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Here is part of what I told Paul Graham after he tweeted you last week: "How about instead of directing people to pay a middle man to take 20% off the top to p

Here is part of what I told Paul Graham after he tweeted you last week: "How about instead of directing people to pay a middle man to take 20% off the top to pay others to plant trees" which, correct me if I'm wrong, is exactly what you are doing, while some of may be going to non-tree planting activities - the most effective thing you can do with that money right now, unless you are sitting on a miraculous new technology, is to pay people to actively plant new trees and/or protect existing forest. Per your website for those that haven't looked >Wren takes 20% of each subscription and puts it toward growing the company. Also like I told Paul, and Sam Altman, "Planting trees isn't even a bandaid, it's like cutting your arm off and then gently blowing in the gaping wound. To offset our current CO2 production you need to add more than 31 million square miles, nearly 16% of the earth's land, of new forest assuming a healthy density of 40-60 trees per acre." That figure above is actually really conservative. Add to that the fact we're losing forest at an estimated 28,125 square miles annually... do you realize how many customers you'll have to get to even combat 28,125 square miles annually? The best trees can manage about 48lbs of CO2 per year, and healthy forest is 40-60 trees per acre, that means you're going to need to plant a billion plus trees a year to even hope to combat current forest loss, a BILLION trees... and I'm not talking twigs, I'm talking 10ft+ trees, in healthy soil, with healthy fungal networks (the fungi that work in symbiosis with trees aid considerably in the carbon sequestration and overall tree health). Seriously, do the math yourselves and then try and justify your business model. Not to me, but to each other. I think you need to cease operations immediately, I think you need to do a lot more math, and then I think you need to come back with a strategy to help people personally minimize their carbon impact. You're selling people a fantasy, you're selling them nothing more than an uniformed "I'm helping save the world" feeling because they joined a subscription service while you take 20% off the top to hire more employees. I honestly have no idea whatsoever why YC selected your company and chose to fund it, other than the 20% off the top of every subscription and perhaps banking on the fact that people will feel guilty about climate change and happily fork over money on a subscription model.

landon32 7y ago
You're right, we have to be critical of what we're doing because this is such an important challenge for humanity. This is why we're doing it: People who sign up for Wren usually were not previously considering offsetting their carbon footprint. In 1 month ~200 people have offset their footprint through Wren. We anticipate this number to grow exponentially, and think several million people offsetting their carbon footprint is a reasonable goal for the short term. This is nontrivial—it will be as impactful as the U.S. agreeing to go on track for the paris climate accord again. This would not happen if we did not take a fee. Planting trees is one of many solutions we're focused on. Project Drawdown has 99 more: https://www.drawdown.org/ https://www.drawdown.org/ and if we were able to enact all of them we'd be carbon neutral as a planet. We will certainly be doing more math and developing a better strategy. However we think that by launching Wren we have already learned more than months spent strategizing could have taught us—this is at its core a consumer behavior problem so we have to spend our time understanding people. Keep us posted on more ideas and feedback for maximizing our impact
- ryanmercer 7y ago
  > Project Drawdown has 99 more: https://www.drawdown.org/ https://www.drawdown.org/ You keep mentioning Project Drawdown in this thread. Why should people pay you 20% instead of just donating to Project Drawdown. Will you continue to take 20% when you reach those 'several million people' subscribing? I mean, at 5$ a month each that's 'several million' dollars a month for what, web hosting and 3 salaries? I see on LinkedIn you're listed as a software company and keep mentioning engineers. What engineers do you need? What exactly are you doing other than acting as a middle-man for funds by hosting a simple calculator and merchant portal? As my downvotes would suggest, I'm apparently coming across as quite harsh but I've yet to see anything remotely actionable other than "see the ideas so and so has" "engineers" "millions". I'm not a venture capitalist, I have no use for projections and buzzwords. I'm not even a CS type so I don't immediately think "we need engineers!" for every problem that comes along in some subconscious way of justifying my career/creating job security. "we prefer projects with strong social impact" what does this even mean. Global warming isn't something that's going to be solved by 'social impact'. China is building HUNDREDS of coal power plants right now and adding millions of new drivers to the road annually (in fact, China has more licensed drivers now than the United States does citizens). The methane