Dennis: Hello, and welcome to the Impactful Ninja Show. I'm your host, Dennis Kambrat. And today, we're joined by Andrea Gori from illuminem. Andrea, welcome. On: Thank you, Dennis. And thank you to everyone that listen to our podcast. It's, my pleasure to be with you. Dennis: My pleasure having you as well. Now let's get into it. Give us a brief overview. What is illuminem? Andrea: illuminem is purely a mission startup. We want to empower the sustainable transition, this big change in the world with 2 ingredients, the most insightful information and the most insightful data. Dennis: So, basically, if I if I were to picture it as the mission driven start with the data and the insights and the information, What would I need to picture them to make it, like, a little more concrete reading? Andrea: Yes. Of course. You can picture it very concretely. First of all, going on illuminem.com, and you already see there on one side almost unlimited news on sustainabilities that are brought to you by a mix of AI and the editorial curated content. So you can imagine everything happening in sustainability, the life rent, life categorized, life summarized in 60 seconds for you. And it is not enough. In parallel to that, we are very proud to have the largest expert network of sustainability top leaders. So this means over 1,500 people from head of states to top scientists, from CEOs to activists that on a daily basis, they share with us their insights on how we advancing in our sustainable transition. Andrea: So this is a very concrete in front of you. And maybe Dennis later will speak more about building data that is more b to b and less, of course, b to c. Dennis: Awesome. Now thanks for the overview. I think now we we can picture it quite clearly. Let's take a step back now. Before you start the illuminem, what's your background? What did you do beforehand? Andrea: Yeah. I hope I will not make this story longer, but I like to consider myself a climate quitter. So I have, literally, say, a watershed point in my life. illuminem, changed completely my passion, my my city, my life, I can say. And so let's start very simple. I was, first of all, I was a very active student on the front line of many, let's say, environmental campaigns. After that, I had the opportunity to actually, like, work in finance. It was a subject I studied. Andrea: I actually started my career in JPMorgan. So if you want the opposite of what is today the activist word. So from a big bank trading desk in London. And then afterwards, I did, long journey for almost 8 years in the Boston Consulting Group. He's, as you know, he's a very famous consulting company. At the time, I remember very clearly because, all of my mentors, colleagues were telling me, Andrea, you did the JPMorgan, you did finance. You should be like a great leader in our private equity practice. And I said at the time, no. No, guys. I'm here because we can do sustainability consulting. Andrea: And at the time, trust me, was less than 7,000,000 in revenues for a huge corporation, so something completely relevant for the picture of the company. But we bet on it. And slowly, we created a leading practice area, so a leading, business area for the Boston Consulting Group. He had the honor to be green champion for entire continent, then the global green champion of, of the group. So representing the group, taking care of many environmental initiative, projects around the world, helping corporations in their decarbonization transition. And after that, with colleagues actually from, from that experience, we took the courage of building Illumina. So I hope I give you a glimpse of it, Denis. Dennis: Sweet. So it sounds like you already had some some kind of sustainability baked in from from the very start when you said your studies are sustainable and about the environment. Later on, you transitioned it sounds like a brief period of finance, doing something different. But then with the consulting at BCG, you went back and, well, dedicated much more time into sustainability again. And then you mentioned afterwards with a few colleagues, that you started illuminem. What was the concrete challenge that you faced? What was the starting point for you that you said, like, well, it's great leading the sustainability practice in one way or the other, but you want to do something else. You want to do something on your own. You want to do maybe a little bit more even. Andrea: It's exactly everything you mentioned. I hope I don't disappoint you to tell you that it's not an heroic moment. It's not like, one night where you literally change everything. It's something that grows with you, grows within you. And in that feeling, of course, like, having been at the front line of, of a new, let's say, part of the PCG business, so helping companies in sustainability. I was really realizing how this entire new world, what I believe would be like the new business normal, like, was literally lacking so many of the foundations, so many of the services, so many of the opportunities that you don't find in any other industry. And we actually started from the core. We said, guys, the problem is not to make another scientific innovation, but to enable the entire sustainable transition to literally reach us faster, to literally make it happen for real. Andrea: So that was probably the big, the big observation. And from that big observation, very methodically, we started to understand where was the market gap, where we could make a difference. Because when you start, you literally have no resources and nothing nothing else at all goodwill. So that's literally the best realization. And hopefully, like, looking at us today already with a company with 300,000 users, with so many friends like you, Dennis. Already, I feel one step closer to that goal that we still have very high there guiding our way. Dennis: Nice. That sounds that sounds quite similar to my journey, actually. Because after university, I started in consulting as well. I was looking specifically for sustainability consulting, and all the big three consulting companies didn't really offer anything like this. So I decided, like, a smaller boutique firm which focused on sustainability consulting. But then, also, in my mind, it grew so much more. It's like, okay. I wanna I want to do something different. Dennis: In our case, we we try to enable people to make a positive impact in their lives across sustainability, but in also ethics and many, many different aspects. But it feels like quite a similar journey that slowly grew to, well, to keep it going into the, well, the much bigger operation we're now. But you also mentioned already, like, a big point of about 300,000 users. Can you remember still, like, going one step back? What was the very first concrete step? How did you get Illumina started? I imagine it takes also for you, it took quite a bit of time to hit the ground running and then to get to the first 300,000. Andrea: Yes. First of all, let me say, Dennis, that we're selling the same shoes, and this polish should be the word of encouragement to any of your listeners, any of our friends there. Guys, we can make it happen. If you start believing in yourself, like, it's possible. And now if I go back on our early days, yeah, there is no garage, you know, there is a classic example, but, there is still, like, all that sweat, that effort, that, fatigue, of trying hard without any real chance, at least on the paper. And now let me tell you, for me, the first part of the journey was to get around me people that were better than me. And I say, guys, I actually can have the good intuition, but I need you, your tech skills to make a platform that is amazing with AI, with the good user experience. I need you because you're a great product person that can guide me to make the user experience amazing. Andrea: I need you as well to help me with the legal staff. I need you as well to help me with the networking. So the 1st concrete step is building a team, a team of people better than me. I always say to my team, the day where I'm better than you in this room, I'm actually in the wrong room. So I need to like, I love to keep summoning myself to people that always inspire me every day for their rigor, for their willingness to make them second as much as for their capabilities. And the second step, right after having built this team, was to literally work on a meme by the product. I remember we were working very late at night because, when you have another job, like, happens only for many of you, you actually squeeze your weekends, you squeeze your, like, your nights to try to build something. For us, it was, an experiment. Andrea: Let me see. The experiment, was even giving mixed results. So right? When you start and one thinks, oh my god, build a platform in 2 months, now I got 1,000,000 users. In reality, you have a number that is always, I actually don't know if it's good enough, not good enough. I would love it more. I would love it, like, to be bigger. But at that point, I just felt that I was happy. I was feeling, for once, doing something that was meaningful to me, something that it was having an impact on others. Andrea: And so at the point, we took the courage and I said, guys, maybe it's the most things we're gonna do in our life, but, we will always regret if we don't make it happen now. And, of course, I speak to you 1 year and a half after that moment, and I still have the same energy and the same, feelings. Yeah. Dennis: And isn't it the most beautiful thing also when you get positive feedback from from your readers or from from your viewers, listeners? It's like, hey. Thanks so much for that piece of content or for this this other piece of content. You really, like, helped me make a positive impact. And yeah. Oh, at least
