by Jim MacLennan | Communication, Startups
If you have been following my recent series of articles, you know that I have a certain level of respect for the common buzzword. Yes, they can be overused and trivialized in the business press (and in everyday life). Alas, some buzzwords are overworked, laden with so much meaning as to be almost unrecognizable. Case in point – Sustainability.
What Does Sustainability Mean?
I consistently hear this simple question when I broach the subject. It is laden with subtext—are we talking about hot-button social issues or block-and-tackle business concerns? And there are so many social, environmental, and economic topics getting lumped in—how can we define something so broad with a single word?
Entrepreneurs in forestry and environmental industries grapple with this even more. Investors want “sustainable” ventures, but what does that really mean? A startup planting trees for forest restoration has a different sustainability challenge than one developing AI-driven wildfire prediction models.
I sense a certain amount of exasperation over this term from engineers and technical folks who have been around a few years. Nicely amped up over a beer, we reminisce about the Roaring 90s when we were designing systems and processes that lived within the four walls of our respective companies.
Back in the day, we designed systems and processes that were ‘sustainable and scalable.’
That meant robust systems that could keep going over time, surviving the twists and turns of everyday operations. This idea of sustainability—the ability to keep things running—applies just as much to startups today.
For an early-stage entrepreneur, sustainability starts with:
- Technology—Can your core solution evolve with industry changes?
- Operations—Can you scale without burning cash too fast?
- People—Can you train and retain the right talent as you grow?
From this viewpoint, sustainability is a **proactive** practice, ensuring your business model doesn’t collapse under pressure.
Resilience vs. Sustainability: Startups Need Both
Wait a sec … that sounds like ‘resilience.’ Aren’t you designing resilience into your systems and processes?
Yes—but resilience and sustainability are different. Resilience is a **reactive** approach to risk management, ensuring systems and processes keep running today, tomorrow, next week, next month.
For example, if your startup relies on a specific supplier for seedlings, what happens if that supplier goes out of business? A resilient company has backups. If you’re using drones for wildfire detection, what happens when a regulation changes? A resilient company adapts.
Think of it this way:
- Resilience is about surviving surprises. Sustainability is about thriving long-term.
- Resilience is defensive. Sustainability is strategic.
- Resilience keeps the lights on. Sustainability ensures you have a future.
Startups need both.
What Does Sustainability Mean … Today?
The world has expanded the definition of sustainability. It’s no longer just about operations and supply chains—it’s about broader impact. How did we get from that to diversity, poverty, climate change, and forest economics?
Actually, we haven’t made that big of a leap. We’re still talking about systems and processes—just on a larger scale. And for startups, this means thinking about:
- Environment – How does your product or service impact the natural world? Whether you’re in reforestation, sustainable timber, or carbon capture, you need to prove your environmental sustainability to attract funding.
- Economics – Can your startup grow profitably without constant funding rounds? How will you scale without exhausting resources?
- Community – Who benefits from your business? Investors? Customers? Local communities? Employees? Can you build lasting relationships that make your startup indispensable?
Cutting Through the Buzzword Clutter
To avoid drowning in sustainability jargon, entrepreneurs need to simplify and communicate clearly—especially when pitching investors. Consider these startup success stories:
- DroneSeed – Uses drones to plant trees after wildfires, tackling both sustainability and scalability issues in reforestation.
- Pachama – Uses AI and remote sensing to validate carbon offsets, making sustainability data-driven and transparent.
- Bark House – Produces sustainable wood siding and wall panels while ensuring ethical sourcing and carbon-negative operations.
What do they have in common? They explain their impact in plain language. No jargon. No fluff. Investors and customers understand exactly what they do.
Can We Get Back to Our Beer?
That’s actually a wise idea. Most startups will resonate with a subset of sustainability’s broad range of concepts. As a first step, it’s enough to understand the three pillars—Environment, Economics, and Community—and how they fit into your business strategy.
Then, communicate it clearly and simply. That’s how you cut through the buzzword clutter and build a truly sustainable business.
Join our mission to support innovation in sustainable forestry. Sign up for our mailing list for insights, funding opportunities, and startup resources.
