EcoScout Week 1: Quit Your Job & Fight The Climate Crisis 🌏

EcoScout
YSYS
Published in
3 min readOct 10, 2019

There is nothing more millennial than quitting your job to fight the climate crisis.

But that's for good reason. The science is terrifying.

We need to reduce carbon emissions by 50% by 2029 otherwise we risk setting off an irreversible chain reactions beyond human control (National Geographic, 2019 & Greta Thunberg, 2019).

This means:

  • The extinction of 1 million species
  • Unprecedented food shortages
  • Millions of climate refugees

(The Guardian, 2019)

That's why we have quit our full-time jobs to create EcoScout.

The problem we want to solve

Living an environmentally friendly lifestyle is expensive, difficult and time consuming.

Our solution

Pre-release website www.ecoscout.co

EcoScout, an app that measures, reduces and offsets your carbon footprint.

Live well, save money and save the planet.

FYI: You can sign up for pre-release here

The team

Tim Kelly, Co-Founder & Head of Product

  • Full-time at EcoScout
  • 3-years experience in boot-strapped startups
  • Previously, co-founder of Evolutionary Tutors (achieved $160k in first year revenue).
  • To be deported from the UK in August 2020 if the start-up doesn't work

Maya Lingam, Co-Founder & Head of Community

  • Full-time at EcoScout
  • 2-years experience in a mid-sized start-up in London and New York
  • Previously, responsible for hiring and managing sales teams for a 70-person start-up

The progress

In 4-months EcoScout has become a startup with two full-time co-founders and backed by the FoundersDoor program.

FoundersDoor is a JP Morgan sponsored pre-accelerator program for start-ups. It includes 6-weeks of mentorship and an equity free grant worth £6k for hardware and coworking space.

We've pivoted our business three times already. We have gone from a recipe website, to a recipe box and now a carbon footprint dashboard.

Our thoughts on the pre-accelerator

TLDR: Unbelievably helpful.

The pre-accelerator is run in London by the super team at YSYS for young founders aged between 18-24.

Tim & Maya Being Nerds

It's a 6-week program that gives you the following equity-free:

  • 6-weeks of free mentorship
  • 3-months of free WeWork co-working space
  • £3000 of hardware
  • Demo day for investors

The program has been unbelievable for us.

The equity-free grants provide us with the short-term financial security we create our business.

The 6-weeks of mentorship give our founding team the perspective we need to make the right decisions.

The demo-day gives us the opportunity to pitch for pre-seed investment to a room full of investors.

Previously, we were sceptical about pre-accelerator programs but so far we are nothing but impressed.

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Interested in getting involved at EcoScout? Email us at hello@ecoscout.co 👋

To find out more about YSYS and their other initiatives subscribe to their newsletter here.

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EcoScout
YSYS
Writer for

EcoScout a startup that measures, reduces and offsets your carbon footprint. Founded by Maya Lingam & Tim Kelly