A 200-person manufacturing company in Ohio lands a contract with a Fortune 500 customer. During onboarding, the customer's procurement team sends a 47-page supplier sustainability questionnaire. The operations manager stares at questions about Scope 3 emissions, water usage metrics, and diversity spending percentages. They have none of this data. They spend 80 hours scrambling to compile something — mostly guesses formatted to look like data. They pass the audit barely. Next year, they'll have to do it again.
ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) reporting is trickling down from public companies to their supply chains. California's climate disclosure laws require large companies to report supply chain emissions — meaning their suppliers (often SMBs) need to track and report ESG data. The EU's CSRD affects any company doing business in Europe. Mid-market companies are being asked for ESG data they've never collected and don't know how to collect.
Workiva and Sphera serve enterprises at $50K+/year. Greenly ($120+/mo) does carbon footprinting but not full ESG. The opportunity is an ESG compliance tracker at $99-199/mo for SMBs: pre-built templates for common customer questionnaires (CDP, EcoVadis formats), guided data collection for emissions/water/waste/diversity, year-over-year tracking, and export in formats customers actually request. Not full sustainability strategy — just 'answer the questionnaire your customer sent.' Target manufacturers and professional services firms in supply chains of ESG-reporting companies.
📊 Market Evidence
🏆 Competitor Landscape
How existing players stack up in this market
| Competitor | Pricing | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Workiva | Contact sales ($10k+/yr) | Enterprise ESG reporting |
| Sphera | Contact sales | Operational risk + ESG |
| Diligent ESG | Contact sales | Board management + ESG |
| Novisto | Contact sales | ESG data management |
| Greenly | $120+/mo | Carbon footprint for SMBs |
Enterprise ESG reporting
Operational risk + ESG
Board management + ESG
ESG data management
Carbon footprint for SMBs
Score Breakdown
Good market signals with room for growth
Market (20%) + Revenue (20%) + Trend (15%) + Competition (15%) + Build (15%) + Pricing (15%)
🚀 Start Building
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Build a SaaS product called "ESG Compliance Tracker for SMBs". ## Product Overview Automated ESG data collection and reporting ## Problem Automated ESG data collection and reporting ## Solution Build ESG Compliance Tracker for SMBs ## Target Audience indie hackers, small businesses, and solopreneurs ## Tech Stack - Next.js 15 (App Router) with TypeScript - Tailwind CSS v4 for styling - Supabase for auth, database, and storage - Vercel for deployment - shadcn/ui for UI components - Framer Motion for animations ## MVP Features to Build 1. Landing page with clear value proposition 2. User authentication (sign up, sign in, forgot password) 3. Core product functionality based on the solution above 4. Dashboard for users to manage their data 5. Pricing page with at least 2 tiers (free + paid) 6. Basic settings/profile page ## Known Competitors Workiva, Sphera, Diligent ESG, Novisto, Greenly ## Key Risks to Address Standard market entry risks ## Deployment 1. Set up Supabase project and configure environment variables 2. Deploy to Vercel with `npx vercel --prod` 3. Set up custom domain 4. Configure Supabase RLS policies for security ## Instructions Start by creating the project structure, then build the landing page first. Use server components where possible. Make it mobile-responsive from the start. Focus on getting the core value loop working before adding polish.