{"data":{"type":"company_profile","id":95450,"entity_id":"wefunder:company:95450","attributes":{"canonical_url":"https://wefunder.com/carboncalories","generated_at":"2026-06-12T03:35:41Z","updated_at":"2026-06-11T23:53:58Z","entity_ids":{"company":"wefunder:company:95450","slug":"wefunder:company_slug:carboncalories"},"profile_visibility":{"owner_published":true,"public_search_results":true,"site_search_listed":true,"privacy_mode":"promote","invite_only":false},"provenance":{"source":"wefunder_public_company_profile","as_of":"2026-06-12T03:35:41Z","claims":{"total_amount_raised":{"source":"FrontCompanySummary#amount_raised","last_verified_at":"2026-06-11T23:53:58Z","as_of":"2026-06-12T03:35:41Z","confidence":"high"},"total_investors":{"source":"FrontCompanySummary#number_of_investors","last_verified_at":"2026-06-11T23:53:58Z","as_of":"2026-06-12T03:35:41Z","confidence":"high"},"active_raise_states":{"source":"Fundraise.visible(nil, nil)","last_verified_at":"2025-02-06T01:17:55Z","as_of":"2026-06-12T03:35:41Z","confidence":"high"},"latest_fundraise_state":{"source":"Fundraise.visible(nil, nil).order(funding_started_at)","last_verified_at":"2025-02-06T01:17:55Z","as_of":"2026-06-12T03:35:41Z","confidence":"medium"}}},"company":{"id":95450,"entity_id":"wefunder:company:95450","slug":"carboncalories","name":"Carbon Calories","tagline":"Democratizing carbon accounting.","elevator_pitch":"Carbon Calories develops carbon accounting solutions hosted on a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform, like QuickBooks Online or Shopify.","story":"Click this slide to see our FAQs!The United States and Europe have committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by over fifty percent (50%) compared to 2005/1990 levels, respectively, by 2030, in-line with targets set with the Paris Agreement. For this, we need all companies, organizations and individuals to measure, track and budget carbon in their operations and lifestyles.The business case for decarbonization is clear: the vast majority of consumers want companies to increase their efforts to improve (lower) environment impacts. Consumers are not only making greener purchases, but many are willingly paying a price premium of up to 34% for sustainable products. These claims, however, need to be backed by data and standard-compliant assessments, to validate their value and to avoid greenwashing.This $12.5\u0026nbsp;billion market size is one percent (1%) the size of the entire global financial accounting services market (all accountants, tax filings, etc.), which stood at $1.2 trillion last year. The market size and opportunity for carbon accounting solutions\u0026nbsp;will only\u0026nbsp;grow faster as consumer pressure and regulatory mandates escalate.Decarbonization enables substantial increases in revenue and, often, cost reductions as well. The market\u0026nbsp;segment of 'sustainably marketed' products\u0026nbsp;is growing more the twice the rate of conventional products.\u0026nbsp;So why not implement decaronization now? On a regulatory level, carbon will soon be priced regionally, and emissions present a liability not currently accounted for in companies' books. Both in the US and the EU, regulation is being written and passed to mandate disclosures, apply carbon import taxes, apply regional carbon taxes, and more, all of which makes the adoption of tools like Carbon Calories' inevitable.Most companies can’t measure their carbon footprint, which leaves them unable to plan effective and realistic decarbonization. This problem is especially acute for SMBs, which also account for more than 95% of all businesses and 50% of the GHG emissions globally. Why is carbon accounting still so out of reach?Existing carbon accounting software products in the market require extensive knowledge of the matter to be used. This complexity necessitates consultants who make these tools accessible to companies, but this intermediation is expensive (ranging from tens of thousands of dollars to hundreds of thousands of dollars per product) and is not affordable for nearly all SMBs. Further, most tools currently available only offer enterprise-level assessment but not product-level assessments, producing results that can be misleading for final, individual consumers and authorities alike.The lack of a uniform reporting framework for products means that we can’t reliably cross-compare products to assess which are low- versus high-carbon. In this report, the WRI details the, \"absence of a generally accepted framework for estimating and publicly reporting comparative impacts.