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How to Leverage Sustainability to Drive Revenue Growth

How to Leverage Sustainability to Drive Revenue Growth

Adrian Alfieri
Adrian Alfieri
CEO, Verbatim

Neutrl is a platform that makes it easy for consumers to shop sustainably. They're partnering with hundreds of brands like Enso Rings, Aura Bora, and Magic Mind to reduce the carbon footprint of consumer goods. 

We sat down with Ian Lazarus, Founder and CEO of Neutrl, to understand how his team enables DTC brands to operate more sustainably. Specifically, we cover:

  • Helping brands speak transparently about sustainability with their shoppers
  • What it means to build a community of like-minded shoppers
  • How to shift the narrative of being a modern brand that's aware of its carbon footprint


A Brand's Journey Towards Sustainability

Neutrl was born out of Ian's desire to help brands and consumers become more aware of the hidden cost of commerce and its impact on climate change.

He initially noticed that consumers were increasingly clamoring for brands to produce their products sustainably. In response, brands were trying to figure out how to address their relationship with climate change.

That's where Neutrl enters the picture. They built a tool that helps merchants calculate carbon emissions associated with customer orders.


You Have to Start Somewhere

When Ian pitches Neutrl to potential customers, they're often eager to plug the tool into their website immediately. However, Ian wants to ensure brands understand their climate footprint in addition to simply installing a shiny tool.

Brands can often spend months thinking about retooling their entire supply chain, but Ian reminds them that they can begin by offsetting the emissions from the thousands of packages they send out a day.

By waiting to reveal a brand's sustainability plans until they’re perfect, brands can miss out on a valuable opportunity to take action and share their sustainability journey with consumers immediately. 

"Consumers are more serious than ever about shopping sustainably. They want to combat climate change, but they just don't know where to start."


Building a Community Flywheel and Driving Value

Neutrl is focused on building a community of brands and shoppers aligned in their mission to be more carbon-conscious.

Making this their focus has allowed Neutrl to achieve incredible results for its partners, proving how serious both buyers and brands are about taking care of the environment. 

One of Neutrl's brand partners saw a 28% increase in revenue over a six-month window when consumers opted to offset their emissions with Neutrl at checkout, proving that sustainability is more than a fad.

While Neutrl's inclusion at checkout allows consumers to transact more sustainably, it also increases the chance they'll transact more often, driving greater LTV through customer retention.

"Increased revenue and conversions prove that buyers care about doing good."


More Than a Checkbox 

Neutrl is more than a checkbox. They are:

  • Addressing consumer desires to shop for products consciously
  • Empowering brands to speak about sustainability to their customers
  • Building long-term relationships with customers, leading to more revenue for the brands

"UPS won't help brands marketing their sustainable shipping efforts; that's our job."


Carbon Neutral; Shifting the Conversation

As carbon neutrality becomes more popular, Neutrl plays an active role in shifting the conversation for the general public.

The airline industry has normalized the option for customers to offset their emissions. 

Still, there isn't the same adoption when it comes to retail, even though apparel is one of the highest CO2-emitting industries in the world. By partnering with Neutrl, brands and consumers can actively take steps in the right direction.

"eCom continues to explode, meaning C02 emissions will only get worse. We have to change that." 


Being on the Right Side of History 

54% of Gen Z consumers think about their carbon footprint when shopping, and 88% of shoppers want brands to help them live more sustainably, but the reality is that many brands aren’t prepared to do so.

Neutrl solves this, seamlessly empowering brands to tell their sustainability story to consumers, building meaningful relationships as both combat climate change.

"We can't ignore climate change any longer. By partnering with us, you get to be on the right side of history."

Adrian Alfieri
Adrian Alfieri
CEO, Verbatim
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How it works (for brands)

Swipe to launch AI-generated ads

Brainstorming 100 unique, 40-second scripts is painful.

Manually matching 20 clips (from your 10,000-video library) to each shot in your 100 unique scripts is even more painful.

Creating 10 permutations of each of the 100 ads (for A/B testing) is maximum pain.

This writing is getting very long, but imagine voiceovers, captions, music, & manually uploading all 1,000 ads to Meta & TikTok on top of this.

Icon solves this with Adswiper: all you have to do is swipe right or left on AI-generated ads.

Adswiper handles scriptwriting, script-to-shot matching (using existing videos from Google Drive + AI-generated videos), permutations, voiceovers, captions, music, & more.

