Antonio Anguiano is Co-Founder and CEO of Greenny, a ClimateTech startup based in Paris, France.
Greenny helps companies to accelerate their carbon footprint reduction by placing gamification at the core of employees’ ecological engagement. Through the Greenny app, employees track their steps and earn tree-planting rewards, which contribute to reducing the company’s carbon footprint. In just a few months, Greenny has partnered with 7 companies, onboarded 350 users, and achieved the reforestation of 343 trees, compensating 257 tons of CO2.
Antonio is originally from Aguascalientes, Mexico. He is a proud father, an outdoor enthusiast, and also a digital product strategist. During his career, he has supported multiple early-stage startups to find product-market fit and scale internationally. This has led him to work and travel around the world, especially across Europe, Asia, and Latin America. His university studies led him to France, where he later settled. His extensive experience in startups combined with his drive to tackle climate change for the benefit of future generations led him to start Greenny.
Content:
04:00 Antonio’s role as digital product strategist
06:00 His experience helping early-stage startups internationally
08:10 Antonio’s personal and professional trajectory, including moving to France and the evolution of his skillset
14:45 His mission-driven approach to “solve the case” at startups as fast as possible
18:10 What led Antonio to start Greenny, his first company
21:35 Why Antonio focused on climate change
26:15 How Antonio is still connected to Mexico
28:20 Antonio’s best advise for aspiring founders
Learn more:
Antonio in LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/antonioanguiano2481632/
Greenny in LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/greenny/
Greenny website: https://www.greenny.io/
Episode page: https://www.mexpreneurs.com/podcast-greenny
Our supporters for this episode:
https://skyflare.com/mexpreneurs
https://partnershipleaders.com/
[Music] Welcome to The Mex preneur podcast the podcast about the stories of Mexican Tech startup Founders who are building world class fast growing companies and having a positive impact at a large scale my name is s Chavez I’m a Mexican based in Germany a tech startup founder executive and mentor and your host today we have Antonio angano with us Antonio is founder and CEO of greeny a climate Tech startup based in Paris France greeny helps companies to accelerate their carbon footprint reduction by placing gamification at the core of employees ecological engagement through the green app employees track their steps and earn tree planting rewards which contribute to reducing the company’s carbon footprint in just a few months greeny has partnered with seven companies on boarded 350 users and achieved the reforestation of 343 trees compensating 257 tons of CO2 Antonio is originally from AAS centes Mexico he’s a proud father and outdoor Enthusiast and also a digital product strategist during his career he has supported multiple early stage startups to find product Market fit and skill internationally this has led him to work and travel around the world especially across Europe Asia and Latin America his university studies led him to France where he later settled his extensive experience in startups combined with his drive to tackle climate change for the benefit of future Generations L him to start Greening I hope you enjoy support for this episode comes from Skyler a cybercity company with a mission to make e-commerce safe for online shops and which currently protects dozens of Shopify based businesses through its 360° holistic protection as an online shop owner you know that every cent you spend in online advertisement counts especially in Google AdWords therefore keeping a tight control of your budget and the ROI are essential nevertheless there are Bad actors out there who can make those costs explode skylers click fraud protection solution helps you prevent and resolve those threats at mix preneurs we had the privilege to have sky founder in Sy podcast including Juan oampo a Mexican Techo founder and Sky’s chief operations officer visit sky.com slmx preneurs to learn more and also to get a 10% discount during your first 3 months of your annual subscription Skyler is at the moment available in Europe Mexico and Canada through the Shopify App Store hello Antonio welcome to the show hello Sergio how are you very good Antonio thank you for joining us thank you no thank you you for inviting me it’s a great opportunity to exchange and to share also our experiences as a Mexican in a foreign country so we really happy to be here thank you very much and please to get us started please tell us who is Antonio angan first of all I think I’m the parent of one great kid uh my son is 12 years old born in France I think I’m I’m a parent first of all uh also a pet lover I have a a bulldog and which I I love to walk on the forest walk is one of my main subjects in this moment I will tell you through the through the interview and besides that professionally I Define myself as a digital product strategist I’m passionated about business models and helping startups since a few years or a few a few decades trying to to help them scale internationally I think uh strategy it’s mainly what defines me and I love the fact that you started with the family we’ve had the founders in the podcast who are also parents but that’s not the case in every occasion that mentioned the family at the beginning but I love the fact of uh starting with the parent role because that’s a big role and a very important role and then going into work and profession and all the great things that you’re doing but you were mentioning about digital product strategies can you expand a little bit more about that like what exactly do you mean by digital product strategist in my career I have been appointed but uh by different uh investors and and companies to explore business models actually solve the possible to think what’s the product doing how we find the market fit and how we bring