Technology with purpose: the Couch to 5K of sustainability

Part of the reason the NHS’ Couch to 5K app is successful is because it promotes little changes as the best way for beginners to get running – and in turn make a significant impact on their health. Tech entrepreneur Lars Ronning is aiming to do the same with his app Ailuna, but here we’re talking about the health of the planet, the everyday behaviours consumers and people in the workplace need to shift to improve it – and ultimately how new business ideas can help drive them.

Ailuna (translated from Hawaiian as “aiming high”) is a community-based sustainability training app, which launched early last year. It already has thousands of users in more than 50 countries around the world, who can choose from a series of personal challenges (called dares) that help them build new habits over time, one habit at a time.

You may choose to focus on remembering your reusable bottle, changing to a less meat-based diet or walk/bike to work, for example, and the app aims to give you the information you need before you start, lets you invite others to join you, tracks your progress and offers tips and advice along the way. Once a habit is formed, you can move onto the next dare – and as you rack up the rewards for each completed dare, the app is designed to help you see the positive impact your actions are having.

“What’s really important is that Ailuna is built on behavioural science. We’ve got a scientist on our team and are drawing inspiration from James Clear who wrote “Atomic Habits” – because it’s all about how you can build better habits step-by-step,” explains Ronning. “You should not try to do too much. You should not try to boil the ocean. Because you end up disappointed and you don’t achieve what you set out to do.”

From idea to evolution – with lots of experiments in between

Ronning and his wife Helene came up with the idea for the app after they wanted to become more sustainable themselves, but couldn’t find much support out there – either for “ordinary consumers” or for small businesses (and larger ones) who wanted to drive employee engagement around sustainability.

And through constant development, experiments, responding to user feedback and catering to their differing content needs, the Ailuna team is now evolving the app for team and business use. It’s now starting a series of commercial pilots – which Ronning terms “early mover” projects with UK businesses to prove “it’s what companies need and want”.

“Businesses need to start satisfying various carbon reduction goals. And many businesses are doing pretty well when it comes to supply chain, manufacturing, packaging, logistics, buildings, infrastructure. But where they need to focus also is engagement within the workforce around sustainability. Because if their employees aren’t buying into sustainability, businesses will not be as successful as they would otherwise.”

Instead of individual dares, there are team dares – and businesses signed up have the chance to tailor them together with Ailuna to support their own goals, initiatives and reporting requirements. “They can use it to engage with their customers, their partners and their suppliers too,” says Ronning.

Behind the scenes – and ready to scale

So far the app has been funded through a combination of angel investors, high net worth individuals and crowd-funding – a benefit of more people seeing the importance of taking sustainability seriously. But it can be challenging to get investors across the line, who often want to see the evidence of business revenues first. Ronning calls it a “chicken and egg situation”.

Nevertheless, revenues are starting to build and he’s confident in the proposition and the importance of developing technology with purpose.

Emerging during the pandemic, Ailuna’s early success also says something about the power to innovate while working remotely. The business has 25 staff based across nine different countries – because “we’ve hired where the skills are”.

“It's become much more established and accepted that people can work from anywhere. By having the right sort of infrastructure in place with Slack, Zoom and Google Workspace, and all the other tools we're using, we have been able to keep communicating, and keep innovating despite people being in different locations and in different time zones.”

And with global ambitions, “having a global team from day one gives us additional strength”.

Yet he also firmly sees Ailuna’s roots as being a British business, bolstered by the global leadership the UK continues to exert in sustainability and a network of businesses in the sharing economy who all want to do the right thing.

For a business just starting out, he adds: “The UK is also a big market. There is a lot of appetite for change and people are starting to understand sustainability and taking it seriously. That goes from consumers to boardrooms.” And that leaves a lot of space for businesses to serve.