OutBe

B2B platform for social and environmental impact

Italy

About Us
OutBe’s team is made up of Luca Tixi, CEO and co-founder of OutBe, founder of Outdoor Portofino, researcher and professional athlete, studied at the University of Genoa and attended a Masters from the Quantic School of Business & Technology. Arianna Liconti, Head of Science & Ecosystem Manager, graduated from the University of Plymouth and Bangor University. Matilde Marino, Head of Marketing and Business Development. Graduated in Economics and Business with a specialization in Marketing from Maastricht University and undergraduate in Innovation and Business Development at CBS. Giulia Gasparrini, Communication Manager, studied at Audencia SciencesCom, CESINE Centro Universitario and Stanislas Cannes. Jacopo Dellacasa, Projects Officer, is in charge of project management and fundraising for OutBe. Graduated in International Political and Diplomatic Sciences from the University of Genoa and specialized in Local and Global Development at the Alma Mater Studiorum University of Bologna. Carola Dufour, Social Media Manager, studied Communication and Sustainable Business. Virginia Colotto, Chief Marketing Officer, specialized in building company’s brands.
OutBe is supported by a 4-member advisory board covering different areas of expertise. Michelle Gordon: Finance & Growth Advisor, takes care of the financial part of OutBe and works as a contract CFO and management consultant. Antonio Novellino: Research & Development Advisor, works as R&D manager at ETT SpA, CEO of SINDBAD scarl and of MUST srl. Vivek Suresh: Technology Advisor specializing in Data integration, ML and AI. Alessandra Tixi: Co-founder and Chief Happiness Officer, also works as Head of Communication & Marketing at Outdoor Portofino.

Problem we are solving
The sea covers about 71% of our Planet, is up to 10.9 km deep in some places, yet only less than 10% has been explored. The less we know about marine ecosystems and the physical characteristics that govern them, the less we will be able to protect them and cope with problems including climate change, overfishing and pollution. For this reason citizen science, defined as a method of data collection carried out by non-professionals, stands as a great resource for collecting data which is useful for sea conservation (Earp and Liconti, 2020).
At the same time, 73% of people between 18 and 30 years old believe that business leaders have a key role in protecting the environment. At OutBe our focus is both on the wellbeing of people and the Planet. While people at work feel stressed (in Italy, 64% of under 35) and only 4% feel engaged in their work space, our solution helps companies to collect environmental data while engaging their stakeholders in outdoor citizen science custom programs.


Through our science-proof programs and digital platform, we facilitate outdoor citizen science activities while accelerating the understanding and so protecting the environment. In terms of impact, our start-up counts 500 outdoor enthusiasts committed and ready to collect data. We have trained 250 of them with monitoring protocols and 100% of participants believe that they acquired important tools to preserve the environment thanks to our programs. Perceived mental and physical wellbeing increases while stress decreases, showing a positive impact on participants. The citizen science projects we have selected to be carried out during outdoor activities try to find information to quantify the impact of different issues, such as climate change, pollution and loss of biodiversity. We have supported 9 scientific projects with over 50 monitorings over the past year. We have also trained 5 local communities and outdoor centers to monitor the local environment on a continuous basis.

Sustainable Impact on Blue Ecconomy
Taking care of ourselves and the Planet is the innovative vision that underlies our project. When participatory approaches to nature monitoring and restoration are incorporated into outdoor sports activities, the result is a successful and innovative model that brings nature closer to people and people to nature. In fact, the first innovation is a service innovation because OutBe offers the possibility to practice sports and in the meantime contribute to the protection and conservation of nature.
This is also the unidentified need that OutBe strives to answer. Indeed, since Covid-19, people’s wellbeing especially within companies has been increasingly taken into consideration. Research has shown that staying in nature has fundamental benefits both for physical and mental health. Thus, we propose to deliver health and wellbeing for people while raising awareness and literacy on environmental issues.
Moreover, from primary and secondary market research we conducted, most of the platforms and startups that position themselves similarly to OutBe focus primarily on the sports and fitness side, or on the science and natural conservation side. While they are excellent examples, these realities do not explicitly link the sports activities that can be carried out on a daily basis to a measurable impact on nature conservation, and therefore limit the positive effect they could generate. The disruptive innovation that OutBe proposes by creating a new market therefore has the objective of bridging the gap between scientific activities useful for the conservation of our Planet, connecting active environmental awareness to responsible outdoor sports activities in a new model that strengthens the relationship between society and nature.
In addition, innovation is also of an organizational type given by the method designed to collect data in a simple way and within everyone's reach through a framework of data collection. The focus on data therefore allows you to give importance to the impact of the individual citizen and make your contribution usable and understandable for anyone within the ecosystem that has the framework as reference.

Financial Needs150.000,00