Guest: Taylor Francis, co-founder of Watershed

One day when he was 13, Taylor Francis walked out of the movie theater, and he was pissed off. He had just seen Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth and internalized a “generational call to arms, that my parents had screwed our generation” by causing the climate crisis, he says. 14 years later, he was working at Stripe and felt another call to arms: The 2020s would be a crucial decade for slashing carbon emissions and combating global warming. So, he and his co-founders Avi Itskovich and Christian Anderson all left Stripe to start Watershed, which helps companies measure and reduce their emissions.

In this episode, Taylor and Joubin discuss Patrick Collison, Dan Miller-Smith, hiring challenges, Jonathan Neman, “golden age syndrome,” John Doerr and Mike Moritz, the Climate Reality Project, steady partnerships, DRI cultures, shared context, social distancing, information sprawl, and the founders’ “woe is me” narrative.

Chapters:

(01:02) - Magnetic missions
(06:40) - How enterprise sustainability works
(08:40) - Watershed’s first client, Sweetgreen
(11:04) - Reflecting on the early days
(16:36) - Al Gore and An Inconvenient Truth
(18:53) - Mobilizing teenagers
(22:16) - The origins of Watershed
(27:04) - Leaving Stripe and raising money
(31:41) - Interchangeable co-founders
(33:06) - The ground truth
(35:25) - The Dunbar Number
(38:22) - Watershed’s operating principles
(41:56) - Intensity, priorities, and sacrifice
(47:37) - Moving faster
(50:26) - Sustainability is a part of business
(52:21) - The topology of emissions
(58:08) - Who Watershed is hiring

Links:

#189 Co-Founder Watershed, Taylor Francis: Worthy Missions

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