In the last few weeks, we received investments of around R$9 million, we carried out a survey with companies listed on B3, we had an internationally recognized study, our team grew from 60 permanent employees and we conquered leading clients in their segments.
This is a quick overview of the current moment, in which we celebrate two years of DEEP's foundation. To understand how we got here and what we project for the future, I decided to tell a piece of this story – actually, from before we even thought about founding the company.
In the late 1980s, I started working with international organizations such as the OAS and the UN on humanitarian missions, and later with the World Bank and the IDB. From 1987 to 2000, I was directly involved in projects in the Americas and Africa, seeing 'in loco' the situation of different countries; I also followed the events in the crises and clashes in East Timor, Kosovo and Iraq.
I left offices in Washington and New York to live real experiences, which helped me a lot to understand the dimension of the impact that resources actually generated when they reached the populations of these regions. My vision of reality changed profoundly and the desire to create mechanisms to assess the relationship between investments/actions and impact began to emerge.
BIRTH OF AN IDEA (OR AN IDEAL)
The truth is that everything we do generates an impact, and this impact needs to be observed and measured in real time. It works as a continuous present, and not an exercise in fiction, in projection, in distant analysis in time and space.
Fast -forwarding, in 2018, I was a volunteer at Instituto Alpha Lumen, which has an incredible education project, an area that, in my opinion, is the starting point for any social advancement. It was there that I met Arthur – today more than a partner, friend and leader, he arrived to contribute to the organization's financial management. Together, we decided to dedicate ourselves to solving an important challenge for the institute: to take a detailed account of the impact of its actions.
We dive deep, in long journeys and constant turns, gathering and processing financial and social information. From that initial project came the desire to go further and develop a solution that would make it possible to measure the impact of each action, of each investment, on the environment and society.
We researched many sources to define the indicators that should be considered, we resorted to the database in the most diverse sources of reference on the subject. In mid-2019, we arrived at something that for us was already starting to resemble an offer, but which still needed more consistency, more product price and greater reach, to show to the market.
We don't give up! Arthur already clearly showed that we needed to focus even more on the financial and accounting aspects. We were convinced that we were on the way and that we would be able to develop methods and metrics to measure the extent of capital's impact on society. The main challenge was to devise calculation methods that could link financial and non-financial facts to multiple layers of impact. At the end of 2019, we discovered a work from Harvard that followed exactly the same logic proposed by us of associating impact and finance. Yes, we are in the right direction!
TRAINING AND CONSOLIDATION
With the pandemic, everything became more difficult. We only had the resources to carry out the work until the end of the first half of 2020. But in August, we received the first investment and gained time and space to move forward. We assembled our first team.
The investment came along with the partnership with Tecsys do Brasil, which believed in DEEP from the beginning, provided a floor in its building and allowed us to have access to its data, becoming DEEP's first customer. With time and the relationship network of partners, advisers and partners, we gained the trust of other companies and even large corporations, investors and multinationals.
We have a very capable team, with an energy that seems inexhaustible and a huge capacity to deliver and to learn and improve continuously. Research and applied science have been part of our culture since the beginning, as part of our DNA. We have masters and PhDs in Statistics, Sustainability and Systems. We want to make DEEP an increasingly interesting space for people to develop personally and professionally, achieve their goals and fulfill themselves.
TOWARDS THE FUTURE
Today, we see a combination of expectations, pressures and commitments that point towards a governance model that takes into account not only the financial return, but also the impact generated by the organization and its value chain. More and more governments, companies and people are mobilizing to promote actions capable of generating positive impacts and reducing those associated with negative impacts. Our vision is that these changes will continue to be decisive for the future of humanity and for our sustainable growth, and will lead us to an irreversible trajectory and the search for new growth vectors where , in the near future, all companies will measure the impacts. of its operations. DEEP is already prepared for this future!