produced by 1.3-1.5 billion cattle worldwide are responsible for roughly 2 gigatons CO2-equivalent. Drawdown, as you keep linking, most of their proposed ideas/areas of interest are laughable - Electric bikes (going to largely be powered by, fossil fuels) - Electric cars (going to largely be powered by, fossil fuels, and will remain cost prohibitive for 95% of the world's population, if not more) - Mass transit takes years or decades to roll out, when funding can even be secured and all zoning challenges can be met - Alternative cement, this will be great if someone can make a breakthrough but there has been next to zero progress made on anything that is remotely feasible or even scalable - Bioplastic, while this takes petrochemicals out of the equation it is still pretty energy demanding and is still not good for the environment, biodegradable does not inherently mean safe. - Recycled paper, or how about doing away with paper. Instead of making recycled paper (which requires obscene amounts of toxic chemicals) why not get legislation passed to outlaw mass mailing, do you know how much mail I throw away each week that is advertisements and solicitations that I never even look at? - Industrial recycling, aside from aluminium and CLEANED glass recycling is mostly a farce. Don't believe me, do your homework, planet money even had an episode on this recently. Plastic is largely just taken to landfills, even if sent to recycling, because unless it is cleaned it is considered contaminated and China will no longer buy it to recycle it because of a loss of cheap labor and the pollution recycling it causes. - Autonomous vehicles, mutli-national companies are having trouble with this and even if they do pass it you likely have years of legal hurdles to get them legal and a decade or more to get people to even begin to accept and adopt them in numbers sufficient enough to make them more efficient than human driving as you'll have to remove the bulk of human drivers from the road. - Building with wood is already happening, but it adds considerable cost and still has considerable height limits which still require more land to be turned from green spaces to tarmac and building. Not to mention this wood isn't always sustainably farmed. - Direct air capture, this is almost certainly never going to happen barring multiple miraculous inventions. The closest person to doing this is Dr. Klaus Lackner and even his research has it not being viable, even if you capture in a method like his (a polymer that you then 'wash' it you still have to sequester it somehow). - Hyperloop, pure fantasy. Never going to happen for travelling large distances. Travelling large distances is one of the problems anyway. Commercial aviation fuel usage has gone up 33% in 9 years. - Refrigerant management, this will help with new appliances but the billion plus refrigeration/freezer units out there already... - Industrial hemp, will just require more land to be planted as farmland won't be sacrificed it and cotton will be farmed until at least the current generation of farmers dies, farmers don't like change. - Living buildings, they look great in concept art but aren't practical and won't have any meaningful impact. They'll likely take decades just to offset the CO2 emissions from manufacturing the concrete that went into the building's foundations. - Ocean farming and marine permaculture, coastal waters absolutely need kelp and seaweed 'forests' re-established. There are some women in/around the Bay Area working on this - Tessa Emmer, Catherine O'Hare, and Avery Resor and what they are doing needs to be done up and down every last square mile of water with proper depth in the entire world. Smart grids, if you mean in the United States good luck. This isn't something you are going to be able to have any influence on whatsoever. You'll have to get every single power company in the United States and Canada to voluntarily replace perfectly functioning, very expensive, equipment over a decade or more and even if you did they'll pass the cost on tot eh customer. - Solid-state wave energy, at any scale this is likely to have any number of unforeseen consequences for marine life (probably sound-induced stress for starters) and be quite costly due to the corrosive nature of oceans.
gwn7 7y ago
> "Start encouraging people to to put down their digital devices and live simpler. That will make a hell of a lot larger impact than telling people to pay 20$ a month to plant trees". Makes complete sense. But there's probably no business there. Everybody wants to be connected and not miss out these days, especially young people. Most people won't even consider "putting down their digital devices", but they would happily pay money to offset their carbon footprint. It can't ever be as effective as putting down the devices in the first place, and completely offsetting their carbon footprint may be impossible, but it's still something which is probably better than nothing. And also something that these people can actually make happen. They don't need to save the world. But I feel the effort is something that needs to be applauded and supported here. These kinds of things may not succeed, but they can lead to better versions in time. No need to support blindly of course, but the criticism could be more constructive in my opinion.
