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.”

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.”

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