Today marks an important day in the story of Ambee. Five years ago, Akshay, Maddy, and I came together to try and figure out how we could positively impact the lives of millions. Our answer at the time was simple—Maddy had just seen the insidious effects of air pollution first-hand. From then on, the mission became clear: To find out how we can use technology to empower people and organizations across the world with the information needed to fight air pollution.
Our journey has taken us from a hardware company selling personal air quality monitors to building best-in-class APIs covering air quality, pollen, weather, forest fires, and soil. Today, we are world leaders in environmental APIs (but don’t just take my word for it, just ask some of our customers). Along the way, we’ve built a fundamentally sound organization whose emphasis on empathy, humility, and fearlessness has made us the preferred go-to partner for organizations across the globe.
The general sense at Ambee, however, is that we’re just getting started. In this spirit of “beginner’s mind,” we went back to the drawing board to try and answer a simple question – “What’s next?” The answer was right in front of us.
Climate change is an existential level threat to all life on the planet. Whichever side of the fence one may choose to be on, the fact is that millions of lives are at risk globally. The statistics are stark.
Climate change is simply the biggest problem we as humanity have faced to date, and every aspect of modern society needs to come together to fight it. At Ambee, we revel in trying to solve challenging problems, so the decision was taken that climate change was the problem that we would go after. However, this needed a fresh approach. Naturally, the gravity, size, and opportunity that the problem posed required us to take a new look at ourselves and how we solve problems.
We also needed the world to know that the audacity of our ambition is now greater than ever. Therefore, ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the new Ambee. Having spent the last five years creating the building blocks for climate change with our APIs, we intend to spend the next five-building products that will help companies fight the scourge of climate change head-on. While we look to the future with a sense of quiet confidence, we can never forget the past. Where we came from and our commitment to providing deep value to our existing and future API customers will always remain unflinching.
Our new goals also necessitated a fresh look and approach – something that can tell the world that we aren’t just solving a problem for ourselves but future generations as well. From the traditional logo, which showed the four elements of Earth (Green), Fire (Red), and Water (Blue) with Air in between, we have now moved to the elegantly simple ‘Pale Blue Dot.’
Nothing can more aptly encapsulate our reasons to use this new look towards building a global climate change company better than Carl Sagan when he saw the Pale Blue Dot.
To some, “the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it’s different. Consider again that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it, everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives… The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand.”
And indeed, make our stand we shall. Come, join us as we do our part in building out the next five years at Ambee and, in doing so, save the one home we have.
I have a deep-seated passion for the environment and in helping people improve the way they live their lives. As a co-founder at Ambee, I am committed to empowering individuals and businesses alike with the environmental data they need to heal our planet’s health.
