Mentor Spotlight: Kirsty Dare

In this captivating interview, Kirsty Dare, Chief Operating Officer at evee, shares her unique perspective on the intersection of business, sustainability, and the urgent need for climate action. Her remarkable journey from the bustling scene of New York City to the heart of Australia's electric vehicle (EV) movement and her strong commitment to sustainability, is not just a career choice; it's a passion that has driven her from founding and selling her own startup to mentoring early-stage ventures and championing the B Corp movement.

evee, a climate tech leader, boasts a dual mission – optimizing resources and combating climate change. Kirsty emphasizes the urgency for Australia to catch up with European EV adoption, shedding light on the crucial role of policy support and the need for a robust second-hand EV marketplace. The interview explores the delicate balance between business scalability and environmental responsibility, with Kirsty stressing the need for a mindset shift. She shares strategies for businesses to align with not-for-profits, emphasizing collaboration for a shared goal.

Our discussion with Kirsty Dare not only provides insights into her journey and the intricacies of evee's mission but also serves as a compelling exploration where business acumen and environmental consciousness come together. Together, they shape a transformative narrative, pointing towards a greener, more sustainable tomorrow.

1. Can you tell me more about yourself, your background, and your journey to evee? 

I started my career in advertising and marketing in London which then took me to New York in 2011. In New York, I set up the US office of a UK marketing agency and ran that for three years. I enjoyed building a business but I felt that my love for advertising and marketing just wasn't as strong as watching something grow and building something from the ground up. So, after I did that for about three years,  and it was very successful by the time I left,  I decided that I wanted to help startups with that scaling phase. 

I moved into operations consulting whilst I was still in New York and worked with early-stage companies looking at how we could scale them and set up sustainable operations to help them grow. Around the same time, I launched my own startup because I realized that I was doing this for other companies and I could launch my own, so I started a fragrance subscription company called Scent and I built that up for five years and sold it at the end of 2021. For me, that was a testament that I can have a vision, build something, set it up, scale it, and get it to a point where it can be acquired, which was an enjoyable experience. But, it was also stressful as the decisions you make as a company founder are so different to when you're an operations consultant or a COO at someone else’s company. I learned a lot during that time and I am very proud of what it became. 

I wanted to continue in operations and fell into the startup scene very quickly here in Sydney. It was around that time in 2018 that I also started volunteering for the Greens. I always cared about sustainability and the environment but I think that working and volunteering so closely with the Greens, I learnt so much about the impact of the climate crisis and it felt like I couldn't unsee what I saw. It just became even more urgent in my mind that I had to do something to help mitigate the effects of climate change. 

So that's been my purpose ever since! And that inspired me to sell Scent and move on from that. I wanted to dedicate my time using business to solve the climate crisis or help mitigate the effects and that led me to my current two roles now. I started working with evee three years ago as Chief Operating Officer. evee is the largest all-electric car showing platform in Australia and New Zealand. I have helped scale the business over the last three years including a successful crowdfunding round that we did in March - April last year.

I'm also a B Corp consultant and I have my own consultancy, Supervision, because I help companies have super vision but also I supervise their journey to B Corp certification. B Corp is an amazing framework for companies wanting to learn how they can do better, as it helps them to track and improve the impact that they have on the planet and their communities. 

I believe businesses can play a positive role and can support what nonprofit organizations, governments, and individuals are doing - we're all part of this system. It has been an honour to help 20+ companies over the last four years on their journey to B Corp certification. I am extremely passionate about the movement, which unites businesses as a force for good. 

2. What is evee's primary aim(s)? and how does it address the challenges related to resource consumption, and climate change mitigation? 

evee has two main impact objectives. One is that we need to get better at utilizing the resources we already have. We live in a world of overconsumption. This idea of one person, one car is just really archaic, as it's a lot of resources to build a vehicle,  a lot of metals and critical minerals and electronics, and emissions to ship that car across the world. We have these very resource-heavy assets which then sit on our driveways or outside our houses for 90 to 95% of the time. At evee, we believe that we should get better at sharing the assets we have, ultimately reducing the number of vehicles that will need to be produced and reducing the overall number on our roads. 

evee’s biggest impact is driving forward the adoption of EVs here in Australia, because EVs are a readily available technology that are proven to help reduce GHG emissions and mitigate the effects of climate change. We don’t have all the answers to solve the climate crisis right now, but the electrification of our transport and homes is here and available, so we should move as quickly as possible with their adoption. 