Share your thoughts in the comments—how does your startup define sustainability?
by Jim MacLennan | Startups, Communication
Buzzwords are interesting little beasts. When used correctly, they can accelerate discussions and facilitate decisions. The prose equivalent of data compression, buzzwords and acronyms are convenient shorthand for big ideas, building blocks for conversations at a higher level.
For example – I get involved in many conversations with entrepreneurs and investors about Complexity. That’s an excellent example of a buzzword … it’s great when there are more than two syllables, and the “x” in the middle pushes it into the “danger zone.”
Unfortunately, buzzwords can be less than helpful when used poorly. When trying to understand a “big idea,” investing the time to parse meanings can get in the way of the message. Complexity can be confusing; is it a good thing? Or a bad thing?
Good Thing, Bad Thing?
The challenge is that Complexity flows in both directions.
- Complexity is Bad: Sometimes, Complexity means complicated. The system / process / supporting technology has many moving parts, rules and regulations, menu options, process steps, and configuration parameters. There is an air of waste and inefficiency here – complexity slows us down, confuses our customers, and frustrates our teams.
- Complexity is Good: Or at least, a necessary evil. In this case, Complexity means nuanced, capable, full-featured.
- When discussing systems and processes, Complexity is required, even desired, because the problem space is large and the software is very capable. Case in point: image manipulation. Systems like Adobe Lightroom or GIMP are competent tools with long learning curves and active online communities. If I have some challenging image changes to make, I will look for the most capable tool for the job – Complexity is enabling my success.
- Similarly, Complexity can describe the structure of a process, a business, or even the interactions of internal and external market forces. A company’s environment might be complex because it serves a range of customers, in different segments, with different operating models. For a small company serving big customers, processes must support sophisticated systems. For a big company serving small customers, processes must handle multiple levels of end-user sophistication. Other businesses have complicated paths to the end customer, with multiple sales channels, a range of distribution channels, numerous business agreements, and detailed pricing models. These examples of Complexity are a good thing, because the ability to handle this complexity becomes a competitive advantage and a barrier to entry for new competitors.
You say “complex,” I say “flexible”
A sales rep actually said that to me once. He was using wit to defuse a difficult question about the system’s learning curve and ended up making a subtly brilliant insight; you can’t make blanket statements about Complexity without understanding the context.
Complexity can be a barrier to forward progress. How do we overcome obstacles? In the manufacturing world, principles like Lean and Continuous Improvement seek to take out complexity that doesn’t add value to the process. Automation and AI can streamline complex manual processes, and Design Thinking helps processes flow smoothly, making them easier to teach, learn, and operate.
Complexity can be an enabler of competitive advantage. So, how can entrepreneurs efficiently enable this advantage? By investing the time to understand the environment and the need. To service these needs efficiently, we will revisit complexity reduction — not to change the environment, but to design a process and flow that enables and manages complexity as simply as possible.
The Zero-Sum Game
These two ideas (Complexity means Complicated, Complexity means Capable) are actually two ends of a spectrum. Think of systems and processes – are they complicated to use, or complicated to build and maintain?
- I need to build a spreadsheet to compute some metrics. I can keep the spreadsheet simple (for me) and get the answer out quickly … but this typically means I am the only one who can use this calculation. There are no instructions, many hard-coded cell references, and fixed values with no explanation. It isn’t complex, delivered a simple answer, and did it fast (a good thing) … but it isn’t very easy to re-use in the future or share with other teams to use for their own metrics. Simple to build, complex to use.
- Alternatively, I can create a powerful and flexible spreadsheet that supports a family of metrics. Questions and follow-ups are easily answered by the user, because the thing was designed to add new data, keep it valid and scrubbed, and intelligently realign the user interface as new options come in. Super simple to use and share – but it takes a ton of work to make something that flexible. Complex to build, easy to use.
On which end of this spectrum do we invest? The best answer is pretty close to straight down the middle.
Good Thing, Bad Thing
In the end, Complexity isn’t good or bad … it’s just a thing. All systems, environments, teams, and people have their complexities – it’s what makes this an interesting world.
Before falling into the glib use of the Complexity buzzword, choose to invest a little time defining the complexity – the good parts and the bad, the stuff we need to keep, and the stuff we can simplify to make a meaningful impact.
What are the complexities you’re tackling in your business? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
To stay updated on trends and strategies in forestry innovation, join our mailing list at Talking Tree Ventures.
