Melissa Perri welcomes Gopal Erinjippurath to this episode of the Product Thinking Podcast. Gopal is the co-founder, CTO and Head of Product at Sust Global, a company whose mission is to “develop data-driven products that enable every business decision to be climate-informed so that humanity can thrive in a changing planet.” Gopal joins Melissa to discuss climate sustainability and why climate data is proving to be valuable to all kinds of organizations, how he tested and iterated to build this complex data product, how he’s de-risking bets in a rapidly evolving market, the balance of being mission-driven and commercially minded, and the importance of making product thinking part of an organization’s DNA. 

Here are some key points you’ll hear Melissa and Gopal talk about:

Gopal talks about his professional background, how he got into climate sustainability, and what led him to found his company, Sust Global. [1:29]

Melissa asks Gopal what type of companies purchase climate data products and services and how they use them in a professional capacity.

Your long-term strategy should include holding financial instruments that directly correlate to tangible assets. There are several physical climate risks related to these assets, so ask targeted questions about the climate to protect your assets. [5:26]

Gopal shares how he was inspired to go into the business of climate-related data and insights. [8:29]

Melissa asks how Sust Global tested their climate-based data product. Gopal explains that the first step was “to start with the outcome rather than the outputs and work backward from there.” Creating mockups of the data-based outcome and testing them with the early set of gated customers can provide valuable feedback. [10:42]

Melissa asks Gopal how Sust Global ensures that their climate data product is of the highest quality. Gopal suggests that the best approach is to “sandbox the data capability into an area that one customer cares about and wants to decide on, and then provide them with that data in the simplest form so they can try it and use it for the first time.” [14:22]

Your data should fit three criteria:

temporal - how fresh your database and data product is 

geographic - dimensionality of your dataset, how it's partitioned before it is handed to customers, and what interfaces there are 

the business problem [16:26]

Gopal highlights the challenges Sust Global faced when creating their product. [19:06]

“You must enable your team to stay on top of things and…to fundamentally have product thinking be part of the DNA of your team,” Gopal says. [20:19]

Gopal looks at capacity building, strategy and execution when he is building a data-based product team. [22:07]

Climate change is a space where it is possible to stay mission-aligned and also be highly commercially minded, due to the rising importance of ESG and climate change initiatives. [24:54]

Resources 

Gopal Erinjippurath on LinkedIn 

Sust Global | LinkedIn | Twitter | Instagram