At evee, we help educate anyone who is looking to buy a new car to encourage them to choose electric and then also, on the flip side, by promoting car sharing we are helping to change attitudes and behaviors around whether people need car ownership at all. We always encourage that you should choose the lowest impact transport option available to you, which starts with walking and cycling, and then next up public transport. If these options are not available, and you really do need to drive a car, then make sure it's electric and make sure it's shared.

Australia is far behind the rest of the world when it comes to EV adoption and a lot of this has been down to a lack of policy that supports the transition (until recently, with the announcement this month of the New Vehicle Efficiency Standard NVES). Australia, along with Russia, were the only countries in the OECD that didn’t have a full efficiency standard,  so the most polluting cars were the ones being sold here. To increase uptake, we need more affordable options, which hopefully the NVES will impact. We also need a decent and healthy second-hand marketplace so more people can afford to enter into the EV market. We are way behind and need to accelerate as fast as possible!

3. Having transitioned from running a successful marketing agency in New York to your current role as a fractional COO at evee, can you share key insights on how your background in marketing has influenced your approach to operations consulting and can you share some strategies for companies in the climate tech sector?

I’ve always been on the business side within marketing, so I would never describe myself as a marketeer per se. I wasn't running the actual marketing campaigns but I did develop an understanding of the importance of a good brand and that still sticks with me today. 

When I was thinking of joining evee three years ago,  I loved the concept and I really got along with the founder and believed in his vision. But I told him that if I was going to join his team he needed to rebrand evee as it didn’t match the audience we were trying to reach or the brand positioning we were trying to have. I think the rebrand was just such a great experience for us to dig into. 

Who was our audience? Who were we wanting to reach? How did we want to be perceived? What is our brand positioning? I think that really elevated the company. Since then we've had a consistent look and feel across all of our assets including the website and all our marketing materials, and it's a very recognizable brand now. 

I think that there's no excuse for an inconsistent brand in this day and age. If you had a shop, you wouldn't have a messy shop front with a paper sign for your logo.  The foundations of your business are immensely important. I'd say that probably comes from my marketing background and being around brands and understanding how they communicate.

4. As someone deeply passionate about creating efficient, thriving, and scalable businesses, what specific methodologies or frameworks do you find most effective in identifying and addressing challenges faced by small businesses?

The B Corp framework is not only great for tracking & improving your impact, it’s also a really good holistic framework for how to set up a sustainable business. Companies approach me specifically about achieving the certification but I try to explain that the additional value is in everything you put in place. It's thinking about every area of your business and what policies and processes you have in place that look after your stakeholder groups. It’s almost like business 101. 

Something that's worked well for evee has been adopting the Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) framework. It's a way of goal setting where leadership identifies the three “big sky thinking” goals for the business and where we want to be within a set period of time. We work on either a three or six-month basis depending on the needs of the company at the time, and then we identify what the three defined and achievable key results are for each of those three objectives. This means we land on a total of nine key results for the upcoming period. We do this regularly and then communicate the OKRs to the team, who then go away and think about how they can set some individual actions for themselves to contribute to these key results. It just keeps the whole business completely aligned. Everybody knows what they're working towards and why and also it makes success tangible to monitor so that everybody can celebrate when it happens and everyone can feel like they all contributed as well. 

I just think for small businesses, It's an effective model for focusing short-term. Personally for startups, I'm not a proponent of long-term goals because things can change so rapidly and so many things can impact your trajectory, which means your whole business model might pivot within a few years. I think that being able to shift what you focus on is important in a startup. So, maybe having annual goals is enough, and then having the OKR’s work within that makes sense. 