of the whole organization to arrive to that objective normally I I have been working a lot with different co-founders of different startups to build a strategy normally there is always an objective either it’s uh going to a series a or series b or to an exit but there is always an objective for the next step of the startup and this have been typically early stage companies where you are one of the first employees of the company one of the first joiners are these larger organizations like what’s the type of uh organizations that you’ve done this work for I have worked in many different kind of organizations since five four guys in a in a garage from really uh scale UPS from 200 employees or 300 employees every single stage of a company is quite interesting and has different challenges what I have learned it’s that money is never the objective the objective is to solve the case if we solve the case then the money comes by itself and by the way when you mentioned about four or five Founders in a garage does that still apply in France are they meeting in a garage like in the US or is it a different type of setup oh for the instance it’s uh I don’t have a I have a garage but we don’t meet in the garage but we meet in my apartment and so we start the company uh working from my place so yeah it does exist at the beginning you don’t have all the resources to go and look for offices no you have to minimize the cost so you can spend your money on marketing and get some more clients yeah I think it’s a model that it’s applicable for many of startups that are starting and you also mentioned about helping these companies scale uh and scale internationally so can you share some examples of some of these most exciting projects that you what you work for and done this type of scaling I think one of the biggest my biggest experience what a company what’s called Fast booking today it’s called the H mostly my mission was to deploy the product across different uh different countries in Europe and later on I moved to Asia living in Singapore to strength the 12 subsidiaries that we were opening it’s really challenging because doing business with different cultures I’m passionate about humans and I think doing business with with different cultures is so amazing understanding how japanes think sometimes we think that all Asia culture have the same mentality and and it’s not that simple understanding how Japanese cannot really do a straight business with China or with Korea because they have a cultural and historical reasons to to be reluctant to it and um those markets are quite isolated learning how to work with Eastern European countries and Western European countries which they have different mentalities as well doing business with uh following protocols understanding what Drive these these nationalities it’s uh it’s something that has been really amazing I think for it means that thanks to this type of experience you’ve actually traveled the world you’ve been in Singapore you’ve been in many other different countries opening new business or expanding these businesses I think there are more countries that I know that the ones that I don’t know even if old humans we we are driving by the same basic nature and the basic needs like there is a specific for there things are specific to each country and the challenge are not always the same know sometimes the companies are already established and they have just to accelerate sometimes they office not establish in one country and so we have to start everything from scratch uh building the team trying to get the clients making it grow adapting all the platform to the language to the way how the people use it looking for a specific requirements so we are capable to introduce it into a new market andon please bring us a little bit back into your story because I think it’s thanks to these role as a digital product strategist you’ve been able to work for these big companies small companies travel the world could you please walk us through how we all began because you were born and raised in Mexico and what took you to France how did you end up in these type of rol roles please briefly walk us through that I born in Mexico City then I my parents moved to a Calientes where I where I did my my teenag years then uh I moved to masan Mexico also to go to the techn Monteray to start my studies then I came to France for an exchange and I did that specialization in business in leyon uh I Found Love there so uh I made my my ex-wife in the University we uh we moved back to Mexico and lived there for a few years and then we decided to move back to France because the employee conditions were better it’s mostly the holidays in France you have like uh 35 days of holidays per year which is a lot and yeah we decided to move to France and I started working in the travel industry I started working in the hotel industry for to be precisely really quick I moved to econometrics I’m predicting prices to sell the hotel rooms at the best price possible in a point of time it’s a technique that we call jilt or Revenue management it’s the same as the advertisings in TV or everything that isable know could be parking lots it defines what’s the demand and what’s the best price for that demand after that I was haunted by a company that was a provider for hotel years in terms of um digital platforms to do marketing transactions websites SEO and and many other things I moved there to do account management uh when I uh arrived to that I was the first account manager that has the mission to make that department become a Consulting department so I started designing the Consulting methods based on design thinking so I started working in in this company that uh brings me to open new markets in Europe and not only Europe and also in Africa and also in the Caribbean I spent uh a lot of time in Cuba and Dominican Republic also helping hotel chains to commercialize digitally after that the same company uh sent me to Asia so I moved to Singapore in 2014 I think they there for a few years my my objective was to deploy uh strategy to adapt