Trial run for a unicorn

Everywhere there are ribbons, flags and multi-colored confetti. Between the calathea sheets, geometric tables, several graphs and the little note left to Priyanka for her birthday. Continue, and here you go, coffees, cookies and beanbags that you don't know what to do with them. Atmosphere: good atmosphere. Welcome to 7 rue de Madrid, in the 8th arrondissement of Paris. On the sixth floor of WeWork, privatized spaces and behind these large glass doors, the Contentsquare premises. Further on, it is in a cozy room called “The Apartment” that Kat Borlongan, 40, settled.

The multi-project entrepreneur, expert in tech and digital accessibility, committed for nearly three years alongside entrepreneurs in the French Tech ecosystem, is far from having finished her day. Between several calls - jargon for “calls” - and a conference she will give the same evening on Sustainability Transformation, the Chief Impact Officer has plenty to do. So to our first question “why a Chief Impact Officer?” she answers right away: “because the market now expects more from startups”. The tone is set and the questions follow one another.

“First, what you need to understand is that the impact cannot be managed by marketing or HR functions, otherwise your project is doomed to failure,” she begins. “On the one hand, because the subject of impact measurement is a subject as such. On the other hand, because they are new skills and a vision that makes a system. Thinking about the positive impact therefore means thinking not about what we are going to say, but about what we are really going to do to reduce and improve our externalities.”

The Chief Impact Officer would therefore be responsible for all processes that generate a social and environmental impact, as defined by the mission and values of the company. A kind of CSR 2.0 manager, integrated into the company's management, whose budget and influence would be much greater and much more visible in the company's strategy. “In the same way as a CSR manager, my role will be to carry out positive actions.

But unlike CSR, these actions will not be outside the scope of the company's primary activity. The idea is absolutely no longer to confine social and environmental responsibility to a separate department. We must put the same ambition on the subject of impact as on that of sales.” This correlation is the main difference between the CSR manager and the CIO. The latter therefore has a much larger budget, but above all, he sits on the executive committee of his company, and is therefore involved in strategic decisions.

According to Kat Borlongan, for the actions of a CIO to be truly effective, “You need a budget equivalent to at least 1% of the company's revenue. And among those who exercise the position, the vast majority are far from having as many resources [...] For this to work, you have to put the same ambition and the same investment into the subject of impact as to that of sales, product, etc.” The bet is ambitious. What is the reality?

With a very proudly proclaimed mission, “to help businesses of all sizes and from all sectors to create a more human digital world”, Contentsquare thinks big, very big. In total, the scale-up counts six fundraisers (worth a total of 1.4 billion dollars) and 18 international offices (including Paris, London, New York, Munich, Tel Aviv, Tokyo and Singapore). Since 2019, Contentsquare has acquired Clicktale, Pricing Assistant, Dareboost, AdapteMonWeb, Upstride and Hotjar. Added to that servers to manage these billions of analyzed data, the challenges are dizzying. With all this, the IOC has plenty to work on. So where and where do you start? And how can we respond to the skepticism of some people about the real capacity to reduce the negative externalities of a company with such a growth model? Is all of this really reconcilable?

“It is true that the word “impact” itself can inspire some skepticism because it is not always understandable for all those who have not evolved in this complex subject or even “bullshit” for those who come back. But, regardless of the profile of the person asking me the question, I tend to suggest that they leave the word aside to question the method. The famous, where do we start, that you ask me. So here are five things that I think are important. The first thing to take into account is that investors are no longer just looking at the numbers. You must therefore have at your side a founder who is sufficiently visionary to understand the need to integrate an impact manager into the C-suite, understand CEO, COO, CIO, or the management of the company.

When point two is fulfilled, you must have plenty of bandwidth in their ministerial diaries among these thinkers (laughs!). This is what will allow you to carry out all the steps to follow. The fourth step is this: once you have the attention and the budget needed to achieve your mission, you can think about how a core product of your business, which creates enormous value, can now be explored from a “non-profit” perspective or exploited for the general interest of public service organizations. Finally, sustainability is the key word. If your founder wants to sell his project, he will only have numbers in his sights. On the other hand, there is the best chance of establishing impact frameworks in their business.”

By recruiting a CIO, Contentsquare's project was not to launch a communication operation. “We quickly set ourselves the goal of becoming a company with a mission in a few years,” she says. A statute created in 2019 to designate companies with one or more social and environmental objectives in addition to their profit motive. In the words of Jonathan Cherki, the founder of Contentsquare, Kat Borlongan explains what prompted the startup to review its impact relationship: “Our company has reached a point where we have built a solid reputation and reach thanks to our product, our teams, our partner network, our resources and our growth. Power and responsibility are deeply intertwined, and our growth must be meaningful. We can't become one of the largest SaaS companies in the world without having a positive impact business. ”

By nature, the status of a company with a mission is expressed very differently from one company to another, depending on the actions taken. For Kat Borlongan, one of the first steps in this project was to determine the fields of action where Contentsquare, through its expertise in the field of user experience, could carry out social or ecological action. “We have identified two fields of action. On the one hand, the impact, which leads us to redefine the norm of what a good user experience is. In particular on issues of accessibility, protection of privacy and respect for the environment.

In a second step, we identified issues of diversity and inclusion in our staff, and that of Contentsquare subsidiaries.” Even today, the position of CIO remains very rare in companies. While their number is expected to increase in the coming years, Kat Borlongan believes that “ideally, in 10 or 20 years, this type of position is likely to disappear, as the concept of impact integrates into the daily life of each employee.” As for Contentsquare, the unicorn continues at full gallop and the best seems to come.