Where are they now? FuturePlus

FuturePlus is a former Hustle Award winner, having been crowned with the Sustainability Award back in 2023. We wanted to check back in with Co-Founder and CEO, Alex Smith, to see how the startup has evolved since the victory.

“FuturePlus has developed and evolved into an ecosystem of sustainability solutions,” explained Smith. “We’re primarily about sustainability management and progress towards positive impact. That has remained with the piece of software that we built, FutureImpact, which is consistently being developed. But we’ve expanded that out into an ecosystem of solutions. We have a carbon accountancy platform, and we also have the consultancy as well.”

FutureImpact was the startup’s original offering, a sustainability dashboard for businesses. The platform uses data-led insights to futureproof a businesses’ positive impact, helping integrate sustainable practices into their operations, communicate their ambitions, and report on progress. It helps a company see where they are currently and what they can improve on.

THE EVOLVING VISION

FuturePlus was born out of the belief that sustainability had become overwhelming:

“It was very technical, people didn’t feel that they could approach it, and also it was hugely siloed.”

Smith had found that whenever people spoke about sustainability, they were predominantly talking about the climate and the environment. However, the topics of diversity, equity and inclusion, social factors, and economic factors, rarely arose in these conversations. All of these factors give a better rounded view of sustainability, so leaving out these topics mean businesses develop risk areas.

The co-founders decided to create an option for businesses to monitor their current sustainability levels.

“Sustainability should and needs to be understood in a full 360° view for businesses when they’re making decisions, and [at the time] it didn’t feel like there was the ability or the tools to help businesses make those decisions. Sustainability had been consistently back-looking or historically focused. …We wanted to change the view into something that was very forward looking, and we did that by producing a score of where businesses currently are as part of the software. It’s really important to have a baseline. But what’s most important is ambition.

We quantify ambition for businesses, and so giving people the ability to say, ‘This is what we’ve done, this is what we are going to do, and this is what we recognise that we need to do, and this is the plan that we have to move forward’.”

This forward-looking approach is what has kept FuturePlus at the forefront of the industry.

WHAT’S NEW?

Over the years, Smith has noticed many micro changes that have made the world of difference to the business.

“We started with the idea of the platform being the central piece, and that has remained so. But what we have found is that our best relationships, and where we have created the best amount of support and change and positive impact, is where we have been able to create an entire ecosystem around what businesses need.”

So, FuturePlus launched PlusCarbon, its carbon accountancy platform.

At the start of the journey, Smith admitted carbon accountancy wasn’t an area FuturePlus wanted to get into. However, she quickly realised it can be super technical for companies and they need support.

“It felt like something that we should be doing, because we were working with some brilliant companies who were using other carbon accountancy platforms, and then coming to us saying, ‘We’ve got this report year-on-year, but we don’t know what to do about it.’ We wanted to fill that gap.”

The other big change has been starting a consultancy department.

Whilst the startup has always had FuturePlus advisors and humans as part of its process, launching a consultancy department has meant that FuturePlus is able to take on bigger, more complex, strategic projects, and really solve issues for businesses by acting like an outsourced sustainability team.

FuturePlus has continued to grow, now working in 17 countries across over 30 sectors, with a bigger in-house team, and is working with clients of a variety of sizes.

“We signed an agreement with the American Chamber of Commerce in Trinidad and Tobago at the end of last year, and working with all of these sort of companies outside the UK and the EU that are on different ESG maturity levels has been really interesting and been really important for us … We’ve been doing some incredible projects with companies like Google and Nestle, looking at AI. So the complexity of what we’re doing has been fantastic.”

CHALLENGES AND HIGHLIGHTS

One of the biggest challenges in the industry is meeting targets in a world that is ever-changing.

“There’s all these external changes that you have to be very dynamic and react to all of the time. I think it is a challenge to do that, but also, like all challenges, offers opportunities,” explained Smith.

“Being a tech company, one of the biggest challenges for us is AI, and it’s something we are diving into headfirst. We spend a lot of time talking about what AI can’t do at the moment, as well as what it is that we do really well.

“AI is so brilliant on so many levels, but you’ve still got to have credible, verified data, and it’s got to be evidenced. Sustainability remains something that is ultimately quite human in terms of asking people to do things differently and in a more sustainable fashion.

It actually requires actions on a human level. AI is pretty rubbish at implementation and change management within teams. It can give a guide, and you can get a framework in two seconds, but it can’t implement it, and it can’t give that guidance and education in order to give people the confidence to do stuff. We’ve delved into some of those challenges about what do we do really, really well, and what can that mean in a new world.”

On the flip side:

“I think some of the biggest highlights are seeing the impact of what we’ve done with our clients, which I know is probably one of those cheesier answers,” Smith laughed. “Things like winning the Hustle Award gives you a real feeling of what we’re doing is right, and we’re going in the right direction, and we do provide something that is special and unique and needed.”

Another highlight has been the team and its development.

“The type of work, who we’re working with, and how we’re working has developed. One of the conversations we have when we bring people onto the team is that it’s almost like microbusinesses. The most dangerous thing you can ever say is ‘I’ve got a good idea’, because if you’ve got a good idea, if you can write a good business case. Tell us what you need. If we agree with you, we’ll invest into that, and let’s grow it. And that has worked out really well for us.”

THE FUTURE(PLUS)

According to Smith, there is a lot of development happening within the platform.

“What AI looks like for us is going to start to come to fruition. We’ve started that build with our dev team at the moment, which is really exciting. Removing the burden around a lot of the admin around sustainability is something that we’re going to be looking to do, but maintaining those really important words for us, which are certified, verified, and evidence, and making sure that businesses have that support.”

Another big plan is how FuturePlus will be looking internationally. It is having conversations with groups in the Caribbean and Australia.

“I think it’s very exciting that what we’re doing has already proven it’s got global application, but those conversations are now really starting to come to fruition. The future is looking big.”

But something Smith wants everyone to remember is:

“At our absolute core, all we’re trying to do is make sustainability more accessible and achievable for businesses.”

This article originally appeared in the January/February 2026 issue of Startups Magazine. Click here to subscribe