- ryanmercer 7y ago
  >But there's probably no business there. Because God forbid we try and preserve the vast majority of life on earth instead of pursuing generating millions of dollars of profit every month. The vast majority of human beings haven't put 1 minute of thought into global warming, in fact it wouldn't surprise me if there were billions of human beings walking around today that have never even heard of global warming or climate change, aside from noticing each year getting hotter and hotter and weather getting a little more extreme. We don't need startups taking a 20% vig via a subscription service for a feel-good "I did my part by giving money" company. We need to present the facts, as unbiased as possible, to the masses and get people to start questioning the topic. We need people to start going "oh, wow, we did that?" we need them to start thinking "well how can I minimize my impact myself". More than a third of the world's population lives on less than $2 a day [1]. Do you think that 2.5 billion people can afford to scrape together even $2 a month to offset the CO2 from their cooking? The median annual household income worldwide is $9,733,[2], do you think that families can afford to pay $10-20 a head worldwide? Do you think that 1/3 of the world's population can realistically afford that? Do you think by the time that Wren backs out 20%, then the non-profits/NGOs/companies they turn around and give the money to backs out their operating costs, that that amount of money (probably 50% or less of the original contribution) will make even a 10% reduction in last year's CO2 emissions and that it will not only be able to keep pace with the increase, but also continue to increase to the point of getting us not just carbon neutral, but removing 10-2 gigatons more than we produce each year to try and restore us to levels of even the 1980s in any reasonable amount of time? I don't. I think this company is just going to be away for those individuals with a little disposable income, that believe in climate change and feel guilty about driving their car and flying everywhere for vacations, to buy themselves a little 'feel good' or a little peace of mind. Most will probably think they're really making a difference and that all will be fine. Even if Wren manages to generate 5 billion dollars a month, and ends passing 4.95 billion down the chain, it's unlikely to even result in sequestering 10% of last year's levels annually. Seriously, run the numbers yourself, everyone that's going to downvote this comment like you are my others, RUN THE NUMBERS please. You'll see that this isn't going to be the solution, nor is it likely to lead to one. It is the wrong approach to the problem as is. This is Silicon Valley being clueless and/or overly optimistic as usual with these sorts of markets/challenges, just like YC wanting to turn half of the Sahara into shallow algal pools (which would result in the rainforest losing massive amounts of fertilization and cause a potentially catastrophic change in global weather patterns, not to mention require more electricity than the plant currently produces). [1] 2012 https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-17312819 https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-17312819 [2] 2013 https://news.gallup.com/poll/166211/worldwide-median-household-income-000.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/166211/worldwide-median-househo...

