Autocase Co-founder John Williams on the Payoffs of Sustainability

A combination of three things:  

1. The realization that investments aimed at creating more sustainable, resilient, and low-carbon buildings need the benefit of business cases backed by objective economic data.
2. Knowing that a standard for economic analysis exists to create those business cases (cost-benefit analysis) and that cloud-based computing could be leveraged to dramatically reduce the time, effort, and cost of those assessments, making them affordable and giving results that are comparable.
3. Prompting (in the form of seed funding) from Autodesk (world leader in building and infrastructure design software) to make automated business cases available to building investments of all sizes.

Our team consists of highly educated economists, researchers, software engineers, and marketing specialists. Autocase’s leadership is rooted in previous working relationships in helping to build a $1 billion company. The founders pioneered economic assessments while working together at HDR (a global architecture, engineering, and construction firm). 

We joined forces to respond to Autodesk’s challenge by founding a new company (Autocase) focused on creating software-as-a-service solutions that make quality economic assessments available at scale. The team has expanded via relationships with leading universities and our professional network. New hires generally have prior relationships with members of the existing team. Our cornerstone philosophy is to only hire the smartest, most collaborative, and trustworthy professionals; equip them with the tools they need to succeed; challenge them to work with each other and our customers; and give them the freedom and flexibility they need to thrive.

The world of building and infrastructure investment, delivery, and operations has been traditionally slow to embrace technology. In the past, the economics of building development were left to owners to sort out. Increased competition and regulatory pressure to deliver more sustainable, resilient, and low-carbon buildings serves as a catalyst to deliver business cases to back design, development, and retrofit decisions. Pushback amongst environmental, social, and governance and impact investors over charges of greenwashing combined with massive new federal funding aimed at green outcomes has led to market demand (total addressable market of $20 billion) for the measurement of financial, social, and environmental returns. 

That’s what we measure. With $100 billion in assessments behind us, sector leaders (architecture, engineering and construction; airports; commercial real estate; public companies; government agencies; FAANG companies) depend on Autocase assessments to determine and compare bottom-line performance. We’ve used technology to automate complex analysis and enable smarter, trustworthy investment decisions. To put it simply, our technology answers the age-old question, “What’s in it for me?”

Carbonsight was created in response to concerns among owners of asset portfolios (buildings and facilities) about making commitments to be net zero carbon or at least meeting new carbon targets. They want to be sure those commitments are backed by integrity. Carbonsight is a single dashboard that gives owners the economic data they need to assess options, set priorities, and track progress on assets located around the world. C-suite players want to be sure they fulfill their commitments on time with maximum effect and the least expense. Carbonsight gives them confidence they are going to deliver.

Capital from our current round will be largely used to scale the use of Carbonsight among multinationals and other owners of large building portfolios, including airports and academic institutions. We will also invest in integration efforts with Autodesk’s solutions.