\" This also means that there isn’t (yet) a level playing field for low-carbon products and businesses to differentiate their products, which is the opportunity that Carbon Calories wants to catalyze with our SaaS platform. What is Carbon Calories proposing? Here is our Sampler for Carbon Statements. Our transparent, patent-pending assessment methodology and disclosure framework will empower brands to differentiate their products and consumer to buy low-carbon. We will become the industry standard carbon accounting, reporting and public disclosure.It currently costs no less than\u0026nbsp;$5,000 per\u0026nbsp;product-level assessment in the market\u0026nbsp;(sometimes up to $50,000 or even $100,000 for complex products). At this price-point, assessing all 500+ million products sold on Amazon would cost $2.5 trillion or 3% of global GDP. This cost-problem is acute for SMBs.We have developed a simple SaaS based UX/UI that vertically integrates data management and sharing B2B as well as B2B2C; automating\u0026nbsp;standard-compliance;\u0026nbsp;and are developing bots/algorithms to automate verification steps and audibility. This is\u0026nbsp;to ensure that all small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) perform high-quality\u0026nbsp;carbon accounting with a reasonable monthly subscription plan. Like they already do, for example, with QuickBooks, Xero, and FreshBooks. We are developing\u0026nbsp;seamless vertical\u0026nbsp;integrations for\u0026nbsp;our clients to receive data from vendors and employees alike, increasing the granularity and accuracy of their results and distributing workloads.After getting brands started, we will expand Carbon Calories' SaaS feature-set to help brands optimize and decarbonize their products and business activities. With reliable, brand-specific product-level disclosures, companies will be able to understand their emissions and you, the consumer, will get dynamic disclosures to easily buy from exclusively low-carbon businesses. We also have plans to develop a personal app, the ‘MyCarbonCalories’, which will make it possible for you to track your lifestyle carbon footprint and manage your consumption habits using product level assessments.Our dedication to accuracy, as determined by the Laws of Nature, informs our disclosure framework, i.e.,\u0026nbsp;the Carbon Statement, our Daily Carbon Quota (DCQ) measures and our decision to not sell carbon offsets. Learn more\u0026nbsp;in Carbon Calories' Glossary of terms.A snapshot of our current operations: Carbon Calories has worked with ten (10x) paying clients, give (5x) of which are publicly disclosing their carbon assessments, and four (4x) using our Carbon Statements. Check out our collaborations here! We have been using proprietary solutions developed in-house, and we are launching our minimum viable product (MVP) online platform in November (2022), followed by a six-month core feature rollout schedule,\u0026nbsp;which will simplify carbon accounting for both businesses (monthly paid subscriptions) and the\u0026nbsp;public broadly\u0026nbsp;(for\u0026nbsp;free!).We have active contacts with channel partners (sustainable business networks, sustainable product retailers, and more) that allow us to reach a large pool of potential clients while keeping the Client Acquisition Cost low. Our marketing efforts will be focused on businesses that sell products with sustainability claims, but we project our growth to be largely organic: from one business to another, we want to become pervasive along supply systems, leveraging the network effect. As more and more brands subscribe and generate product-level assessments using Carbon Calories SaaS platform, our database of anonymized, brand-specific market benchmarks will become more and more valuable to current and future subscribers, strengthening our value proposition.Alexander has devoted his personal and professional life to decarbonization since 2001. He has built Energyweneed.com in 2012, the Great Transformation, a mitigation and economic redistribution model, in 2015, WikiCarbon.org in 2019 and Carbon Calories' proprietary solutions, in 2021-Present. Ray has spent nearly thirty\u0026nbsp;(30)\u0026nbsp;years architecting and developing SaaS for three startup companies; as employee number\u0026nbsp;twenty-fifth (25)\u0026nbsp;for an\u0026nbsp;energy data management system/SaaS, Uplight, which become a\u0026nbsp;unicorn during Ray's employment there. We are both determined to support decarbonization.We can’t wait to receive your feedback and see you play an active role in your personal and all our global decarbonization process! Click here to sign up for our newsletter!","location":"New