Cecil's pre-seed raise cements them as the global natural capital platform

By Co-Founder Alex Logan, this blogpost first appeared on their site

We’re excited to announce the close of our US$1.6M pre-seed round. This investment, led by Climate Salad members; Tenacious Ventures with participation from Macdoch Ventures and Global Founders Capital, will allow us to continue our mission to help teams restore nature.

By simplifying the management of nature-based solution (NBS) portfolios, we will accelerate the scale of effective global carbon and natural capital markets that incentivise decarbonisation and ecosystem conservation.

Since soft launching in June 2021, we’ve onboarded over 1,500+ NBS projects to our natural capital platform across 1 million hectares of land in Australia, the United Kingdom and Germany.

Sarah Nolet, GP at Tenacious Ventures who has joined Cecil’s board, commented:

‍

"There is growing recognition that nature-based solutions have a key role to play in addressing climate challenges, but right now, the process for finding, registering, and managing these projects is clunky, inefficient, and complex. Cecil's product-led growth approach and ambitious vision mean they are uniquely placed in this growing market, and we could not be more pleased to be partnering with them"

‍

Alasdair MacLeod, Executive Chairman of the Macdoch Group (parent company of Macdoch Ventures and the Wilmot Cattle Company who signed Australia’s largest ever soil carbon deal with tech giant Microsoft last year), said the following:

‍

“Not only are multinational corporations like Microsoft seeking to buy carbon credits to offset historical emissions, the investment community are increasingly understanding the need to invest in natural capital. These offset deals and natural capital investments will require new mechanisms for measurement, recording and validation and crucially, new technology to enable those mechanisms. Technology providers such as Cecil will play an important role in the emerging market for natural capital investments and offset marketplaces.”

The global natural capital platform

Cecil simplifies the process of managing and investing in natural assets.

Teams log into Cecil to create methodology workflows, access real-time monitoring insights, and portfolio performance analytics. By integrating data typically locked away in spreadsheets, remote sensing tools and physical documents into a single workspace, Cecil streamlines natural asset management to deliver quality nature-based projects.

The platform also enables better collaboration between supporting stakeholders. Teams using Cecil can invite investors funding the projects, auditors verifying outcomes or delivery partners managing activities on the ground, to access insights that drive better outcomes for all involved.

Cecil Co-founder, Alex Logan commented:

“By helping project participants work together through a shared view of activities and outcomes, we are bringing additional transparency to NBS projects. Our goal is to support global teams working to restore billions of hectares of nature with a platform that standardises these processes, accelerating the development of global carbon and natural capital markets in the process.”

‍

The Cecil team is growing. If you’d like to join us, please check out our careers page and drop us a line.

Over the next 5 years, policy changes and social pressures will drive US$5 trillion of climate finance into restoration of natural ecosystems. Investors need to diversify their portfolios, increase climate resilience, and accelerate their transition towards net zero. As well as fighting climate change, there is huge economic opportunity in natural capital and climate tech.