the product to take requirements and to build the teams for uh the 12 subsidaries I think in that moment I it’s when I started to become passionate about product because um the product was so so not adapted it was a a European product that we wanted to sell in Japan and going there and taking all the feedback from from users doing workshops with them designing the right solution and the right adaptation what something really great in that point of time the the vice president of product who was uh living back in France he told me you have to start doing that professionally so he advised me to take some courses that I took in Virginia University to do it professionally in terms of product management and design thinking in Virginia in the US so you you went to the US to do those courses I did it online I was taking the courses from Singapore but with the students in in Virginia and so I I really like it in terms of uh designing Solutions making things simple and and adapting the solution to different cultures and habits after that the company got purchased by aquarel and they asked me to come back and take over the product teams so I moved back to France and I started a a different Journey now driving all the product teams and Design I spent a few time there and then I needed another challenge so I also was chased by a company call addictive who they are focusing programmatic advertising at that moment they were trying to build a an artificial intelligence to predict the best audience and the best pricing for ads mobile ads mostly uh it was super challenging I remember the first time I I arrived to a meeting with the data science there was a question and the result out of the meeting was a mathematical equation I realized I said that I was I needed UPG great in math skills so I start taking math courses and really deep into AI what year was this Antonio this was I think 2017 around it and my mission was to design uh an audience platform and a creative optimization platform the idea was really to predict the purchase decisions from clients and show them the best ad that will fit and increase conversion after that the same investment found that was investing there uh suggest me to go to another company called Fox intelligence they were trying to build something different in this time it was ecology a little bit reforestation digital cleaning and at the end uh doing some uh statistics with all the data I collected I spent there the same thing I spent there I think one year and a half just the time to build the road map uh set up all the product and uh and design and research process in the company and building the teams uh and one my mission was done then I moved to the next one then I did a few interventions also commission by uh by investment funds or by b in a few really early stage startups to help them making and build a vision so they can go through the preced round successfully we did uh I did three of them uh in short periods of time that happens in one year and a half I did three interventions uh mostly as a consultant and after that I joined thei a company based in priv I love it because uh it was a real subject to fight for the digital rights of humans you know today uh we all have different rights but uh in Internet we it’s really difficult to have rights and it goes today through cookie banners and preferences in websites but mostly this the subject was that like what are my rights and what I can do what data should be respected for myself online and my objective was to succeed uh was to to bring the company to the series B which uh we successfully completed we raise uh 40 million US dollar then I I deployed the scale up after the fundraising and after that I decided to found greeny that’s been uh quite a journey that you’ve been into if I understood correctly you move then from revenue management to product to Ai and all of that is now within that let’s say digital product strategy umbrella that you mentioned but you’ve gone from so Revenue management of course it’s high in demand and uh but now combined with product combined with AI I can imagine that you had like a super strong profile and and extremely attractive for VCS and from what I understand that’s what opened the doors from one company to the next company to the next company to the next company so and it’s been very Mission driven as you mentioned like you went with a very specific objective in mind and sort of like when you achiev that you move to your next adventure so to say was that the case it is I think uh it’s part of what defined me I think I’m a really result thriving and my motivation it’s uh it’s to solve the case as fast as possible and to bring them Clarity sometimes co-founders of startups they have the head on the operations and they struggle to see what’s next you know they have a they have a product today that solves a problem but they need to go deep into it on understand what’s the job to be done why people hire this product why they take this product why are they trying to solve sometimes we just stay in the first level of thinking like for example if I when I purchase a a washing machine you can people can ask me why you wash a why you purchase a washing machine and most people think it’s a wash my clothes but it’s not true I purchase a washing machine to save time so I can spend more time in other things what are these other things that I’m spending the time on and one I understand that my objective is to make people save time not wash clothes then I can build a series of products and solutions to make people save time it’s an example but mostly is what I do that’s incredible and really getting to the gist of it now like not staying at a superficial level of okay what’s the job to be done but as you mentioned like at the end of the day it’s about saving time and that’s where the valid proposition should be focused on and everything that we do should be around that specific goal or benefit indeed we will be right back for a conversation with our [Music] guest support for this episode comes from partnership leaders the leading