Boston-based Practically Green, which helps companies engage their employees in corporate sustainability and responsibility programs, announced on Thursday that it is rebranding as WeSpire. Along with the brand makeover, the company debuted its ROI calculator, which enables clients and their employees to track and accurately measure the impact and savings of each individual green initiative.
The name change, according to WeSpire’s founder and CEO Susan Hunt-Stevens, was in part influenced from a conversation with KAYAK cofounder and Blade CEO Paul English at the Unconference a few years ago. “He liked the idea, but he said, your name needs to be shorter,” said Hunt-Stevens. “It’s taken us four years, but we did it!”
The startup, which raised a $3M Series A in January, offers a SaaS engagement platform to help corporations build awareness, drive behavioral change and, with the new ROI calculator, assess the effects of green initiatives on business results.
“What’s been fabulous to watch is how rapidly these programs are growing in these companies, their definitions of sustainability are very broad,” explained Hunt-Stevens, adding that it can apply to health and wellness, environment, work life balance, volunteering, diversity and more.
“Our original mission was inspiring people to make better choices, and to help form positive and new ways to live at work and at home,” said the CEO. The company’s new name now reflects that mission more precisely, and, with the ROI calculator, it has numbers to demonstrate that mission’s fulfillment.
WeSpire has seen a jaw-dropping $1 million in savings across client campaigns since they launched their enterprise product in July of 2013. Its platform has led to reductions in over 3.6 million gallons of water, 3.15M kilowatts of energy and 2,000 metric tons of CO2 emissions.
The power behind the platform is something Hunt-Stevens calls persuasive technology, which “is the idea of how you can use tech to drive behavioral change and design for behavioral change to help people create better habits, increase motivation and increase their ability to do something."
Hunt-Stevens said that WeSpire plans on holding a quarterly meetup series to bring those together within the Boston community who are pioneering in the area of persuasive technology.