York, NY","website":"https://www.carboncalories.com/","total_amount_raised":0,"total_investors":0,"is_funded":false,"is_active":false,"quality_score":2,"related_urls":["https://wefunder.com/carboncalories","https://www.carboncalories.com/"]},"media":{"share_image_url":"https://uploads.wefunder.com/uploads/company/header_media_photo/95450/xxl_cropped_Image_for_Wefunder-1.jpg","logo_url":"https://uploads.wefunder.com/uploads/company/logo/95450/large_cropped_social-logo-black-icon.jpg","header_media_url":"https://uploads.wefunder.com/uploads/company/header_media_photo/95450/standard_cropped_Image_for_Wefunder-1.jpg","cover_photo_url":"https://uploads.wefunder.com/uploads/company/header_media_photo/95450/standard_cropped_Image_for_Wefunder-1.jpg","profile_video_url":"https://wefunder.wistia.com/medias/aazmtwotir"},"links":{"company_url":"https://www.carboncalories.com/","twitter_url":"http://twitter.com/CarbonCalories","instagram_url":"https://www.instagram.com/carboncalories/"},"highlights":[],"quick_facts":[{"index":1,"claim_id":"claim-fact-1","value":"We have paying clients using proprietary models."},{"index":2,"claim_id":"claim-fact-2","value":"Four brands are publicly disclosing with our Carbon Statement."},{"index":3,"claim_id":"claim-fact-3","value":"Columbia University will third-party verify our methodology."},{"index":4,"claim_id":"claim-fact-4","value":"We will automate standard-compliance and verification processes."},{"index":5,"claim_id":"claim-fact-5","value":"Our reporting framework will empower you with intelligible data."},{"index":6,"claim_id":"claim-fact-6","value":"Check out our FAQs: https://wefunder.com/carboncalories/faq"}],"team":[{"id":1963410,"entity_id":"wefunder:company_role:1963410","user_entity_id":"wefunder:user:1668200","role":"founder","name":"Alexander Frantzen","title":"Founder/CEO","bio":"Alexander has ten years experience in finance, impact investing, and carbon accounting. He built www.energyweneed.com, www.wikicarbon.org, and all Carbon Calories' proprietary calculators.","avatar_url":"https://uploads.wefunder.com/uploads/company_role/custom_photo/1963410/square_cropped_File_008.jpg?1720017552","profile_url":"https://wefunder.com/alexanderfrantzen2","personal_url":"https://www.alexanderfrantzen.com/","linkedin_url":"https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-frantzen/","twitter_url":"https://twitter.com/CarbonCalories","related_urls":["https://wefunder.com/alexanderfrantzen2","https://www.alexanderfrantzen.com/"]},{"id":2923406,"entity_id":"wefunder:company_role:2923406","user_entity_id":"wefunder:user:2724566","role":"employee","name":"Raymond Boutotte","title":"Co-founder/CTO","bio":"Ray has twenty-five years experience at three startups, including Uplight, a unicorn in energy data, as Chief Architect and Principal Software Engineer, with extensive background architecting SaaS.","avatar_url":"http://uploads.wefunder.com/uploads/user/avatar/2724566/large_c97bcce0e15cbb40a66820220808-140-urvtwg.jpg?1661609778","profile_url":"https://wefunder.com/raymond.boutotte","linkedin_url":"http://https://www.linkedin.com/in/rayboutotte/","related_urls":["https://wefunder.com/raymond.boutotte"]}],"featured_investors":[],"investor_memos":[],"tab_counts":{"posts":0,"ask_questions":1,"featured_investors":0,"faq_entries":1},"active_fundraises":[{"id":50046,"entity_id":"wefunder:fundraise:50046","state":"open","offering_type":"4(a)(6)","funding_type":"note","structure":"ttw","security_type":"equity","currency":"USD","testing_the_waters":true,"min_purchase":100,"max_purchase":9,"funding_target":50000.0,"funding_started_at":"2022-08-09T01:30:29Z"}],"latest_fundraise":{"id":50046,"entity_id":"wefunder:fundraise:50046","state":"open","offering_type":"4(a)(6)","structure":"ttw","testing_the_waters":true,"can_invest_now":true,"funding_started_at":"2022-08-09T01:30:29Z","funding_closed_at":null,"terms":{"eb":"$4.25M","nb":"$5.5M","txt":"valuation cap"}},"recent_posts":[],"q_and_a":[{"id":216490,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:216490","question":"Hi Alexander // Thanks for your efforts // Just a few basic questions I had that I'll put here: Is this a software you’re selling? What’s Carbon Calories’ business model? How is Columbia University involved? How does Carbon Calories make these services available? Is Carbon Calories going to audit every company like an accounting firm? How can users trust the information that businesses provide? How will you help businesses assess supply-chain emissions? How big are you trying to go? Without regulation or policy, how will you get companies to do carbon accounting? How much money do you need in total? Have you raised money before and how much? Are you raising any money outside of Wefunder (e.g., from venture firms)? What is the name of Carbon Calories legal entity and where are you based?","author_name":"Sky