How Ocean Regeneration Is Winning Bank Customers | Mathias Boissonot, Founder & CEO at Handprint

Banks spend millions on carbon footprint. Banks have an engagement problem. Something is not working! This week I speak with Mathias Boissonot, Founder and CEO of Handprint and he makes a commercial case for a different model: instead of tracking what your customers do wrong, quantify what they're building right.

Handprint powers ocean regeneration programs for banks like DBS, including coral reef restoration and mangrove planting that customers own, watch grow, and choose to fund with their spend. The result isn't just goodwill. It's an 875% increase in customer engagement compared to legacy carbon programs, and $23 million a year in verified ecosystem value returned to society.

We get into why Mathias measures success by a metric most founders have never heard of: the "phoenix" over the unicorn, and the sales and founder lessons he's learned building the company from scratch.

What you'll learn

Why carbon offsetting and "your carbon footprint" features fail to change customer behavior, and what the psychology actually isThe handprint model: quantifying positive impact instead of negative impact, and why that flips the entire customer relationshipHow banks turn nature engagement into a growth engine: referral programs with co-owned impact, nature cashback instead of standard cashbackWhy 62% of customers would switch banks over purpose misalignment, and 52% already haveThe phoenix metric: measuring company success in ecosystem value generated, not just valuationMathias's biggest founder mistakes, and the best sales advice he's ever received: "implicate the pain"

Timestamps

00:00 — Cold open: has carbon offsetting failed?

04:40 — What Handprint actually does

06:55 — Phoenix vs. unicorn: a new metric for success

09:00 — $23 million in ecosystem value, every year

18:30 — Why donation and carbon-guilt features don't work

24:40 — Kill the cashback war: nature cashback instead