Matt Ellis
Co-founder and CEO at Measurabl
Matt Ellis worked in commercial real estate brokerage for five years before he founded Measurabl, a platform for tracking and managing sustainability data that now covers 15 billion square feet of real estate in 90 countries.
The startup is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year and closed a $93 million funding round in May.
Times have changed since Ellis started his career at CBRE in the inauspicious year of 2008.
“I couldn’t have picked a darker abyss to throw myself into,” Ellis said. “My brokerage experience exposed me to a concept that at the time we called green buildings. It’s very cute.”
Energy Star certifications were just appearing, he said, and Ellis started thinking, “There is something to be done here — you must measure sustainability.”
He’s still preaching that message today, and he wants to ask real estate companies tough questions: “Does the executive team have compensation tied to climate outcomes? Where’s the policy? Is that written in your charter? A charter is a measurable artifact. You need to do all of that.”
When it comes to ESG metrics, Ellis said governance is tied to outcomes.
Unlike many of its competitors, Measurabl offers tools to manage sustainability data across the spectrum of company stakeholders — “from meter to market.”
“What we’re actually talking about is resource efficiency and regulatory compliance,” Ellis said. “The way that I like to frame ESG is that this is not an ROI [return on investment]; this is a do-or-die.”
Ellis said the company plans to focus on geographic expansion in the year ahead, and will continue to invest in developing a seamless experience for customers. He envisions a future in which customers can “go from optimizing their boiler in a building to standing up an entire impact investment fund to leveraging that fund with sustainable debt from their bank.”
In the end, it’s a yes or no question, Ellis said: “Are you, or are you not, measurable?”