Swiping right will also automatically create ready-to-launch adsets across all channels (Meta, TikTok).

Swipe to launch AI-generated ads

Connect data sources

Connect your video library (Google Drive, Dropbox, Air) & ad accounts (Meta, TikTok).

Videos from both of these will be imported as building blocks for your AI-generated ads.

Connect data sources

What they're saying

Backbone
"Manual ad creation was limiting our testing potential. Icon's swipe system lets us scale to thousands of variants without the production headache."
Maneet Khaira

Maneet Khaira

CEO, Backbone

Products

Adswiper

Replaces CapCut ($7.99/month), Adobe Premiere ($54.99/month)

Swipe right or left on AI-generated ads made from videos in your Creative Library.

Uses AI for scriptwriting, script-to-shot matching, permutations, voiceovers, captions, music, & more.

Adswiper
Autopilot

Replaces Ad Managers (direct use)

Swipe to launch AI-generated ads automatically on all channels (Meta, TikTok).

Autopilot
Adspy

Replaces Foreplay ($49-$99/month + $20/user), AdSpy ($149/month)

Use winning ads from top brands to inspire AI-generated ads in Adswiper.

Adspy
Creative Library

Replaces Recharm ($500-3K/month), Air ($250-$2K/month)

Store, tag, create, & split videos with AI.

Creative Library
Creative Analytics

Replaces Motion ($1K-$10K/month)

See which ads are winning to inform AI-generated ads in Adswiper.

Creative Analytics
UGC

Replaces Billo ($99/video)

Get AI-generated UGC videos for your Creative Library.

UGC

Story

Kennan Davison

Kennan Davison

CEO, Founder
Kennan Davison
Kennan Davison
Kennan Davison
Kennan Davison
Kennan Davison
Kennan Davison
Kennan Davison
CPO, Chairman, Founder at Skio (CEO 2021-2024, $10M+ ARR in 3 years, profitable).
Previously: Pinterest, Hulu, Wieden+Kennedy (ad agency), League of Legends Challenger (Top 200 North America, 100M+ players globally), Y Combinator S20 (solo founder), Columbia (transfer, dropout).
Hi there, I'm Kennan!
Growing up, my dream was to be a pro gamer: this felt within reach in high school once I ranked top 200 North America in League of Legends (out of 100M+ players globally).
Despite this, I needed to support myself so I went to college and started learning to code. Coding came naturally (especially with 100 hour weeks) and I was soon skipping class to work at places like Hulu and Wieden+Kennedy (ad agency). Realizing that being paid to work full-time (vs. paying to go to school) sounded quite nice, I dropped out after 1 year and joined Pinterest.
After Pinterest, I started a company called Skio which does subscription management software for brands on Shopify. In just 3 years, we've partnered with 1000+ brands (Liquid I.V., Milk Bar, Polaroid, Barstool, Unilever, KraveBeauty, Boba Tea Protein), reached $10M+ ARR (+profitable), and built an amazing team of 50.
With advancements in generative AI (video specifically), I saw an opportunity to help brands bring their stories to life exponentially faster and make marketing much better (hence Icon).
I love learning how we can help better. Feel free to reach out anytime at kennan@icon.me.
Founders Fund

Founders Fund

Icon Investor
Founders Fund
Founders Fund
Founders Fund
Founders Fund
Founders Fund
Founders Fund
Founders Fund
Peter Thiel's Founders Fund is a venture capital firm. Its partners have founded and funded companies including PayPal, Palantir, SpaceX, Anduril, Flexport, Airbnb and Stripe.
Ron Shah

Ron Shah

Icon Investor
Ron Shah
Ron Shah
Ron Shah
CEO, Co-founder at Obvi, Co-host at Chew On This, Managing Partner at Gaas for SaaS.
Roman Khan

Roman Khan

Icon Investor
Roman Khan
Roman Khan
Roman Khan
Roman Khan
Roman Khan
President, Founder at Peak21, CMO at Raycon, CMO at Know Beauty, CMO, Co-founder at Linjer, CMO at Nutrition Kitchen.
Kennan Davison

Kennan Davison

CEO, Founder
Kennan Davison
Kennan Davison
Kennan Davison
Kennan Davison
Kennan Davison
Kennan Davison
Kennan Davison
CPO, Chairman, Founder at Skio (CEO 2021-2024, $10M+ ARR in 3 years, profitable).
Previously: Pinterest, Hulu, Wieden+Kennedy (ad agency), League of Legends Challenger (Top 200 North America, 100M+ players globally), Y Combinator S20 (solo founder), Columbia (transfer, dropout).
Yunyu Lin