community of partnership professionals and Executives in SAS and Tech with over 1500 members globally we’re living the decade of the ecosystem and every CEO needs to become a partnership leader just take a look at the top companies in the world today like Microsoft Google and apple they have all become platform companies and partnership Executives in it have been the ones leading these transformation partnership leaders brings these Executives together and is building a Playbook to enable CEOs and Business Leaders across Industries to transform their organizations into platform companies if you’re a tech startup founder partnership leaders is the place for you to learn how to leverage Partnerships to take your business to the next level I’m a member of PL and co-host of the Germany chapter and have seen firsthand the richness and value of this incredible community visit partnership leaders.com to learn more and to apply to become a member make sure to mention in your application that makes preneurs refer you so you can receive a special price if your application is accepted and then of course you mentioned about starting greeny but if I understand correctly is then greeny your first own startup because you’ve done multiples entrepreneurial activities during your career like opening new lines of business creating new products but from what I understand it’s been primarily at established organizations like startups that were founded and you joined later on but is then greeny your first own company that you started from scratch it is my first company I think my career brings me to understand how the startup landscape work how people get money out of it how we solve the problems how everything is based in speculation obviously and like well like Wall Street it’s it’s the same thing I think it’s people that put Pony or gamble in the best candidate or in the best company to multiply their investment um I I understood how it works I understood what I I already said like the most important part is to solve a case and then the money comes by itself so I decided that I was ready I helped many startup scaling uh never failed because it’s not a matter of being good it’s a matter of listening putting people together to work catalyzing the the company team to arrive to the solutions so we have the right methods we arrive to the right solution that could be something completely different of what the compan is doing I’ve taken companies that they were doing something and finishing doing something else no just because we solve the real case so Jack greeny is my it’s my first company I decided that it was time uh to start I also wanted to do something that was impactful for the world I as I told you I’m a parent of a kid uh I see how the planet is involving global warming is a real problem that we have to solve and I think this problem out of the money that we can make of it it’s uh the impact that we can create in the society today uh the planet need our best brains to go there and think together how to solve it and it’s all polluted by a shade of green washing companies that they see that okay it’s a problem people are investing on it okay let’s build something to make money out of I’m not building something to make money out of it I’m building something to bring a solution and to accelerate the efforts I’m very curious about you mentioned you thought or you came to the realization that you were ready to start your own business but from what you mentioned you probably were ready some years ago um what was the compelling event that made you realize like okay this is the time for me to start something and not 3 4 years before I think it’s the um maybe the age also and the we have to be willing to sacrifice things know the to take out of the Comfort now being an entrepreneur it’s a a big challenge know creating a company handling people motivating and taking this project in under our skin and and trying to bring that to reality it’s a big Challenge and a big cample obviously I I’m not as comfortable as I was uh with a with a salary paid by by investment companies or startups but I think it was time it was time for me to invest my time my experience in into something that can have an impact and then obviously the the money will come and you mentioned about greeny and climate change specifically so what exactly drove you into this realization of course I think all of us watch the news we feel it now it’s super warm here in Europe again but what was that thing that told you like okay we need to go and do something regarding climate change what was that compelling event what happened during your journey that or was that something that you were already thinking for many years before trying to find a solution and then you landed with greeny’s Concept how was that Evolution I think there was a combination of two things the first one was my intervention in Fox intelligence fox has an application that is called clean Fox this application it’s it’s a public app that people can download and it connects the email or your email account and then it reads all the emails all newsletters that you have and quantifies what’s the impact in carbon about all this it’s like measuring your digital footprint and then it tells you okay if you delete all your newsletters from Amazon then you will save two tons of CO2 or it work it with objectives and objectives on loock trees that were planted as well so it was a nice solution and based on digital pollution I got inspired by this app that I had the pleasure to shape also together with the with the CEO and the teams later on I just decided that identify that there is two different uh sectors that are growing really fast and they are growing really fast because there is a an objective and a puzzle to solve the artificial intelligence that today we see it everywhere and the other one is ecology so I said okay in which of these two I should go and they said okay if I go to artificial intelligence I have to find a model and if I try to solve the EC case using my EXP in artificial intelligence then it will make sense