Katelyn Prendiville in conversation with Tech Ready Women’s Program Lead, Crystal McGregor, shared about her startup, SeedCulture, a gamified education and engagement sustainability platform for teams. 

SeedCulture addresses the need of the large scale educational campaigns and the shortage of resources faced by sustainability teams.

The cloud-based software helps organisations upskill, engage and empower their employees to help meet their ESG and climate goals.

The metaphorical seeds of the startup were sown when Katelyn was in Dubin a few years ago and was introduced to the UN sustainability and development goals. And while she was exploring how to make her apparel business more sustainable, she did a deep dive into broader sustainability topics from climate change to modern slavery. The learning journey really motivated her to think about how to create systemic change to address global challenges. SeedCulture is a product Katelyn would have benefited from as an employee to understand and amplify her own impact. 

The main challenges Katelyn faced was when she built the first platform was customer acquisition and how to turn feedback into a viable product roadmap. But then, as Katelyn was starting Tech Ready Women’s Female Founder Startup program, she faced another issue with a Co-Founder. At Tech Ready Women, Katelyn found a supportive community rallying behind her and mentorship that helped her get through tough times.

After the program, Katelyn took time to reflect, and officially decided to transition her career from marketing to sustainability after undertaking several certifications and courses. She started to work with a management consultancy as a sustainability consultant to work with large organsiations on their sustainability strategies and operating models. This experience allowed her to see the problem with a new perspective, not only as an employee but also a sustainability professional. 

As a woman in tech entrepreneurship, Katelyn had to overcome structural barriers as a minority. She finds it difficult to make her voice heard with investors and felt invisible and not taken as seriously. She credits some of this to imposter syndrome. Remembers that to truly rally people around a mission and vision and create meaningful impact, she personally feels the need to persevere to make her voice heard. 

For Katelyn, a big win has been having the courage and conviction to pick herself up after what felt to her like rock bottom, and pursue her idea to reality. Despite it being early days, Katelyn has received significant interest in SeedCulture from larger organisations. 

The next steps for Katelyn are to translate her (self-made) mockups to a product roadmap and start building. 

From the Tech Ready Women community, Katelyn would love any introductions to progressive or sustainability focused organisations!

If you know an organisation like this, please feel free to get in touch with Katelyn directly through seedculture.io or her personal LinkedIn.