landon32 7y ago

You're right, we have to be critical of what we're doing because this is such an important challenge for humanity. This is why we're doing it: People who sign up for Wren usually were not previously considering offsetting their carbon footprint. In 1 month ~200 people have offset their footprint through Wren. We anticipate this number to grow exponentially, and think several million people offsetting their carbon footprint is a reasonable goal for the short term. This is nontrivial—it will be as impactful as the U.S. agreeing to go on track for the paris climate accord again. This would not happen if we did not take a fee. Planting trees is one of many solutions we're focused on. Project Drawdown has 99 more: https://www.drawdown.org/ https://www.drawdown.org/ and if we were able to enact all of them we'd be carbon neutral as a planet. We will certainly be doing more math and developing a better strategy. However we think that by launching Wren we have already learned more than months spent strategizing could have taught us—this is at its core a consumer behavior problem so we have to spend our time understanding people. Keep us posted on more ideas and feedback for maximizing our impact

ryanmercer 7y ago
> Project Drawdown has 99 more: https://www.drawdown.org/ https://www.drawdown.org/ You keep mentioning Project Drawdown in this thread. Why should people pay you 20% instead of just donating to Project Drawdown. Will you continue to take 20% when you reach those 'several million people' subscribing? I mean, at 5$ a month each that's 'several million' dollars a month for what, web hosting and 3 salaries? I see on LinkedIn you're listed as a software company and keep mentioning engineers. What engineers do you need? What exactly are you doing other than acting as a middle-man for funds by hosting a simple calculator and merchant portal? As my downvotes would suggest, I'm apparently coming across as quite harsh but I've yet to see anything remotely actionable other than "see the ideas so and so has" "engineers" "millions". I'm not a venture capitalist, I have no use for projections and buzzwords. I'm not even a CS type so I don't immediately think "we need engineers!" for every problem that comes along in some subconscious way of justifying my career/creating job security. "we prefer projects with strong social impact" what does this even mean. Global warming isn't something that's going to be solved by 'social impact'. China is building HUNDREDS of coal power plants right now and adding millions of new drivers to the road annually (in fact, China has more licensed drivers now than the United States does citizens). The methane produced by 1.3-1.5 billion cattle worldwide are responsible for roughly 2 gigatons CO2-equivalent. Drawdown, as you keep linking, most of their proposed ideas/areas of interest are laughable - Electric bikes (going to largely be powered by, fossil fuels) - Electric cars (going to largely be powered by, fossil fuels, and will remain cost prohibitive for 95% of the world's population, if not more) - Mass transit takes years or decades to roll out, when funding can even be secured and all zoning challenges can be met - Alternative cement, this will be great if someone can make a breakthrough but there has been next to zero progress made on anything that is remotely feasible or even scalable - Bioplastic, while this takes petrochemicals out of the equation it is still pretty energy demanding and is still not good for the environment, biodegradable does not inherently mean safe. - Recycled paper, or how about doing away with paper. Instead of making recycled paper (which requires obscene amounts of toxic chemicals) why not get legislation passed to outlaw mass mailing, do you know how much mail I throw away each week that is advertisements and solicitations that I never even look at? - Industrial recycling, aside from aluminium and CLEANED glass recycling is mostly a farce. Don't believe me, do your homework, planet money even had an episode on this recently. Plastic is largely just taken to landfills, even if sent to recycling, because unless it is cleaned it is considered contaminated and China will no longer buy it to recycle it because of a loss of cheap labor and the pollution recycling it causes. - Autonomous vehicles, mutli-national companies are having trouble with this and even if they do pass it you likely have years of legal hurdles to get them legal and a decade or more to get people to even begin to accept and adopt them in numbers sufficient enough to make them more efficient than human driving as you'll have to remove the bulk of human drivers from the road. - Building with wood is already happening, but it adds considerable cost and still has considerable height limits which still require more land to be turned from green spaces to tarmac and building. Not to mention this wood isn't always sustainably farmed. - Direct air capture, this is almost certainly never going to happen barring multiple miraculous inventions. The closest person to doing this is Dr. Klaus Lackner and even his research has it not being viable, even if you capture in a method like his (a polymer that you then 'wash' it you still have to sequester it somehow). - Hyperloop, pure fantasy. Never going to happen for travelling large distances. Travelling large distances is one of the problems anyway. Commercial aviation fuel usage has gone up 33% in 9 years. - Refrigerant management, this will help with new appliances but the billion plus refrigeration/freezer units out there already... - Industrial hemp, will just require more land to be planted as farmland won't be sacrificed it and cotton will be farmed until at least the current generation of farmers dies, farmers don't like change. - Living buildings, they look great in concept art but aren't practical and won't have any meaningful impact. They'll likely take decades just to offset the CO2 emissions from manufacturing the concrete that went into the building's foundations. - Ocean farming and marine permaculture, coastal waters absolutely need kelp and seaweed 'forests' re-established. There are some women in/around the Bay Area working on this - Tessa Emmer, Catherine O'Hare, and Avery Resor and what they are doing needs to be done up and down every last square mile of water with proper depth in the entire world. Smart grids, if you mean in the United States good luck. This isn't something you are going to be able to have any influence on whatsoever. You'll have to get every single power company in the United States and Canada to voluntarily replace perfectly functioning, very expensive, equipment over a decade or more and even if you did they'll pass the cost on tot eh customer. - Solid-state wave energy, at any scale this is likely to have any number of unforeseen consequences for marine life (probably sound-induced stress for starters) and be quite costly due to the corrosive nature of oceans.

