45. Planting 1 million hectares of rainforest using drones and balancing short-term revenue with long-term impact

How do you build a hardware company that not only generates immediate revenue but also creates a lasting, positive impact?

How do you bring investors on board?

How do you build an international team of A-players in Research & Development, Data, Marketing, and Sales?

The answers in this episode.

Morfo restores large-scale forest ecosystems, with the help of drones and an innovative method.

With a single drone, they can process up to 50 hectares of forest imagery per day and plant 180 seed pods every minute, even across steep and difficult-to-access lands like rainforests.

But it is not just about planting trees. They make sure to have local participation in their projects, so far, they’ve involved more than 1,000 people. Morfo is building sustainable livelihoods for the most vulnerable communities of this world.

🌳💪 In just a year, their first project went from a vegetation cover of 0.3% to 42%, by planting 15 different species, all native to the region! 600 Hectares of forests in restoration in 3 different places.

Their mission is to restore, by 2030, 1M hectares of rainforest, which means planting 1.2 Billion trees, with their innovative solution.

To achieve that goal they:

- raised 4M of seed round in November

- have built a team of 31 people across 2 continents

Pascal Asselin, co-founder and CEO of Morfo shared his insights on:

- How to find financial models that make investors interested in the company

- Short-term revenues with long-term forests: Working two time horizons at the same time

- Projecting into markets with gigantic potential: low risk, high reward

- How to build credibility with science as a foundation

- How to build a solid, experienced and trustful leadership team

- The “sharing is caring” concept and how this helps to better understand your company’s mission

- How OKRs help to define a clear common vision

- How to optimize people management, when you have operations in several locations

- How to make sure you have both sustainable and social impact and involve local communities

Watch the full episode on YouTube - https://youtu.be/hkfZTSKM2gA

Resources:

Pascal’s LinkedIn

Morfo website

Books:

How to Save Our Planet: The Facts by Mark Maslin

Reinventing Organizations by Frederic Laloux, Ken Wilber (Foreword)
Podcast - Génération Do It Yourself (in French)

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