Joe Simmons
Case Study | Octopus Energy Hatchery
R&D sustainability product to calculate and reduce carbon footprints
Introduction
Exploring carbon calculation, offsetting and reduction for SMEs.
As a small team of four, we set out on a research and development project to discover if we could help small to medium-sized enterprises calculate and reduce their carbon footprint.
Discovery research
Are business owners interested?
I interviewed a range of business owners to understand their thoughts around sustainability and carbon footprint calculation. I showed them three potential solutions and confirmed there was some interest in our initial ideas.
Feasibility test
Is a software solution feasible?
We had confirmed that business owners were interested, so we set out to prove a solution was feasible. I designed a simple solution and worked with the two developers to build a web app that could calculate a carbon footprint.
Building an MVP
Does it work for real businesses?
We also confirmed initial interest and basic technical feasibility, so we set out to build an MVP to test if our solution would work for real businesses. I designed a simple MVP we thought real businesses would use. Using existing credible carbon calculation standards and a lean approach, we built a working MVP in a few weeks.
Results
Testing real market demand.
To test market demand for our MVP, we launched a Webflow landing page and drove traffic through Google Ads and LinkedIn outreach.
- Google Ads delivered 421,000 impressions, but only generating 17 form submissions at a high cost of £164.71 per lead.
- LinkedIn outreach performed well, achieving a 58% cold-message-to-demo conversion rate, suggesting it’s a more efficient channel than paid ads for this niche audience.
- From these leads, we conducted 8 product demos. Despite the small sample size, 50% of demo participants converted into partnerships or pilot programmes, indicating strong interest once engaged deeper.
- Product interest after demo was 88% but some we rejected as they didn’t fit our product yet.
58%
Cold message to demo
50%
Demos to pilot deals
88%
Interest after demo
Demo results
Where that interest went
- Pilot programmes 2 · 25%
- Partnerships, signed or in talks 2 · 25%
- Interested, not the right fit yet 3 · 38%
1 didn’t convert
Feedback and iterations
Crafting the full product after real user feedback.
We worked closely with our initial pilot programme users to get feedback and iterate on the product. After making initial changes, I designed the next full version of the web application.
Investment pitch
Investment pitch & analysis.
Finally, we put all our hard work into an investment pitch and business analysis. The board ultimately decided to invest in another idea that had closer links to their long-term strategy, but we were all proud of the work we had created and believed that the idea could have continued.
