Why we invested in Makersite
The transition to a zero-carbon economy increases the pressure on corporations to measure externalities resulting from their business activities and products such as greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Data about corporate and product-level externalities is becoming central to supporting fiscal interventions, from expanding the EU emission trading scheme to various forms of taxation ranging from VAT to corporate, energy and property taxes. It also serves as a basis for continuous operational improvements companies need to achieve to meet their net zero emission targets.
Design and engineering teams need to understand the environmental and societal footprint of a product, and optimise that footprint by making better, more sustainable product design choices — switching suppliers, where necessary. Taking meaningful action at the product level requires comprehensive, highly granular supply chain data and powerful data analytics tools. At scale, this data is difficult to come by and today there are only a very small number of specialist vendors who can serve this market. Based on customer feedback and our own analysis, we believe that Makersite is best positioned to lead this category.
Why Makersite?
Founded in 2018 by Neil D’Souza, Makersite has built one of world’s most comprehensive supply chain databases. The database integrates more than 140 different external data feeds covering raw materials and the material composition of pre-products, and specific end-products broken down into their individual components. Using a manufacturer’s bill of materials as a starting point, Makersite’s software maps individual product components across all supply chain tiers, supplying data analytics for product life cycle analysis, multi-variable decision making for product design, and analysing supply chain resilience.
For a given item, up to 50 different financial, environmental, health and regulatory criteria from material cost to water and land use, embodied and operational carbon and supplier routes are available. Customers can then apply 35 different analytical tools including should-cost analysis and supplier optimisation to their data set. For individual clients, the data and data analytics capabilities are enhanced through bespoke ERP system integrations, thereby extracting value from the customer’s own proprietary data.
In a major step to empower industrial designers and engineers, Makersite announced a partnership with Autodesk, the leading provider of CAD software, to integrate its API into the company’s design software. This effectively gives designers and engineers real-time visibility of the impact of their design choices, and the ability to simulate costs and potential substitution choices for materials and components. For example, designers can switch materials or supplier location to simulate the impact of these choices on the CO2 footprint of a product.
To provide a sense of the scale of the dataset, Makersite is for example tracking 80 million chemical components that can be found in electronic devices. In customer interviews, the company’s data analytics capabilities were frequently praised. While the breadth of data is an important differentiator, which precludes many vendors from competing with Makersite, the ability to process and analyse the data at scale in a user-friendly and cost-efficient manner is critical for the company’s customers, which include many leading S&P 500 companies.
The €18 million Series A will allow the company to supercharge its already impressive growth trajectory. Our mission at KOMPAS VC is to identify and financially back the most talented and ambitious entrepreneurs who through their innovations help realise a zero emission, zero waste building and manufacturing industry. Together with our co-investors Hitachi Ventures, Translink and Planet A Ventures we are very excited to support Neil D’Souza and his terrific team expand their global footprint, and their vision to support the manufacturing industry make better, more sustainable design and supplier choices based on reliable data when developing new products and assessing the externalities of existing ones.
—by Sebastian Peck, Partner | KOMPAS VC
