Before starting her master’s for environmental management at Duke University, Tiana Elame already had over 10 years of experience under her belt leading and delivering projects related to environmental assessment, compliance and mitigation.
Part of her background includes working as a practitioner for the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), which requires public agencies to consider any environmental impacts of their actions and to inform government entities and the public about the potential environmental effects. This experience is what led her to want to create her own startup that would help homeowners interested in sustainably upgrading their homes cut through the confusion of what to do and learn just how sustainable the products they might choose really are.
With her company EnvAns (Environmental Answers), Elame is creating a two-sided marketplace for homeowners to not only receive true and accurate information about sustainable home solutions, but to also find vendors that would help to supply those solutions.
Elame and EnvAns are participating in the 2023-24 cohort of Duke’s year-long Melissa & Doug Entrepreneurs Accelerator. She graduates with her masters in May. [We have also written about fellow cohort members Alleviate Health, Hayha Bots, SaveOr, College To Climate, Aurganics, Infinity Portal, Himayat and Anon ID.]
Elame and her fellow cohort members will be amongst 36 startups who will be pitching their companies at the Duke Startup Showcase tonight (Thursday, April 11) at the Fuqua School of Business from 4-6:30 p.m. The event will start with tabling where attendees can meet and speak one-on-one with the founders and will end with a pitch competition where more than $100K in non-dilutive prizes will be awarded. If you’re interested in attending the event, register here.
EnvAns will act similarly to a Google search engine where services and products will be recommended based on what the consumer needs or inquires. The answers will be formatted like an article so that it can provide more informed and direct decision-making.
For businesses, EnvAns provides a back end for them to provide details about their products to promote them, and also so that they can be rated for their suitability to be featured on the marketplace. The goal for this setup is to reduce issues such as lack of transparency to determine if the product is sustainable or “clean.” EnvAns will also reward companies for being more transparent about their impact on the environment.
“The platform is supposed to be a space where people can shop and see pricing without having to give up their data,” Elame explained. “If anyone has experience shopping on a solar website, they ask for a lot of information and then you normally have to wait for a consultant to your house and do that evaluation. We’re trying to cut that out and to give them real-time information, so they can decide what the incentives and ways are to be more environmentally friendly.”
EnvAns is coming in at a time where answers to combating climate change are still uncertain. Products and solutions are made everyday, but Elame says there is still a gap for businesses to comfortably make investments in environmentally friendly products.
While energy managers or products exist, Elame said that an exclusive marketplace that provides transparent, consistent and standardized information can be more impactful at scale.
“The goal is to make people more educated about their spaces so that we can remove a fear of climate change,” Elame said. “The goal isn’t to be fearful; it’s to be climate-ready. And there are different ways to be climate-ready that are not just buying solar panels. It can be as simple as swapping out your insulation or if you needed to upgrade your driveway using different types of cement that emit less CO2.”
Elame said that there are already a lot of people interested in investing in sustainable products like solar, but most are overwhelmed by the variety of products and providers while also not understanding what they need. That’s why EnvAns wants to offer a low-cost guidance where they wouldn’t earn money from the consumer directly, but will earn affiliate revenue if a consumer buys a product though their site.
“We’re not trying to tax people for knowledge,” she continued. “But more so just generally making it so that they can have a more informed buying experience.
EnvAns is currently a team of four students, including Elame, and are currently in the process of customer discovery and assumption-testing while also building out their waitlist. Elame believes that EnvAns can make the most of its upfront impact partnering with HOA (Homeowners Association) groups, so that more homes would be incentivized to reduce energy costs while potentially increasing property value.
