Skip to Main Content
HBS Home
  • About
  • Academic Programs
  • Alumni
  • Faculty & Research
  • Baker Library
  • Giving
  • Harvard Business Review
  • Initiatives
  • News
  • Recruit
  • Map / Directions
Alumni
  • Login
  • Volunteer
  • Clubs
  • Reunions
  • Bulletin
  • Class Notes
  • Help
  • Give Now
  • Stories
  • Alumni Directory
  • Lifelong Learning
  • Careers
  • Programs & Events
  • Giving
  • …→
  • Harvard Business School→
  • Alumni→
  • Stories→

Stories

Stories

998
998 views
01 Jun 2023

Bridging the ESG Data Gap

Career pivot leads to ESG platform for VCs
Re: Megan Murday (MBA 2021); Rebekah Emanuel (MBA 2015); By: Deborah Blagg
Topics: EntrepreneurshipBusiness Ventures-Business StartupsEnvironment-Environmental SustainabilityCareer-Career Changes
ShareBar

Megan Murday

The idea for a digital platform to help venture capitalists calculate, benchmark, and improve portfolio ESG performance crystallized while Megan Murday (MBA 2021) was studying at HBS. Now the CEO of the software startup Metric, she says that “investors increasingly manage environmental, social, and governance [ESG] performance for long-term value creation.” Murday developed and launched the company in 2020, collaborating with faculty, experienced entrepreneurs, and fellow students at the i-lab, a physical and virtual learning environment within the Harvard Innovation Labs ecosystem. It provides students and alumni from across Harvard’s 13 schools with wide-ranging resources and support for creating their own ventures and solving problems through innovation.

During Metric’s incubation at the i-lab, Murday developed analytics that meet the evolving ESG needs of both founders and venture capitalists. Founders use the software to report ESG data by answering a few operations-focused questions, and then they can easily access ESG scores, peer benchmarks, and customized plans for improvement. Venture investors see ESG data from founders in real time, enabling limited partner reporting and portfolio monitoring.

Launching a startup was not Murday’s original goal in attending HBS. She grew up in a Rust Belt city outside of Chicago and expected to work in the public sector after studying policy at Georgetown. Murday saw the potential for greater impact in the private sector though, and she planned to pursue a post-HBS career at a Midwest company to test her thesis that tech-led growth could revitalize the region’s battered economy. Her pivot to entrepreneurship began while looking for companies with inclusivity and sustainability embedded in their business models. “I found lots of ESG buzzwords and messaging,” Murday notes, “but quantitative data was missing.”

  Nurturing  
  Breakthrough  
  Ideas  

     READ MORE STORIES

  Nurturing  
  Breakthrough  
  Ideas  

     READ MORE STORIES
Her assessment resonated with HBS classmates from private equity, who said their limited partners had started demanding better-quality ESG data to evaluate ongoing investment management. During Startup Bootcamp, a short intensive program for first-year MBA students, Murday and a team of classmates explored the idea of a TurboTax-style platform for gathering, reporting, and analyzing ESG statistics. In spring 2020, the team moved the concept forward at the i-lab, a dynamic space in Batten Hall where undergraduate and graduate students from across Harvard gather to exchange ideas, attend programs and workshops, and collaborate with faculty, staff advisors, legal experts, HBS alumni, and entrepreneurs-in-residence.

Murday was at the i-lab the day Harvard’s campus-wide COVID-19 shutdown was announced. “That was a curveball,” she notes, but adds that the Harvard Innovation Labs moved quickly to set up virtual resources. She credits Rebekah Emanuel (MBA 2015), senior advisor for Social Impact at the i-lab, with helping Metric land early customer interviews and build a pitch deck narrative. “Her social entrepreneurship experience was invaluable,” Murday says.

Metric was a finalist in the New Venture Competition sponsored by HBS’s Arthur Rock Center for Entrepreneurship and today is a Chicago-based company with a half-dozen employees and venture investment from institutional funds and strategic angel investors. Murday says her post-HBS involvement with two alumni-focused Harvard Innovation Labs programs—Launch Lab X GEO (LLX GEO) and the Harvard Climate Entrepreneurs Circle—has been uniquely helpful in Metric’s progress.

LLX GEO, led by Thara Pillai, director of Alumni Engagement, is a six-month, virtual accelerator for recent founders across industries all over the world. The curriculum includes tactical workshops, leadership circles, pitch feedback, and monthly talks with successful founders. “The sessions were terrific,” she recalls, “but camaraderie was the highlight. Hearing cohort members’ perspectives and learning from their experiences was incredibly helpful.”

A cofounder of the HBS Sustainability Club as a student, Murday remains keenly interested in business and climate change. That focus is front and center among participants in the Climate Circle, where she connected with advisors and prospective Metric customers. The nine-month program offers one-to-one mentoring and workshops for founders of high-potential ventures. “Participants represent the interdisciplinary perspectives required to create practical climate solutions,” she explains.

As Metric’s customer base expands, providing a one-stop shop for ESG and impact data management is Murday’s goal. “From addressing climate change to revitalizing struggling regional economies, business leaders have an opportunity and responsibility to tackle the most pressing issues of our time,” she states. “Our company empowers venture investors and founders to do just that.”




NURTURING
BREAKTHROUGH
IDEAS


An Engine of Innovation


From Big Pharma to Startup


Cultivating Prosperity in Afghanistan

 
ShareBar

Featured Alumni

Megan Murday
MBA 2021
Login to send a message

Post a Comment

Featured Alumni

Megan Murday
MBA 2021
Login to send a message

Related Stories

    • 01 Dec 2023
    • HBS Alumni Bulletin

    Rounding the Bend

    Re: Emily Bolon (MBA 2007); James Reinhart (MBA 2009); Christopher Homer (MBA 2009); Maria McClay (MBA 2006); By: Jen McFarland Flint
    • 01 Dec 2023
    • HBS Alumni Bulletin

    Thinking Ahead

    Re: Simin Lee (MBA 2016); Julian De Freitas (Assistant Professor of Business Administration); Jeremy Yang (Assistant Professor of Business Administration); Julia B. Austin (Senior Lecturer of Business Administration); Thomas W. Graeber (Assistant Professor of Business Administration); Seth Neel (Assistant Professor of Business Administration); David C. Edelman (Senior Lecturer of Business Administration); Brian J. Hall (Albert H. Gordon Professor of Business Administration); By: Julia Hanna; Illustrations by Chris Gash
    • 02 Nov 2023
    • HBS Alumni News

    Seeding Startups

    Re: Shirish Nadkarni (MBA 1987); By: April White
    • 22 Nov 2022
    • Harvard Business Review

    Why Startups Should Embrace Radical Transparency

    By: Jeff Bussgang

More Related Stories

 
 
 
 
ǁ
Campus Map
External Relations
Harvard Business School
Teele Hall
Soldiers Field
Boston, MA 02163
Phone: 1.617.495.6890
Email: alumni+hbs.edu
→Map & Directions
→More Contact Information
  • Make a Gift
  • Site Map
  • Jobs
  • Harvard University
  • Trademarks
  • Policies
  • Accessibility
  • Digital Accessibility
  • Terms of Use
Copyright © President & Fellows of Harvard College