Richards","votes":0,"created_at":"2022-08-25T22:00:23Z","canonical_url":"https://wefunder.com/carboncalories#question-216490","answers":[{"id":216646,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:216646","answer":"Hi Sky! Thank you for all your questions. I'll answer them in separate posts below, and may include them in our FAQ, which has more questions and answers: wefunder.com/carboncalories/faq.","author_name":"Alexander Frantzen","votes":0,"created_at":"2022-08-27T22:54:52Z"},{"id":216647,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:216647","answer":"1. Is this a software you’re selling? Carbon Calories will be selling a cloud-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) carbon accounting platform, so that businesses can access, store and manage their carbon accounting and reporting needs online; similar to QuickBooks Online, FreshBooks, Xero and Wave. https://quickbooks.intuit.com https://www.freshbooks.com https://www.xero.com/ https://www.waveapps.com","author_name":"Alexander Frantzen","votes":0,"created_at":"2022-08-27T22:55:10Z"},{"id":216648,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:216648","answer":"2. What’s Carbon Calories’ business model? We will charge businesses a recurring monthly subscription starting at around $100 per business account (multiple users). We may offer accounts to individuals too, which will be priced differently.","author_name":"Alexander Frantzen","votes":0,"created_at":"2022-08-27T22:55:48Z"},{"id":216649,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:216649","answer":"3. How does Carbon Calories make these services available? Our tools are currently available offline; we are going to make them available in the cloud (online), like QuickBooks, Salesforce, Shopify, etc. Moving our tools online is analogous to how QuickBooks used to be exclusively available on your Windows Desktop, installed locally on your computer; and now is available online via their cloud-based software-as-a-service, QuickBooks Online.","author_name":"Alexander Frantzen","votes":0,"created_at":"2022-08-27T22:56:24Z"},{"id":216650,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:216650","answer":"4. Why make proprietary tools available via the cloud (online)? Making our solutions available online is better because: (1) businesses can access features anywhere, anytime; (2) we can help businesses to integrate more automations to save them time; (3) it offers more streamlined and flexible user interface (UX) design; (4) being online makes it possible to amortize (spread out) the cost via a monthly subscription, rather than large, one-time payments; and (5) being online makes it possible for Carbon Calories to roll-out universal updates for all users to ensure the reliability and cross-comparability of results for everyone.","author_name":"Alexander Frantzen","votes":0,"created_at":"2022-08-27T22:58:17Z"},{"id":216651,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:216651","answer":"5. How is Columbia University involved? Carbon Calories will contract Columbia University to develop and third-party verify Carbon Calories’ methodology and calculations to assure all brands that their results are standard-compliant and to enhance verification and auditing capabilities. We've included a longer answer in our FAQ (link at the top of this page).","author_name":"Alexander Frantzen","votes":0,"created_at":"2022-08-27T22:59:42Z"},{"id":216652,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:216652","answer":"6. Is Carbon Calories going to audit every company like an accounting firm? No, Carbon Calories will not manually audit every company’s product-level or enterprise-level assessments; for the same reason that the IRS only audits approximately 4 out of every 1,000 tax returns filed: it is simply too expensive. We will, however, support verification, automate controls, and may deliver 'audit ready' reports that documents the 'audit trail' or 'paper trail', if and when companies do decide to have one or more of their assessments manually audited. See the following two questions and answers for more detail.","author_name":"Alexander Frantzen","votes":0,"created_at":"2022-08-27T23:01:27Z"},{"id":216653,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:216653","answer":"7. How can users trust the information that businesses provide? There are laws that prohibit companies from making untruthful or misleading marketing claims. Business that publicly disclose untruthful or misleading results face legal liabilities in addition to collateral damage, e.g., loss of brand value and customer attrition. Carbon Calories will build tools and various automations (bots/algorithms) that help companies ensure that they’ve dotted all i’s and crossed