Tassie carbon accounting startup banks $5.3 million Seed round

US climate tech investor Sophie Purdom has made her first international investment via her New York VC fund Planeteer Capital, leading a $5.3 million Seed round.

Purdom visited Sydney late last year as a keynote speaker at Climate Salad‘s Climate Tech Festival, which featured more than 50 Australian climate tech startups.

The one she’s picked as her first offshore bet is Tasmanian carbon accounting startup Sumday.

The round was also supported by existing backers Blackbird, Possible Ventures and Wedgetail Ventures, as well as Canva cofounder Cameron Adams.

Sumday previously raised $2 million in a pre-Seed round 12 months ago for its global ambitions, having expanded into the US and UK markets.

The subscription-based software startup gives accountants and bookkeepers the ability deliver non-financial accounting services to their clients, starting with carbon accounting. Around 50 accounting firms now use it to tackle greenhouse gas (GHG) accounting on supply chains.

It was cofounded in 2021 by former lawyer Jessica Richmond and accountants Danny Hoare and Lindsay Ellis, in the northern Tasmanian industrial town of Burnie. They’ve also focused on education around scope 3 emissions – those outside a company and known as value chain emissions, from product build to use.

The Canva cofounder has a farm in Tasmania and the Sumday team managed to get Adams on board as an investor after tracking him down to an event he was speaking at and making their pitch.

Jessica Richmond said the scope 3 emissions problem won’t be solved without value being realised by everyone in the chain.

“This funding means we can continue democratising access to robust, audit-ready GHG accounting across the globe,” she said.

“Whether companies want to handball this work to their accountant or upskill internally, we’ve got their back.

“As we grow across the UK, EU and US, our roots remain deeply embedded in our firsthand experience as an accounting firm in rural Tasmania that just had to solve the obvious problems, from accuracy, to upskilling, from affordability to accessibility.”