Greengauge founder Lindsey Goodchild doesn't think of herself as a "typical entrepreneur." About 18 months ago, she finished her post-graduate work at Ryerson in sustainability and started doing consulting work for corporations. "I started consulting with really large companies and saw a lot of really good strategies, but when it came to executing those strategies they fell flat." What they needed, she realized, were tools to allow them to better implement their well-intentioned strategies after they left the boardroom.
She submitted an idea to a GreenApp challenge sponsored by Ryerson and Blackberry to develop an application for mobile devices and the web to allow companies to better monitor and implement their green strategies. She won the contest, and Greengauge was born. She raised
$30,000 in seed funding last fall, around the time she was finally able to quite her full-time job to focus on the company. She hired a full-time CTO at the start of this year, bringing her staff to "two-and-a-half," she says, including their part-time CFO.
Just as Ottawa-based Coral CEA has invested in Greengauge as
part of funding it announced for four Ryerson DMZ companies, Goodchild says the company is now weeks away from launching its first product for limited private beta testing.
"We're really focussed on researching how to embed sustainability into organizations," says Goodchild, noting that she's drawn invaluable support from the academic community, the Ryerson DMZ and some advisors at MaRS.
Writer: Edward Keenan
Sources: Lindsey Goodchild, CEO, Greengauge; Coral CEA