Corentine Piette on sustainability as good business, paying the alignment tax as a PM and overcoming imposter syndrome
Product and CakeShow Notes
In 2019, every investor wanted a climate slide in your pitch deck. Then came the war, rising interest rates and fading VC money, and sustainability slid down the priority list. Corentine leads product at Sweep, a sustainability intelligence platform that collects, harmonizes and makes sense of companies' sustainability data, so they can report, comply and act on it. Sweep was founded in 2020. Its customers account for around 2% of global emissions.
Ghonche and Paul talk with Corentine about how the pitch changed from values to financial losses and ROI, what AI does for sustainability teams and what it costs, and why a platform that feeds auditors needs reliability, traceability and transparency more than speed.
We also get into the PM's job when execution is almost free. Corentine's answer is owning the why, cutting the noise, and paying the alignment tax. When everyone has an AI sparring partner and a thousand opinions, who brings the team to one story? Ghonche adds where he draws the line: AI challenges his ideas, but the ideation stays with him.
And we talk about imposter syndrome: theatre classes, DJing in Berlin, why Corentine would hire the person who doubts, Ghonche's "Jack" trick, and the story of "bicycle face". We end on how to keep hope with a problem as big as climate change.
Mentioned: - The High-Impact Professional's Playbook by Devon Fritz (book recommended by Corentine): https://www.highimpactprofessionals.org/book - Sweep x Capgemini, "Sustainability in Action 2026: Global Report" (1,000 business leaders interviewed): https://www.sweep.net/reports/sustainability-in-action-2026-global-report - Reshma Saujani at Smith College's 2023 Commencement: "Imposter Syndrome is Modern-Day Bicycle Face" (the story Ghonche tells): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMRcWj_GKxY
Follow Corentine on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/corentine-piette/ Follow Product and Cake: https://www.linkedin.com/company/product-and-cake-podcast
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