The Rise of Carbon Accounting: What Does Good Look Like? - Kristian Rönn of Normative

In the race to net-zero emissions, one of the leaders in the carbon accounting space that helps companies calculate and reduce their emissions is Normative. Today, we have Normative’s CEO and co-founder, Kristian Rönn, here to share the lessons he has learned in the past eight years since creating Normative with his friends and what progress they’ve made on the path to sustainability.

Being a startup founder is definitely no easy job, and Kristian said that sometimes, you need to take a step back in order to reflect and recalibrate what the best way forward is for the company and your team. This is Kristian’s advice based on his experience, and he offers many more nuggets of wisdom, such as how to avoid hitting a wall or  what to do when you do hit a wall, so listen to this episode and find out more.

Kristian’s key lessons and quotes from this episode were:

• “You need a different type of personality when you start a company than when you grow with the company.” (33:24)
• “What you need to be in the end is humble.” (37:40)
• “You don't have to be the CEO just because you're a founder. I think it takes humility either way, but where startups fail is when you don't have that humility.” (38:17)
• “What is the way forward? How will we have the biggest impact in 10 years, 20 years, or whatever it might be?” (40:36)

In this episode, we also talked about:

• The history of carbon accounting and how Normative works (9:48)
• The difference between ‘net zero’ and ‘carbon neutral’ (16:51)
• The three scopes of emissions and how to prevent double accounting (20:58)
• Kristian’s core lessons in his entrepreneurial journey (33:14)
• An important startup that Kristian experienced and wants you to avoid (41:28)