15Rock Solution explained

All-in-one ESG data managing and sharing platform

Why do we exist?

Even while many companies and investors talk about impact, little evidence shows it. This is an action problem, not a data or framework one.

In a changing environment, inaction creates risk. Our platform is intended to raise awareness of this transition risk.

We are NOT:

• A new ESG standard

• A scoring platform

• A framework reporting platform

• A tool that removes investor control and functions like a black box

• A restrictive data platform, your data is yours. Integration & disintegration is easy.

We enable corporations and investors to gather, collect, analyze quickly, and report ESG data, relying solely on the real numbers.

We interviewed over 100 investors ranging from sizeable ESG funds to niche impact investors. They all agreed that the problem was understanding the plans/progress in the context of the goal.

Today there are few fairly large firms who are managing this data at scale using in house systems with run rates that range from 3M-10M/year. The vast majority of firms are not monitoring transaisitons and either outsourcing it or it's simply not being done.

How does our platform work?

The books Atomic Habits by James Clear and Measure What Matters by John Doerr have had a big influence on us. Both are incredibly adaptable approaches to achieving goals that have been shown to alter people's lives as well as scale up companies such as Google, Intel, Amazon, Netflix, Accenture, and many more.

At the heart of our platform are measurable and objective goals, which we then contextualise by aligning to multiple frameworks and employing cutting-edge machine learning/financial engineering to assist highlight the ROI that climate-related projects can offer to organisations and investors.

Goals work best when there are:

• Measurable targets
• Measurable progress
• Specific date

NetZero by 2050 is a fantastic goal, but it necessitates knowledge of existing emissions and a plan to get there. It's the same as if I said I wanted to lose 20 pounds but didn't know my present weight or had a plan to get there; the complications increase or lessen depending on the current scenario.

In the same vein, Projects should:

• Be connected to a goal
• Contribution to the higher goal should be known
• The project should have its own KPIs to judge success and failure.
• The project should have a target date

This tool does not exist, as far as we can tell after speaking with over 100 companies. Investors give templates to firms, and corporations must report to a variety of reporting standards (CDP, TCFD, etc..).

We devised a straightforward method for firms to communicate information with investors.

Details

15Rock's platform captures corporations' climate goals and aligns projects to those goals. We do this by Connect goals—>projects—→ securities

Goals     are:

1. linked to UN SDG's as Goal Groups (climate for example)
2. Goal Groups have sub-goals(reduce GHG gas)
3. Goals must have quantitative outcomes (0 carbon).
4. Have defined date(0 carbon by 2040)
5. Company      updates current state at predefined intervals

Projects are:

1. connected to specific UN SDG sub-goals
2. Specific project contribution is measurable to the goal(100,000 reductions in Co2 emissions or 10% of emissions)
3. Projects have their own KPIs(converting 100 factories to solar)
4. Projects have their target dates to track progress.

Securities are

1. linked to projects(green bonds, loans, etc.) or overall company goals(equities)
2. use of proceeds for project-linked securities is straightforward to manage.

If you have feedback or questions, please do reach out!

Data gathering

Data gathering - Our goal is to make it very easy/quick for teams to get companies to report. Front office teams do not want to gather data, and ESG teams don't have the resources to do this themselves.

Our approach to gathering data:

Self-service:

1. Companies can self-register and add their goals, projects and updates on the platform for their investors.
2. Companies invite investors to access this dataset via our system.
3. Investors can invite companies to the platform

15Rock/ White glove data gathering service:

1. 15Rock uses a mix of human and AI to process sustainability reports, proxy info, earnings calls and MD&A to gather project data.
2. Humans use the tools to extract the data and add it to the platform.
3. A climate/energy-related specialist verifies the data is entered correctly.
4. We will reach out to the company IR team if there are questions.

The incentive for companies to report:

1. Companies are struggling to provide their data in context. They are overwhelmed with templates from various investment firms to report data.
2. Companies' IR teams must attend multiple meetings to explain their projects and transition progress.
3. Companies do not want to report one template for each investor and often push back or delay.
4. We will have a free tier for the public and small investors so the public can have visibility on the company's goals and reduce bias in the narrative as our solution provides projects within the context of goals.

Sharing:

Companies choose to make their goals/projects public, or investors see it. Investors' and corporates' data privacy is controlled with access controls.

General info:

1. Our platform can handle public and private companies.
2. Our platform makes data gathering very easy and scalable.
3. The system does outreach and updates, investors when companies miss a reporting date
4. 15Rock can offer a service to follow up with companies after X number of emails.
5. We are asset class agnostic, so we support Equities, Fixed income and real assets.
6. Reaching out manually will not be scalable, as one of our beta firms mentioned they have a team focused on gathering and processing this data.

Technology:

• Fast - Frontend and API are replicated in multiple regions around the world for quick access.
• Scale - Dynamically scaled with flexible infrastructure.
• Secure – Independent security review of our platform.
• Stable – automatic failovers to regions, no dropped traffic.
• Change – changes to our system can be implemented quickly(think hours, not days or weeks), the entire process is automated(DevOps/GitOps), and we maintain multiple environments for testing. A dedicated environment can be available

State of the data

We believe we can help today to monitor and manage the data. Our platform uniquely connects goals and projects. This type of tool is not availed today, so we see four options in the industry:

1. Work is not being done.
2. Work is being done manually (most popular)
3. The complaint here is a 100 holding portfolio takes      over five analysts to maintain and portfolio managers to provide      oversight as they manage all the data in excel/word/email documents. ~2M      run rate.
4. Investment firm creates their software
5. This firm built its tech. They said their run rate was      over 10M to maintain the system as they are relatively large. Still,      behind the scenes, they are similar to the manual approach – non-front      office folks entering data but data being distributed across the firm.

Work with us!

1. We are highly cost-efficient, less resource-intensive, open roadmap,      and open to working with investors and corps to find the solution to an ongoing problem.
2. A manual solution for a firm with a considerable portfolio activity of updates can't scale. A purely internally developed software would most likely be resisted by competing investors, reducing chances of adoption.
3. We are hiring, reach out!