Microsoft-supported effort to advise female-led software startups reveals new cohort

The first Saas Launch Lab cohort includes two Seattle-area tech leaders: Advocat Tech CEO Pradnya Desh (left), and Automaton CEO M.H. Lines.

SaaS Launch Lab, a new effort to boost female-led enterprise software companies, announced the 12 companies selected to participate in the program, including two from the Seattle area.

SaaS Launch Lab is a joint project of Microsoft’s venture fund, M12, and Project W, a Davis Wright Tremaine initiative to support female founders.

The lab is holding five virtual workshops for the pre-seed companies. The topics covered include refining a proof of concept, finding a product-market fit, building a team, creating a deck for making your VC pitch and a seed round how-to. The workshops wrap up in October with 1-on-1 pitches with M12 investors.

Participating Northwest companies include:

Advocat Technologies, a Bellevue-based platform addressing legal needs by using AI to create documents from attorney conversations. The CEO is Pradnya Desh.Automaton, Seattle software platform that provides automated testing for sales and marketing technology. The co-founder and CEO is M.H. Lines.

The organizers have not decided if this will become an annual event.

M12 will also be a program partner for Project W’s Women Entrepreneurs Boot Camp that’s taking place in early October. The event targets women founders in fintech, cybersecurity/data management, and plant-based protein. Companies need to apply by Sept. 11 to be considered for participation in the virtual boot camp.

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Andrew Yang’s foundation donates $1M to effort providing families in need $3k over 3 months

A volunteer-led effort with Seattle roots that’s working to help families in need during the COVID-19 pandemic received a $1 million donation from a foundation backed by entrepreneur and former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang.

The $1k Project pairs donors with families in financial trouble, providing them $1,000 a month for three months.

The effort is focused on helping people who are not already plugged into social safety-net programs. Typical recipients include families with at least two dependents, particularly young children; single moms; families with no income or savings; people who are unable to work because of health issues and those unable to get unemployment.

Before this week’s announcement of Yang’s support, The $1k Project had already helped nearly 400 U.S. families since its April launch.

Part of Yang’s pitch for the U.S. presidency was the creation of the $1,000 a month Freedom Dividend, which his campaign described as “a universal basic income for all American adults, no strings attached — a foundation on which a stable, prosperous, and just society can be built.”

Yoko Okano and Minda Brusse helped create the $1k Project and are co-founders of the Seattle-based venture capital firm First Row Partners. (First Row Partners Photo)

Access to extra cash is likely to become even more important as a federally funded boost for unemployed Americans ran out on Friday. U.S. lawmakers are struggling to come to an agreement on extending the benefits: Democratic leaders have pushed to continue the $600 a week increase, while Republicans are calling for less support.

“Everyone can do something. We have to acknowledge that our larger institutions are letting us down right now,” said Seattle’s Minda Brusse, a leader of the effort and co-founder of the venture capital firm First Row Partners. “We all need to think about what can we do for each other.”

 We all need to think about what can we do for each other.

Sponsors can read short profiles of families, select a match, and then contribute to a GoFundMe account established for that recipient. Through the partnership with Yang’s nonprofit Humanity Forward Foundation, donors can contribute smaller amounts that are matched, pooled and provided to families.

Larger donors can contribute to multiple families through Humanity Forward and claim their gift as a tax deduction. In that case, The $1k Project selects the recipient family in order to abide by tax regulations.

Both the donors and recipients remain anonymous in the exchange, but the families still share their gratitude with sponsors through emailed messages.

“So much stress has been taken off of me and I am so extremely grateful,” wrote TanQuisha from Florida.

A recipients’ profile includes a “referral chain” that tracks their nomination path to verify that they’re coming through a trusted source. Brusse suggests that families who are eager to be considered ask their former employers to recommend them.

The $3,000 can help people retain housing, and provide food and stability for kids.

“We’re trying to give people the opportunity,” Brusse said, “to make changes in their life that they need to make to keep their lives stable.”

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Microsoft unveils new sustainability steps in effort to remove all carbon produced in company history

Microsoft President Brad Smith, Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood, and CEO Satya Nadella preparing to announce Microsoft’s plan to be carbon negative by 2030. (Brian Smale / Microsoft Photo)

Microsoft unveiled a new suite of sustainability initiatives Tuesday as part of its effort to zero-out the carbon debt the company has accrued over its lifespan.

The latest announcements include the largest single renewable energy investment Microsoft has ever made. The company is investing in 500 megawatts of renewable energy from Sol Systems, equivalent to the energy needed to power more than 70,000 homes in the U.S. per year. The investment will fund solar energy projects in the U.S. in under-resourced communities, according to Microsoft. The company will provide $50 million in grants to community organizations working on education, habitat restoration, clean energy programs, and job training.

Microsoft is partnering with six corporations — Maersk, Danone, Mercedes-Benz, Natura & Co., Nike, Starbucks, Unilever, and Wipro — to create Transform to Net Zero, a coalition dedicated toward creating a net-zero carbon economy. The Environmental Defense Fund is also a founding member.

The coalition is pledging to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. Each company will share what it learns in pursuit of carbon reduction goals with the coalition and broader business community.

“We’re actively investing and we’re actively purchasing at the same time, and being able to operate in the market as both an investor and a consumer is a really critical step,” said Lucas Joppa, Microsoft’s chief environmental officer, during a virtual climate change event hosted Tuesday by Bloomberg Green.

Microsoft is also unveiling a new Sustainability Calculator of cloud customers to help them understand the carbon emissions generated by their cloud usage. The calculator uses AI and analytics to advise users on ways to reduce their carbon footprint and predict future emissions.

Microsoft pledged in January to become carbon negative by 2030 and remove more carbon than the company has put into the atmosphere since it launched by 2050. As part of Tuesday’s announcement, Microsoft also pledged to stop using diesel fuel to power backup generators in data centers. In addition to those programs, Microsoft was one of the first companies to implement an internal fee on carbon emissions that managers must budget for.

Though Microsoft has launched one of corporate America’s most aggressive climate change initiates, other big tech companies are following suit. Apple said Tuesday that it will ensure every product it sells will have a net-zero impact on global warming within 10 years, Axios reports.

Microsoft plans to remove 1 million metric tons of carbon from the atmosphere this year, and on Tuesday the company opened a request for proposals “to source that carbon removal from a range of nature- and technology-based solutions.”

“It’s incumbent, I believe, on Microsoft and other players in this space to make sure that we don’t just engage in these markets by ourselves,” Joppa said. “We engage in these markets on behalf of the rest of the world.”

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