How to embed sustainability into unit economics, how to stay true to your mission, being an impact entrepreneur in a short-termist and finance-first World
How should founders embed sustainability and impact into their business models — not as compliance overhead, but as genuine competitive advantage — at a time when ESG regulation is tightening and investors’ appetite for “impact premiums” is fading? Taking into account that public money and Government subsidies is not a sustainable business model any more, even if you think it has ever been one.
This is no longer only a philosophical question. It’s an operational one.
Over the past weeks, I sat down with 11 battle-tested founders across climate, circular economy, fintech, health, education, and civic tech to pressure-test a simple idea: when does impact actually translate into ROI?
I listened. I challenged. I compared execution patterns.
This piece also builds on more than a hundred long-form interviews I’ve conducted since 2021 for my podcast 40 Nuances de Next — an unusually rich archive of founders speaking openly about what works when sustainability meets the P&L.
What follows is not a manifesto. It’s a field guide.
Lesson 1 — Impact must live in unit economics, not in deck appendices
The first and most brutal pattern: if impact does not improve your unit economics, it will eventually be cut.
Paolin Pascot, founder of Agryco (former Agriconomie), put it plainly: “We’re building regenerative agriculture supply chains. But if the economics don’t work for farmers and buyers simultaneously, it’s just a nice PowerPoint.”
Agryco doesn’t sell “regeneration” as a moral add-on. It embeds carbon sequestration into yield improvement and supply-chain resilience. Sustainability is not a cost line — it’s the mechanism that stabilizes margins on both sides of the market. Hortense Harang, at Fleurs d’Ici (We Trade Local), applied the same logic to flowers: “We don’t compete on ‘being local’ as a feel-good story. We compete because hyper-local sourcing reduces waste, improves freshness, and creates defensible relationships with growers. The impact is real, but so is the business case.”
Here’s the rule most decks still avoid: customers don’t pay for virtue; they pay for performance.
If sustainability doesn’t improve quality, reliability, or cost structure, it will not survive scale.
Lesson 2 — Product superiority beats moral storytelling
Marta Sjögren, CEO of Paebbl, crystallizes the hard truth of climate tech: “Climate tech only scales if it’s economically inevitable. We’re mineralizing CO₂ into building materials — but we win because our product performs better and costs less than alternatives, not because customers want to save the planet.” This is the dividing line between scalable climate tech and subsidized experiments.
Paebbl doesn’t ask buyers to compromise. It removes the trade-off entirely. The carbon story matters — but only because the product already wins on physics and pricing.
Impact that depends on customer goodwill is fragile.
Impact that rides on product superiority compounds.
Lesson 3 — Expand the stakeholder map or stall
The second major insight: impact often creates value — but in the wrong budget.
Maxime Leroux, founder of ClimateView, learned this the hard way: “We went from targeting environmental departments to engaging transport, budget, and economic development departments. Climate action planning touches everyone’s budget — you just need to quantify it in their language.”
By reframing climate action as infrastructure planning, ClimateView unlocked a much broader buyer universe.
Same product. Different translation.
Rachel Delacour, CEO of Sweep, applies the same principle in large corporations: “Carbon accounting isn’t just an ESG compliance exercise. It’s supply chain risk management, operational efficiency, and investor relations. The moment you reframe it as business intelligence, every CFO pays attention.”
Impact doesn’t fail because it has no value.
It fails because founders don’t know how to price that value across stakeholders.
Lesson 4 — Control your destiny before you maximize impact
Axel Dauchez, founder of Make.org, speaks openly about a tension many impact founders avoid naming: “There are moments when business is subordinated to mission because you’re at the end of an investment cycle — you need others to survive. At that moment, your priority is business survival.”
He goes further: “When you find yourself in control of your destiny — when the business is there — your priority becomes maximizing impact.”
This is uncomfortable, but accurate.
Selling below cost while claiming moral superiority is not impact — it’s dependency.
Only companies that control their cash trajectory can afford to push their mission fully.
Lesson 5 — Internal coherence is an impact KPI (KAPI*)
Dauchez adds a rarely discussed dimension: “You can’t sustain internal dissonance between what people experience in their guts and what they tell their families. If you don’t address this with your team, there is huge internal suffering.”
