By Alex Birch, XY Sense Cofounder and CEO
Last week, I was honored to participate in an exciting panel discussion on environmental, social, and governance issues at the Sunrise Startup Festival in Sydney, Australia. The session, which was part of the first day’s programming at the Blackbird VC event, also featured:
Kate Glazebrook, Head of Impact and Operating Principal, Blackbird
Leah Kaplan, APAC Solution Lead, Geospatial Analytics, and Sustainability Champion, Google Cloud
Flavia Nardini, CEO, and Cofounder at Fleetspace
Aengus Tran, CEO, and Cofounder at Harrison.ai
This year, the Sunrise event attracted more than 1,000 people from across the globe. The event attracted even more attention than in past years. Blackbird recently closed an AUD $1B fund – the largest ever fund for an Australian VC.
Sustainability Matters
Sustainability is a critical issue in the CRE space. Globally, our dataset shows average office utilization is running at 20-30%. That means most companies have significant excess space consuming energy and other resources but providing little or no business value today.
The effort to rationalize real estate investment is a top priority for businesses, organizations, and governments worldwide. More than 40% of global carbon emissions are directly related to real estate, according to the ABC Global Status Report, 2021. Efforts to help businesses rationalize their workplaces can significantly contribute to lower costs and meaningful progress on climate change.
XY Sense and Sustainability
Sustainability is a crucial part of the XY Sense value proposition. Our sensors and occupancy analytics platform empower organizations to right size their real estate portfolios and reduce their total energy consumption and carbon footprints.
With an asset class as large as commercial office space, empowering even a portion of organizations to right-size their portfolios can significantly impact the fight against global warming.
Our sensors and platform solutions themselves also offer superior sustainability:
- XY Sense’s wide-area sensors cover a greater office footprint than competitor sensors – 1,000 sq ft, or the area for about 20 desks. That’s more than twice the area for competitor sensors. With XYSense, less hardware is needed per installation
- Our proprietary XY Senselink installation methodology dramatically reduces wiring and equipment costs for every installation – including up to 90% less cabling.
- Our battery-free sensors mean reduced toxic e-waste. For a 20,000-headcount organization, a battery-powered system could mean as much as 1-2,000 pounds of disposable battery waste every 2 years
Naturally, the benefits of XY sense span more than sustainability and environmental impact. When we first envisioned our solution, we sought to develop hardware and software that would help companies save money, reduce workplace friction, and enhance employee work experiences while driving increased sustainability. We understood how vital sustainability initiatives are for leading businesses and were determined to create a win-win for our clients. We are proud that our offering achieves all these goals and objectives.
Get in Touch
As your business considers how to drive positive benefits through real estate and workplace planning, the XY Sense team would love to help. We’ve worked with a broad range of companies and use cases – from rationalizing space needs for hybrid organizations to helping reimagine spaces for new ways of working to planning for global real estate expansion. Contact us or schedule a demo, and we’ll create a consultation session to understand your goals and discuss ways we can help.