all t’s – so that, we, the final end-users (customers) can trust the results and disclosures. Please see my answer in the next question regarding bots/algorithms to automate controls. Note on the FTC: The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in the U.S. has rules against making untruthful or misleading environmental marketing claims, as outlined in FTC Act Section 5 (see [1] and [2] below). The FTC can and likely will begin to more aggressively correct (fine) violations of Section 5. Various consumer protection agencies in Europe are beginning to crack down on misleading environmental marketing claims. [1] FTC Act Section 5 Summary of Environmental Claims: drive.google.com/fil…jq/view?usp=sharing [2] FTC Guides for the use of environmental marketing claims: drive.google.com/fil…WE/view?usp=sharing","author_name":"Alexander Frantzen","votes":0,"created_at":"2022-08-27T23:09:26Z"},{"id":216657,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:216657","answer":"8. How will Carbon Calories quality control business inputs and results? Having Columbia University third-party verify our methodology and calculations will go a long way to support the reliability of results. In addition, Carbon Calories will develop and implement various data quality controls on our SaaS, including: (1) not generating final results for products that have outstanding inputs and/or incomplete results will be flagged, so you know that results may have potentially material exclusions (most likely, we will simply not give companies access to reporting features to disclose incomplete results); (2) itemizing the quality of input data, e.g., did the company provide primary data or are they relying on secondary data, both of which are standard-compliant, but which likely provide for different levels of accuracy and reliability; (3) using bots/algorithms to check and flag (or limit) certain input values, e.g., no T-shirt weighs a tonne, so if a user enters 1,000 kg cotton per T-shirt, that is clearly an error; (4) using bots/algorithms to check final product-level results, e.g., if a company’s T-shirt ranks in the lowest 20th percentile (is low-carbon), great, but we will likely randomly select a fraction of said company’s product-level results for a manual and/or more extensive audit; (5) engaging exclusive vendors and/or public institutions to perform a large number of audits more cost-effectively; and/or (6) invite brands to submit their “audit trail” publicly (radical transparency).","author_name":"Alexander Frantzen","votes":0,"created_at":"2022-08-27T23:15:04Z"},{"id":216658,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:216658","answer":"9. How will you help businesses assess supply-chain emissions? We will make it possible for business-to-consumer (B2C) companies that typically rely on goods and services from various business-to-business (B2B) vendors, across extended supply-chains, to invite said B2B vendors/suppliers to compile and submit primary data from their business activities. This will make it possible for businesses to assess supply-chain emission more reliably. That’s a large reason why we’re making Carbon Calories' proprietary tools available online: to support supply-chain data integrations.","author_name":"Alexander Frantzen","votes":0,"created_at":"2022-08-27T23:16:31Z"},{"id":216661,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:216661","answer":"10. How big are you trying to go? Big. Our goal is to become the most widely used carbon accounting and reporting solution globally. We are building the QuickBooks of carbon accounting; and QuickBooks is the most widely used financial accounting solution used by small-to-medium sized business, globally (over ~6 million subscribers last time I checked).","author_name":"Alexander Frantzen","votes":0,"created_at":"2022-08-27T23:20:29Z"},{"id":216662,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:216662","answer":"11. Without regulation or policy, how will you get companies to do carbon accounting? Companies that can qualify their low carbon products and that can differentiate them among alternative, competing products in the market, will sell more and thus increase their return on investment (ROI). The Sustainable Market Share Index by NYU Stern Center for Sustainable Business as found that sustainably marketed products can often charge a thirty percent premium versus conventional products and their market-share is growing much faster (7.3% CAGR versus 2.8% for conventional products). By the 'rule of seventy' (70%/7.3% equals less than 10), the market-size of sustainably marketed products will more than double in less than 10 years. Conventional products thus face a significant opportunity