Green Success Stories sat down with Jason and Jaime Curtis, co-founders of Option Zero, a climate-focused software development consultancy they run as a husband-wife team.

Jason and Jamie describe their journey growing their skills at a variety of companies from climate-focused to not, and from tiny startup to Fortune 500, while struggling with life balance. Having developed their unique sets of skills, they realized that their traditional jobs weren’t making the best use of those skills towards fighting climate change, or their time as a family. Developing and running Option Zero has enabled them now to lead a life of enhanced connection, meaning, and impact.

Tell us a bit about your sustainability journey.

You can get the full, in-depth version in a profile that was done on us in Part Time Tech: https://www.parttimetech.io/p/jaime-jason-curtis-option-zero.

But here’s the abridged version:

We were both working hard in our own careers in Big Tech companies. But we think big picture, and started to see that our work didn’t feel very impactful, and at the same time was making balance impossible to find regarding work, play, and especially family.

We decided to change things around. We quit our jobs and started our own consulting company, Option Zero, that does software engineering, fractional CTO work, and more, in the climate space.

We wanted our work to be varied, impactful, and on our own terms. Plus we wanted to structure our lives such that we could work, play, and raise our child together. With Option Zero we’ve got the best of both worlds. We do work that’s good for the planet and good for our family. Balance.

Tell us a bit about the product or solution you offer.

Option Zero offers fractional chief technology officer (CTO) services and software development services for climate companies. We also teach a class entitled Software For Climate with Terra.do, which helps software people (engineers and otherwise) transition their careers towards climate.

Share a green success story with us – how have you helped customers or other businesses in the fight against climate change?

We had a green success story with Carbon Yield. We met Sam and Claire who had a successful concierge type business helping farmers find regenerative agriculture solutions. They came to us with a solid reproducible business, and we provided the software know-how to help them figure out how to scale it. As a fractional CTO, we were able to take on the work they needed done in bits and pieces. Our first engagement was around roadmapping, which helped set them in the right direction. Later we did a second scope of work around helping them set a solid data foundation to take control of their data going forward, and finally for the last year or so we’ve been working with them to build out their web app.

With another client, we started out in a software-shop consulting mode where we built some specific energy modeling software for them. That job eventually grew into more of an architect and leadership role. We ultimately helped them hire a full time CTO to replace us.

The fractional CTO model is a great fit for companies that are bootstrapping or don’t have a ton of funding yet – we can help them tune their direction and build their momentum by build out what they need, when they need it.

What would you do with $1 billion dollars?

We would fund every promising project especially hardware startups. We would earmark a lot of it for countries and populations that are experiencing instability due to climate.

How would you like people to get in touch with you?

Reach out to us at https://www.optionzero.co/ or sign up for our class at https://www.terra.do/climate-change-courses/software-for-climate/.

Kudos

Many thanks to Jason and Jaime Curtis, co-founders of Option Zero. Green Success Stories is happy to support and highlight their efforts! We invite you the reader to do the same.

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