved? Then figure out which part of what subset of those problems am I good at solving? Or could I be potentially be good at solving or adding tangible value to? And then third, what would I enjoy doing? And I feel I would try to work at the intersection of those three things. I would try to figure out what are the causes I really care for? What am I really good at? And then what would I enjoy doing because working in a company which is trying to do good, it’s, you know, maybe it’s in its infancy, so it’s going to be a hard journey. So as much as you believe in the mission and vision, and you’re pretty good at working at whatever you do, you also need to sign up for a long term commitment. So you need to really enjoy that journey. So I feel those are the three things which I would just ask people to think about.

Anand 31:17 Wow, that’s great advice. And with that thank you again for being on the show and sharing your story.

Ahmad 31:24 Thank you so much for having me.

Thanks for listening and reading, whether you got through the TLDR; or the entire thing, I hope you learned a thing or two 😀. If you have any feedback for questions you want to ask or topics you want to hear us discuss, shoot over an email to hello@doingwellbydoinggood.co, or tweet us at @dwdgsf.

Until the next post, we’ll catch you on the flip side!

✌🏽Anand

Originally published at https://dwdg.substack.com.