cost from *not* decarbonizing. Until regulation comes into place, which traditionally follows consumer pressure and paradigm shifts among the public, companies that can differentiate their low carbon products and/or conventional businesses that can put themselves on a path to decarbonize and produce low carbon products, can expect to outperform all status-quo, conventional companies this decade.","author_name":"Alexander Frantzen","votes":0,"created_at":"2022-08-27T23:24:44Z"},{"id":216663,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:216663","answer":"12. How much money do you need in total? Carbon Calories has budgeted $600,000 for the first twelves months, including six months to finish building our Minimum Viable Product (MVP), i.e.., putting our tools online, and another six months to onboard subscribers to hit our target monthly recurring revenue of $50k+ by August 2023 (month 12). This will line us up for our next fundraising round to grow; we plan to notify all our existing investors (who invest now) to get in early, before we open that round to the wider market, when that time comes.","author_name":"Alexander Frantzen","votes":0,"created_at":"2022-08-27T23:26:55Z"},{"id":216665,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:216665","answer":"13. Have you raised money before and how much? Alexander has spent over $50,000 of his own cash developing Carbon Calories' proprietary tools and branding over the past year. Further, Form Ventures invested $100,000 in Carbon Calories earlier this year, which help us get to where we are now, including getting Ray, our co-founding CTO, onboard. We currently have $100,000 committed from a second, mission-aligned, nyc-based venture capital firm.","author_name":"Alexander Frantzen","votes":0,"created_at":"2022-08-27T23:30:27Z"},{"id":216666,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:216666","answer":"14. Are you raising any money outside of Wefunder (e.g., from venture firms)? Yes, Carbon Calories is simultaneously pitching to pre-seed venture capital firms and angel syndicates, all of which are accredited investors, to raise the $600,000 we need over the next twelve months. However, we are thrilled to have as much public participation as possible, via crowdfunding, through this Wefunder campaign, because at the end of they day, carbon accounting and reporting serves you, the public. We are accepting investments on a first come, first serve basis until we reach $600,000.","author_name":"Alexander Frantzen","votes":0,"created_at":"2022-08-27T23:32:25Z"},{"id":216667,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:216667","answer":"15. What is the name of Carbon Calories legal entity and where are you based? Carbon Calories’ legal entity name is CARBON CALORIES INC. which is a Delaware Corporation formed in November of last year. We are registered to do business in New York[1] as that is where I, Alexander, founder of Carbon Calories, am based. I am currently the sole owner of Carbon Calories and Ray, Carbon Calories' co-founding CTO, will begin being issued shares around this time next year. So, we are currently 100% founder/co-founder owned. People who invest in this Wefunder campaign, current investors (i.e., Forum Ventures) and other investors in our pre-seed ($600k) round, will see their investments convert into shares upon our first price round, expected around August 2024 (Month 24).* * Disclaimer: We need to onboard around 500-1,000 subscribers @ $100/month to hit the $50,000-100,000 Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) target by August 2023 (Month 12) to complete our next raise then. This necessitates us hitting aggressive minimum viable product (MVP) development milestones and onboarding paying subscribers rapidly. If we don't finish developing our MVP on time and/or the market doesn't find our solution compelling upon completion, then hitting these KPIs will be delayed and/or may not be possible. Of course, Carbon Calories is confident that we can and will achieve our goals and targets; but, there is no such thing as a risk-free investment. [1] opengovny.com/corporation/6447953","author_name":"Alexander Frantzen","votes":0,"created_at":"2022-08-27T23:43:06Z"}]}],"faq":[{"question":"Hi Alexander // Thanks for your efforts // Just a few basic questions I had that I'll put here: Is this a software you’re selling? What’s Carbon Calories’ business model? How is Columbia University involved? How does Carbon Calories make these services available? Is Carbon Cal...","answer":"Hi Sky! Thank you for all your questions. I'll answer them in separate posts below, and may include them in our FAQ, which has more questions and answers: wefunder.com/carboncalories/faq."}]}}}