gwn7 7y ago

> "Start encouraging people to to put down their digital devices and live simpler. That will make a hell of a lot larger impact than telling people to pay 20$ a month to plant trees". Makes complete sense. But there's probably no business there. Everybody wants to be connected and not miss out these days, especially young people. Most people won't even consider "putting down their digital devices", but they would happily pay money to offset their carbon footprint. It can't ever be as effective as putting down the devices in the first place, and completely offsetting their carbon footprint may be impossible, but it's still something which is probably better than nothing. And also something that these people can actually make happen. They don't need to save the world. But I feel the effort is something that needs to be applauded and supported here. These kinds of things may not succeed, but they can lead to better versions in time. No need to support blindly of course, but the criticism could be more constructive in my opinion.

ryanmercer 7y ago
>But there's probably no business there. Because God forbid we try and preserve the vast majority of life on earth instead of pursuing generating millions of dollars of profit every month. The vast majority of human beings haven't put 1 minute of thought into global warming, in fact it wouldn't surprise me if there were billions of human beings walking around today that have never even heard of global warming or climate change, aside from noticing each year getting hotter and hotter and weather getting a little more extreme. We don't need startups taking a 20% vig via a subscription service for a feel-good "I did my part by giving money" company. We need to present the facts, as unbiased as possible, to the masses and get people to start questioning the topic. We need people to start going "oh, wow, we did that?" we need them to start thinking "well how can I minimize my impact myself". More than a third of the world's population lives on less than $2 a day [1]. Do you think that 2.5 billion people can afford to scrape together even $2 a month to offset the CO2 from their cooking? The median annual household income worldwide is $9,733,[2], do you think that families can afford to pay $10-20 a head worldwide? Do you think that 1/3 of the world's population can realistically afford that? Do you think by the time that Wren backs out 20%, then the non-profits/NGOs/companies they turn around and give the money to backs out their operating costs, that that amount of money (probably 50% or less of the original contribution) will make even a 10% reduction in last year's CO2 emissions and that it will not only be able to keep pace with the increase, but also continue to increase to the point of getting us not just carbon neutral, but removing 10-2 gigatons more than we produce each year to try and restore us to levels of even the 1980s in any reasonable amount of time? I don't. I think this company is just going to be away for those individuals with a little disposable income, that believe in climate change and feel guilty about driving their car and flying everywhere for vacations, to buy themselves a little 'feel good' or a little peace of mind. Most will probably think they're really making a difference and that all will be fine. Even if Wren manages to generate 5 billion dollars a month, and ends passing 4.95 billion down the chain, it's unlikely to even result in sequestering 10% of last year's levels annually. Seriously, run the numbers yourself, everyone that's going to downvote this comment like you are my others, RUN THE NUMBERS please. You'll see that this isn't going to be the solution, nor is it likely to lead to one. It is the wrong approach to the problem as is. This is Silicon Valley being clueless and/or overly optimistic as usual with these sorts of markets/challenges, just like YC wanting to turn half of the Sahara into shallow algal pools (which would result in the rainforest losing massive amounts of fertilization and cause a potentially catastrophic change in global weather patterns, not to mention require more electricity than the plant currently produces). [1] 2012 https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-17312819 https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-17312819 [2] 2013 https://news.gallup.com/poll/166211/worldwide-median-household-income-000.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/166211/worldwide-median-househo...