Yunyu Lin

Founding Board Member
Yunyu Lin
Yunyu Lin
Yunyu Lin
Yunyu Lin
Yunyu Lin
Yunyu Lin
Head of AI at Ramp.
Previously: CEO, Co-founder at Cohere (acquired by Ramp), Nuro, Facebook, Y Combinator S20, Duke (dropout).
Kevin Jin

Kevin Jin

Engineering
Kevin Jin
Kevin Jin
Kevin Jin
Kevin Jin
Kevin Jin
Kevin Jin
Kevin Jin
Kevin Jin
Kevin Jin
Kevin Jin
Previously: CTO at Kalder, Compound Labs, Robinhood, Rippling, Impira, Flexport, Google, Tesla, TSM, Vanderbilt.

Why us

Track record of things that can't be faked

Icon is the best team helping brands get winning ads with AI.

Our CEO/Founder (who is writing this, sorry for writing in 3rd person) brings experience from Skio, Pinterest, Hulu, Wieden+Kennedy (ad agency), League of Legends (Top 200 North America, 100M+ players globally), & Y Combinator S20 (solo founder).

At Skio (subscription management software for brands on Shopify), he was CEO/Founder of the company from 2021 to 2024 helping grow revenue from $0 to $10M+ ARR in 3 years (w/ 90% margins) and a team of 50 (on $8.4M raised). Skio is profitable and still growing >100% YoY.

Our tech investors include Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, Kevin Hartz (A*, Eventbrite), Max Altman (Saga), Alex Botez (Chess), as well as founders & executives of OpenAI, Ramp, Flexport, Pika, Karat, & Cognition.

Our D2C investors include Ron Shah & Ash Melvani (Obvi), Roman Khan, Nick Shackelford, Jimmy Kim (Sendlane), Kevin Lee (Immi), Justin Mares (Kettle & Fire), Steph Liu (Levitate), Sara Du (Alloy), Jason Wong, as well as founders of Eight Sleep, Yotpo, Siena AI, Replo, Novel, Parker, GR0, DCL Logistics, Aftersell, Platter, Openborder, Prescient AI, Daasity, & more.

Our team has also worked with 1000+ brands like Liquid I.V., Milk Bar, Polaroid, Barstool, Unilever, Bulletproof, 100 Thieves, Vega, KOS, KITSCH, True Botanicals, mindbodygreen, Transparent Labs, GHOST, Wild One, OpenStore, The Nue Co., Immi, DRMTLGY, Boba Tea Protein, KraveBeauty, Glamnetic, Doe Lashes, Magic Mind, Remedy Organics, & Siete Foods.

Focused on helping brands get winning ads

Icon is focused on helping brands get winning ads vs. also juggling the underlying AI tech.

We believe our approach is fundamentally better because we're free to choose the best technology partner for a specific job.

To illustrate this, maybe one AI-video partner specializes in face closeups while another partner specializes in body movements (where face doesn't matter as much).

If we built all underlying technology in-house, it would create a fundamental conflict of interest where we can't offer a competitor's tool (that might be better) without losing revenue.

Products
Icon

Other options

Adswiper (replaces CapCut, Adobe Premiere)
Replaces CapCut ($7.99/month), Adobe Premiere ($54.99/month)
Swipe right or left on AI-generated ads made from videos in your Creative Library.
check
x
Autopilot (replaces Ad Managers)
Replaces Ad Managers (direct use)
Swipe to launch AI-generated ads automatically on all channels (Meta, TikTok).
check
x
Adspy (replaces Foreplay, AdSpy)
Replaces Foreplay ($49-$99/month + $20/user), AdSpy ($149/month)
Use winning ads from top brands to inspire AI-generated ads in Adswiper.
check
x
Creative Library (replaces Recharm, Air)
Replaces Recharm ($500-3K/month), Air ($250-$2K/month)
Store, tag, get, & split videos with AI.
check
x
Creative Analytics (replaces Motion)
Replaces Motion ($1K-$10K/month)
See which ads are winning to inform AI-generated ads in Adswiper.
check
x
UGC (replaces Billo)
Replaces Billo ($99/video)
Get AI-generated UGC videos for your Creative Library.
check
x

Ready to get winning ads with AI?