then uh I was also thinking with my co-founder that worked with me in in my last experience in the DOI we will really drive by ecology by our gestures uh we went cycling or walking to the work trying to reduce our waste and we identify ourselves as a green guys and then uh we decided to simply try to start a research and we started research interviewing CSR manager interviewing Human Resources managers CEOs uh understanding what were their main challenges what they were willing to do what was the main Challenge and we identify that the main challenge in organizations today towards ecology it’s how I take all my employees with me into this now because it’s quite simple no you measure your carbon footprint say okay I produce I know 10,000 tons of CO2 so I what I can do to reduce it okay but then you have the rest of it no and there is uh what should I do with a carbon that I cannot reduce because companies need to pollute to exist no we we need digital emails we need to find to purchase good to produ products and so we saw that what they were doing today it’s purchasing carbon credits they go this year a company they purchase a carbon credit and kind of like they purchase the right to pollute but without any impact in the organization and then also we in the research we saw that carbon credit it’s today it’s a a really big grein washing as well I will say because the carbon credit could be purchased in a a carbon credit is a you purchase a ton of CO2 that is saved somewhere and mostly it’s coming from environmental uh projects or coming from reforestation today but reesta tree it cost really low and this Tre can stock one ton of CO2 in their own life so why when I purchase a tree it cost me € 15 yeah and when I purchase a carbon credit it cost me A1 where is the difference going if both Solutions are compensating the same amount of CO2 uh and this is going to control organizations and to Big multinationals that certified that uh the tree is going to be there for 20 years and they go every year and control and count the trees and they are not reforesting the money is not going to re Foresters the money is getting into the middle to these big big organizations that control the impact so we try to find an elegant model that can solve the problem and I think we are arriving to it that’s incredible and of course we we’ll Deep dive into greeny in the next conversation it’s already a fantastic preview for all of our listeners in terms of what greeny is about and I’m fascinated with these transitions that you’ve been going and now how you’ve decided to go all in into your own business but also what I would love to learn is so you’ve been outside Mexico many years already but how are you still connected to Mexico how are you contributing back to Mexico how are you keeping those ties with Mexico overall well first of all I have all my family that lives there so I keep going there every year uh to visit and to go back to my Origins and try to lose myself even if I today I consider myself as a human a citizens of the world I think I I have not much contact but oh no yeah yeah yeah I I actually have a a few friends that work in schools so time to time I try to give some talks to either children or or teenagers to try to inspire them and tell them uh that they can actually they they can build something they are not there just to work for somebody else I’m trying to explain them how the world and the economy Works how big or people with a lot of money they are looking for investment and they are looking for small companies to invest and so I do some workshops so I try to help young Mexicans understand that they don’t have to become salar or employees all the time they can build Solutions I go back to my first point like if they believe in what they do if they really never underestimate the power of resilience if you believe in what you are trying to solve and you are also willing to change your mind willing to challenge yourself with a product you are not trying to prove you are right you are trying to see how to solve the problem and if they found uh something that passionate them then they can do it and there is many examples of kids and teenagers that have build companies with an app because they somebody or their parents influen them and told them okay like if you identify that there is a problem then there is a solution let’s build something I do some talks I think in Mexico to motivate children and again with your background I can imagine there definitely some super insightful conversations that you’re having with young Generations there unfortunately we’re reaching the end of our conversation and again we’ll dive deeper into greeny in our next episode but what I would love to to learn from you is your best advice for other aspiring Founders I think you already mentioned some of that with the fact of a problem resilience but I would still love if you could share with us your best advice my best advice is to believe in yourselves if you wake up in the morning thinking okay what is my objective what I want to do and you solve the problem the money will come never never never put yourself in the position saying okay how do I make money because the position of how do I make money brings you to become an employee because that’s easy the easy way the mentality should be how I solve a problem and what’s the impact of that how can I make people or the life simple for a user and after that everything comes and as you mentioned if you solve the problem money will follow yeah indeed andon well thank you very much it was a fantastic conversation I’m very much looking forward to our next episode and thank you very much for being here likewise thank you and Dr you thank you and thanks to you for joining us today please remember to subscribe by your favorite podcast app to be notified about new episodes and share with us your feedback we would love to hear from you thank you also to the max preneur team Valeria Morel ector vagan from hyper voltage Francisco hes Pamela Elis Kya Cruz Rosio Marin I am Ser Chavez see you next time [Music] for