Impact is not only external.
When the company narrative diverges from daily reality, teams feel it immediately.
This is where transparency becomes operational, not ideological.
Lesson 6 — Radical honesty beats inspirational fiction
Axel Dauchez practices brutal clarity: “Have we really solved the problem of women’s violence? No. Are we up to the task? No. Did we do good things? Yes.” And then the line most founders avoid: “The ‘everything is great’ speech often hides the discomfort that people feel.”
Nicolas Reboud, founder of Shine, echoes this restraint: We built tools that genuinely reduce administrative burden for small businesses. That’s real impact — but we don’t pretend we’ve fixed France’s entrepreneurship ecosystem. We fixed one pain point well.”
Impact credibility grows when ambition is precise and limits are explicit.
Lesson 7 — Impact is often organizational, not Thematic
Loïc Soubeyrand, founder of Swile, reframes impact through execution quality: “My personal fight is making work better. Most workplace unhappiness comes from dysfunctional organizations.”
This is not glamorous impact. It doesn’t photograph well. But it touches millions of daily experiences — and it directly affects retention, engagement, and performance.
Sometimes the most scalable impact is simply running a better company.
Lesson 8 — Reject the profit vs impact dichotomy : Ecology is Economy… and vice versa.
Mathieu Nebra, co-founder of OpenClassrooms, dismisses the framing altogether: “Common sense doesn’t need to adapt to certain terms. If you think something is important, just do it. Impact is a slogan — what matters is doing things correctly.”
He adds:“There are two unique modern challenges — environmental crisis at unprecedented scale and global inequality. But the fundamental nature of entrepreneurship hasn’t changed: solve real problems for real people.”
This is not naïve. It’s disciplined.
Lesson 9 — When business case and impact case are aligned (ie identical)
Eric Carreel, founder of Withings (and Fifteen), applies this logic to health tech: “We make devices that help people understand their health. The impact is obvious — but we don’t position it as charity. We position it as essential infrastructure for preventive healthcare.”
Preventive health is impact. It’s also a massive market inefficiency waiting to be corrected. When impact aligns with structural demand, pricing power follows.
Lesson 10 — Start from problems worth solving
Pascal Lorne, who recently exited GoJob, summarizes a decade of execution: “We succeeded because we started from problems worth solving — education, employment access, social inclusion — not from what was technically flashy or fundable.”
Impact here is not branding. It’s a strategic focus.
Lesson 11 — The investors’ rule of thumb
After listening to these founders, a pattern becomes unavoidable:
The only impacts that scale are those that do at least one of the following:
- structurally improve unit economics
- reduce operational or regulatory risk
- compress acquisition, retention, or financing costs
Everything else is storytelling.
What you should do Next
- Embed impact in unit economics. If sustainability doesn’t improve margin, redesign the product.
- Translate impact across budgets. Learn to sell risk reduction, efficiency, and resilience — not ideals.
- Control your cash trajectory. You can’t maximize impact while economically fragile.
- Practice radical transparency. Credibility compounds faster than inspiration.
- Reject false dichotomies. Profit and impact are not enemies — confusion is.
- Build for inevitability. Anchor strategy in physics, prices, and real constraints — not regulatory moods.
Synthesis
In 2026, impact entrepreneurship is no longer about choosing between mission and money.
It’s about building companies where economic value and social or environmental value reinforce each other structurally.
Markets don’t reward virtue.
They reward inevitability.
As Loïc Soubeyrand puts it: “When you improve organizational excellence, you improve happiness at work — which is a big part of everyone’s day. That’s impact that drives business performance.”
This article is based on interviews conducted in Q4 2025 with: Paolin Pascot (Agryco), Hortense Harang (We Trade Local / Fleurs d’Ici), Marta Sjögren (Paebbl), Loïc Soubeyrand (Swile), Axel Dauchez (Make.org), Eric Carreel (Withings / Fifteen), Mathieu Nebra (OpenClassrooms), Maxime Leroux (ClimateView), Nicolas Reboud (Shine), Rachel Delacour (Sweep), and Pascal Lorne (GoJob).
