Susa Ventures is excited to announce our investment in Treeswift, a Philadelphia-based startup building the sensory and analytics platform for measuring forest and carbon data. We participated in a $4.8M round led by our friends at Pathbreaker Ventures. We’re thrilled to welcome Steven, Michael, Elizabeth, Vaibhav, and the rest of the Treeswift team to the Susa Family.

Treeswift’s founding team

One area of interest for us recently has been startups tackling climate change. Many of the solutions often proposed by governments and other organizations rarely take economic viability into account. Other proposals fail to provide the level of transparency or trust that would make would-be buyers of carbon credits or sequestration comfortable that they’re actually making an impact.

What we liked about Treeswift’s CEO, Steven, when we met him is that he was creating a very practical solution: build the world’s best system for measuring carbon. By developing the trusted carbon standard used by all industries, Treeswift can be the data hub at the center of the fight against climate change.

Similar to our investment in FarmRaise, we believe the best solutions to an existential problem like climate change are 1) economically viable 2) massively scalable and 3) improve the quality of human life rather than decrease it. FarmRaise helps farmers build more sustainable and regenerative agriculture practices through their ability to access government funding and build strong financial tools for farmers. Treeswift creates the world’s most accurate measurement for carbon, helping forest planners manage their land and companies to accurately offset or remove emissions. The net result is making carbon reduction efforts more trustworthy and, as a result, even more fundable.

Treeswift has an incredible team, staffed by PhD’s, world-class ex-military operators, and forestry experts. A few team highlights, which give a sense of the company’s recruiting power:

Ian Cameron (VP of Operations) — Previously a platoon commander in the Marines and president of his 1100-person Naval Academy class.Elizabeth Martinez (Director of GIS) — 25 years of experience as Sr Director of GIS at a large forestry company (2m acres and almost $2b of forest investments under management).Elizabeth Hunter (Co-founder/COO) — PhD in Robotics with a focus on bridging robotics and synthetic biology for applications in medicine and agriculture.

Treeswift’s world-class team uses the data collected by satellites, drones, and robots to build the most accurate dataset on forests and carbon. They are already working with several of the largest forestry companies in the world, replacing the inaccurate, manual measurement of trees with modern technology. Treeswift reduces measurement error and increases measurement capacity by several orders of magnitude.

Climate change is a problem that affects all of us. However, solutions like carbon credits don’t work as anything but a feel-good indulgence without an accurate measurement of impact. By sitting in the middle as the data platform of a multi-trillion dollar market, Treeswift can solve this problem of measurement and create a more transparent and useful data source, available to all.

Our Investment in Treeswift was originally published in Susa Ventures on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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