Monitoring carbon offset reforestation projects

First, it takes decades before the trees grow enough to capture the maximum of CO2 they are supposed to. So the impact of such programs would (theoretically) be felt in decades while companies book the results of their offsets immediately.

Third, many afforestation programs are totally opaque in terms of how the money is really used which leads to many scandals.

The global video games industry is estimated to be worth $120B in 2018, bigger than the movie ($41B) and music ($19B) industries combined, with an estimated 2.5B players.

The second aspect that struck me on this landscape is the categories. The vast majority of the products listed are in the healthcare and senior care categories (again linked to the targeted older population who starts to need care). But there are no, or few, services in the entertainment, fitness, social network, travel, video games or work categor... See more

I personally think that an interesting opportunity is to better transpose online the spontaneity/serendipity of the interactions that people have at the office. Two good examples are Loom which enables workers to create videos with the least friction possible (more spontaneity), and Around which is doing what Loom did, but applied to video conferen... See more

As I said in the previous point, there’s an increasing number of people who are aged 55+, who are still working (especially that in many societies we’ll work longer), have money to spend, are fit/healthy and who have specific needs. This is why I think models like Wisr (a marketplace for senior talents listed on the landscape) or a Peloton for boom... See more

Many industries are still lagging behind when it comes to cloud software adoption. The current crisis is creating an urge for them to accelerate this transition (especially for software that helps these companies operate more efficiently and save money).

Second, the real benefits of current afforestation programs are hotly debated because these programs are not monitored well enough over time (read this article to understand how messed up this space is) and also because what often happens is that the trees that are planted somewhere lead to other trees being cut in another region. Afforestation oft... See more

Before starting this memo I would like to touch some words on afforestation/reforestation programs (a.k.a planting trees) as a carbon offset mechanism. Planting trees has become the darling of many large companies that aim to become carbon neutral in the next couple of years. However, planting trees (as a carbon offset mechanism) has many issues: