Europe is at the forefront of solving climate change. The EU and UK have aggressive plans to cut carbon in half this decade, and they’re both counting on businesses to play a key role: revamped regulations require tens of thousands of European companies to report their carbon emissions in the next year. The UK’s newest requirements kick in today.
At Watershed, we’ve worked closely with European companies—like Spotify, Klarna, and Wise—since day one. Today, we’re redoubling our investment in the region, with dual headquarters in London and San Francisco, a fast-growing local team across the region, and new European investors.
Ellen Moeller, who previously led Stripe’s European partnerships teams, has joined Watershed to lead this effort as Head of Europe. We’re hiring across nearly all roles—including sales, recruiting, climate strategy, policy, product, and operations—as we grow our European team tenfold this year.
We’re also honoured to partner with new investors who’ve built enduring businesses in Europe, including David Helgason (co-founder of Unity), Aglaé Ventures (the investment firm backed by the Arnault family), and John Elkann (CEO of Exor). They join our existing investors and advisors, including Sequoia, Kleiner Perkins, Mark Carney, Al Gore, Christiana Figueres, and John & Patrick Collison.
European companies taking real action
Watershed’s mission is to accelerate the fight against climate change by enabling companies to take real action to reduce their carbon emissions.
For the last two years, our partners in Europe have used Watershed to understand their emissions, decarbonise their supply chains, deploy clean power, support carbon removal, and report on their progress:
- Monzo: “Climate is now something we can regularly talk about in meetings, including at executive and board levels. And we’re now able to train employees on the carbon impacts of our processes, and to engage suppliers with real insights in hand.”
- Kainos: “Within 6 months, Watershed measured two years of our carbon footprint, supported our submission to SBTi, and helped us create a reduction plan that will get us to net zero.”
- Klarna: “Having a detailed breakdown of our emissions and being able to pinpoint where the largest sources are has helped; we now know what we need to do and who we need to work with.”
On Monday, the UN IPCC issued their latest report on the world’s efforts to mitigate climate change. The dual message, both grim and motivating: we’re “on track towards an unlivable world,” but cost-effective decarbonisation is possible if we act now.
Every day counts in this fight, and European leadership is critical to accelerating the race to net zero. Whether you’re interested in building our team in Europe or decarbonising your business, we’d love to chat about working together.
