Julianne Sloane, co founder of Nossa Data, shares their expansion plans and the advantages of being based in the UK

Companies are facing ever closer scrutiny of how they look after the environment or their employees as investors and regulators demand greater disclosure of environmental, social and governance (ESG) metrics.

To satisfy this growing demand, Nossa Data provides data management and analytics tools on ESG metrics to companies using technology and artificial intelligence solutions.

We spoke to Julianne Sloane, co founder, about the company's expansion plans and the advantages of being based in the UK.

What does your company do?

Companies are getting more and more pressure from stakeholders on what to do when it comes to ESG but they do not have the tools to help them do it. Nossa Data helps companies with their environmental, social and governance reporting, data management and analytics.  

We help them bring together qualitative and quantitative ESG information into a single place, we help them report that information in line with required reporting standards and then we provide them with peer benchmarking and analytics so they can understand how they are doing compared to their closest peers and to their industry.

The pressure to report ESG metrics is coming from lots of places. There is more and more regulation getting phased in over the next few years and investors – especially in the UK and Europe – are really starting to scrutinise companies on their ESG performance.

Given the amount of interest ESG disclosure is getting from investors right now, strong ESG disclosure can mean a 10% reduction in companies' cost of capital.”

For us, it has been really beneficial being in London. Nearly everyone we speak to has a high ranking ESG person based out of London. It really helps speed up our relationship building because it is easy for us to meet the key people

Tell us about your UK and global operations.

We are two people now. Myself, and my co-founder Irina Dumitrescu, who is Romanian but who has been in London for about nine years.

I met Irina on a program called Antler which is London-based. It is one of two programs in the UK that is particularly good for founders looking for a team. There is another one called Entrepreneur First. They are a really great asset for the London ecosystem because they help pair business people with technical people so you can find the team and the people who want to share the company building journey with you and get you started. That has been really helpful.

We are hiring two people at the moment and we have been looking at some of the top UK universities and on our business side we are looking at people who have gotten experience at other London fintechs. The academic institutions in the UK are a huge advantage for us. We have definitely been able to find the talent we need and we intend to recruit our initial team all within the UK because we think all the talent we need exists there.

What are the benefits of being UK based? Why is the UK an important market for you?

For us, it has been really beneficial being in London. Nearly everyone we speak to has a high ranking ESG person based out of London. It really helps speed up our relationship building because it is easy for us to meet the key people. We are always happy to speak to companies that are looking to improve on ESG so we can see how we might help them.

The UK is also more advanced in ESG thinking than a lot of the rest of the world. Having access to those people and being UK based it means that, say, we wanted to go to the US market this is a huge advantage. The UK and Europe are definitely ahead of where the US is at so we can leverage that expertise to create a competitive advantage for ourselves.

We have raised £300,000 in investment and our first £180,000 came from SFC Capital which is a UK Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS) fund. SEIS is an awesome resource for a start-up, especially at your earliest stage.

The UK is very start-up friendly. It was a really simple process registering our company.

The UK is more advanced in ESG thinking than a lot of the rest of the world. The UK and Europe are definitely ahead of where the US is at so we can leverage that expertise to create a competitive advantage for ourselves

What are your company's growth ambitions and how does the UK feature in these?

We've previously utilised the Google campus in London's Shoreditch. They offer free office space for early stage start-ups. It's really nice as you can get a Shoreditch office which is where a lot of the tech scene is happening and you don't have to shoulder these costs early on. We will get an office in London as soon as London opens up [post Covid-19 lockdowns]. We are going to keep hiring within London as we think the talent is there for our next stage.

As our next step, we will be raising a seed round. We are in discussions with a lot of the different UK strategic investors. There are a lot of venture capital investors that have strategic relationships with the financial institutions so this would make a lot of sense for us as we are a fintech.