6. How do you balance business scalability with the urgent need for sustainable and environmentally conscious practices? 

It's a challenge! There's no impact that you can have if you have no business and that's why  B Corp is really about balancing profit and purpose.

But we’ve seen time and again that just focusing on profit is harming our planet and negatively impacting society. When businesses just focus on shareholder returns, it causes a lot of inequity. I think it's really about doing the best that you can and ensuring that sustainability is woven into every decision that you make as a business. Can we do this better? Can we have less of a negative impact on the environment in this decision that we're making? Do we have other options available? Is this additional cost justified in terms of the positive impact? 

When you are constantly thinking like this, it means that it becomes second nature that you are always thinking about the environment and your various stakeholder groups in your decision-making. There will be hard times when you cannot justify the most sustainable option that was five times the cost of something else, but you have to weigh that up. It's your responsibility as a business leader to be constantly weighing up the negative impact of the decisions that you make and whether that has a net positive gain for the overall impact you're having. 

The hardest decision I think you have to make as a business owner or leader of a not-for-profit is that every single decision you make has an impact on various stakeholder groups, the environment being a stakeholder as well, and working out what is the best decision that has the least negative impact and the highest amount of positive impact. It's really hard. 

7. In your opinion, how can businesses, especially those in the climate tech sector, better align their strategies to support and synergize with the goals of not-for-profits like Subak Australia?

The biggest thing is a change in mindset. If you're a business founder or a leader, you may think that the purpose is to just make your business as profitable as possible (and drive returns for shareholders and investors). But if you're working for a greater good, as in the climate tech space,  your product exists to reduce or mitigate the effects of climate change - that's ultimately why you launched your business. 

Yes, you want to make sure everybody gets paid and has good liveable salaries and that your business is growing. But you've got to remember what your purpose is. When you realize that the goal is to create a better world where the effects of climate change are reduced or that we solve the climate crisis, there is in alignment with a lot of the not-for-profits.

Profit is the fuel and not the outcome. If businesses partner with not-for-profits with the same mission, all ships rise with the tide. There's a stronger voice if all sectors collaborate. There should be more collaboration because we're all trying to solve the same problem and so it's all about that mindset switch. 

It can be a struggle for a business leader to adopt this different mindset, especially if they come from a more corporate or private sector background, but if they’re running a purpose-led organization, they shouldn’t be in it just for the money, there is that greater impact and you need to remember that there are other players who are also working towards that and you can help one another. 

8. As one of our mentors, what strategies do you believe are essential for fostering effective partnerships between for-profit companies and not-for-profits to create a mutually beneficial relationship?

I guess it's just reframing and taking action. Yes, if you're running a business you want to be getting more customers to drive your revenue, but can you put a little bit of time aside per week to think about the following: How can we be an advocate? How can we identify not-for-profits that are also in the space, team up with them, and create a campaign? How can we leverage each other's followers to lift this issue and advocate for change? 

With B Corp, I'd recommend this for any business. To really think about who your community is and what your give-back strategy is. With my B Corp clients, we always think about how we can support charitable partners that solve the same problem,  that share the same values, and that are laddering into the same material issues.

This could look like climate tech companies financially supporting the not-for-profits, giving a percentage of their revenue back to a chosen charitable partner. Or the companies could volunteer their time or expertise, or give use to their platforms and channels to advocate for particular campaigns these not-for-profits are trying to get exposure for.

I think there is a responsibility of businesses to give back and to give a platform or financial support to these not-for-profits who are working towards the same outcome.

9. Do you have any exciting projects you are working on in 2024 with evee or else?

A big milestone for evee was becoming a certified B Corp this month. It's something that we’ve been working on over the last 12 months and we’re all incredibly proud to join the global movement, using business as a force for good. Personally, it was an interesting experience to be the one implementing things, as opposed to just being the consultant for once!

So, I've had to wear both hats - guiding the strategy but also implementing all the initiatives and programs - but I've really enjoyed the process. I think we've put so many amazing things in place and I'm proud of the culture we've created and the impact that we're having at evee.