Interview with Green Chamber Sponsor: Exygy Web + Mobile
After a chat with Zach Berke, Founder and CEO of Exygy Web + Mobile, I learned how technology can be used as a tool to support sustainability-focused innovators and social entrepreneurs…
LL: How did the idea for Exygy first come about?
ZB: There was no “ah-ha” moment. Exygy happened because we all wanted to do what we’re great at — build kick ass technology — for important things we care about like sustainable enterprise, changemakers, innovators and entrepreneurs.
LL: Why did you decide it was important to incorporate sustainability into your business practices?
ZB: It was easy to take the first step and incorporate sustainability into our business practices: our servers are green, the whole team bikes to work, and we make sure our old hardware gets re-used rather than dumped.
Taking our sustainability practices to the next level — by becoming B-Corp certified, sponsoring the Green Chamber, and becoming a founding member of The Hub — was all about being able to announce our values loudly and clearly. The clients we want to work with — change makers and social innovators — want to work with us not just because we build great product, but because it’s clear we’re in business for the same reasons they are and so our goals are aligned.
LL: What does sustainability look like to you?
ZB: For Exygy, sustainability is about empowering change makers to fulfill their visions. There are so many innovative folks out there with powerful ideas around sustainability and social impact. Our goal is to work with innovators to build transformative technology and empower you to be more effective at making the world better.
LL: Did you face any obstacles along the path to becoming a sustainable business and what challenges do you still face?
ZB: No. It has been easy and fun. We hire folks who already care about what’s going on. They are working here because they don’t just want to be technologists, they want to empower social innovation. It’s been easy because there’s no resistance since people are here because this is what they care about. As a simple business, it’s less about the materials we use and more about our process and the people we choose to work for. We can be geeks for good by choosing clients who are doing good work and who share our values. So working with these innovators and organizations like the Green Chamber allows us to build a business network of people who are in business for all the right reasons.
LL: Can you tell us more about specific sustainable business methods that your business practices?
ZB: Our servers are green, the whole team bikes to work, and we make sure our old hardware gets re-used rather than dumped.
LL: What advice do you have for other businesses who are trying to adopt green business models?
ZB: Talk to others. Have big goals and start small. Think about how you can make changes that are good for the environment and good for your business. Do those things first.
LL: Do you see any trends in your industry emerging around conservation and sustainability?
ZB: Lower power consuming hardware is good not only for the environment but also for your data center’s pocket book and for your users who get longer device life. To this end, a lot of our clients in the developing world are working with custom charge controllers to make batteries last longer and be discarded less often.
LL: How did you find out about the Green Chamber and what made you decide to join?
ZB: Melinda Cheel and Luke Fretwell. Exygy immediately became a Green Sponsor of the Chamber because we knew that the Green Chamber was an idea whose time had come, and we saw it as an opportunity to both support an important new organization as well as get in early with an exciting group of innovators.
LL: Is there anything else about Exygy that you want GCC members to know?
ZB: We are more than a typical software vendor: we are a technical partner, a kind of CTO for hire. Our clients are visionaries and our job, before we begin building anything, is to first help shape the vision by identifying the interplay of business requirements and technical requirements. For startups and social innovators time to market and executing on a budget is always important so together with our clients we shape multi-phased project plans that get core functionality built quickly in order to cost effectively prove the model, build traction, generate customers and revenue, and then we dig deeper.
Here are some examples of the clients we have worked with recently who are doing great things:
The Story of Bottled Water
We built this website, supporting a highly publicized video targeted at radically altering consumer behavior, and it has been a huge success. Featured in the New York Times, the Colbert Report, and more.
http://storyofstuff.org/bottledwater/
VeeV
Website for world’s first carbon neutral spirits company. Flash AS3 front end + custom content management backend.
MyPlastiki
Website supporting the epic sea voyage of adventurer/environmentalist David de Rothschild. Featured on Oprah, CNN, and more.
Skoll Foundation and Social Edge
Widgets for finding and connecting with social entrepreneurs funded by Civic Ventures, The Draper Richards Foundation, PopTech, The Schwab Foundation, The Skoll Foundation, Ashoka, GSBI, and more.
http://exygy.com/social-entrepreneurs-search-widgets/
EurekaFund
Crowdsourced Fund Raising platform to fund early stage scientific research, specifically solar, wind, water, transportation, and energy storage. A “Kiva for Science”. Featured in the New York Times in February this year.
GreenLeafSF
GreenLeaf has been committed to the local, sustainable model of food distribution for decades, long before it became a trend.
NomadsLand
A video publishing platform for nonprofits, social enterprises and responsible companies.
PharmaSecure
Counterfeit medications are an urgent public health menace in the developing world. PharmaSecure is a venture-backed company with offices in the United States and India. We built for them secure sms based infrastructure to print and validate codes on medical packaging.
HowYouEco
A social networking site and business directory supporting a sustainable lifestyle
The Brand Accelerator
An equity-funding source that brings together entrepreneurs, consumer goods companies, and capital to build and grow the next generation of innovative and healthy consumer brands.
http://www.brandacceleratorinc.com/
BeRewarding.com
An innovative platform to educate about and raise money for important social issues including water, climate change, energy, poverty, health, human impact, education, biodiversity, and human rights.
Resilient Cities Initiative
RCI invites Cities and their Business, Civic and Government colleagues to create positive climate change, now.
http://resilientcitiesinitiative.org/
Exygy Web + Mobile
576 Natoma, SF, CA, 94103
415.992.7251
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