Interview with Lars Ronning, CEO at Behavioural Science Technology Platform: Ailuna

Ailuna helps you build sustainable habits that are good for you and good for the planet – and makes it fun! Habits with impact.

Ailuna’s magic starts with its dares, which are personal training programmes in sustainability, starting with just one week. They are designed and written by experts. Ailuna encourages you to tackle one sustainable swap at a time, rather than taking on something new each day. By making small changes you can achieve remarkable results.

By inviting your friends and family to join you on a dare, everyone is much more likely to earn their badges and stick to their new habits!

But Ailuna is not only about habit building, it’s also a source of uplifting news and information. A place to keep track of your sustainable choices – and connect and communicate with like-minded people who all want to make a difference. You can also shop for sustainable products.

The word Ailuna (Ai luna) is Hawaiian and means up there, aiming high. This is pretty fitting, because that’s exactly what we are trying to do. If every single one of us aims high and tries to make changes to our lives, we can build a better future for ourselves and for the planet.
 
 

 

How did you come up with the idea for the company?

 
Helene and I are passionate about the environment and want to leave the world in a better place.

A couple of years ago we changed our diet, started avoiding plastic, added insulation to our home, tried an EV and in general wanted to become more sustainable – but we could not find an app that truly brings people together and helps building green habits that stick. So we decided to build one!

It had to be one based on positivity and giving people an uplifting experience since Helene and I felt there was too much doom and gloom in the news about sustainability and climate change.

Helene and I are people just like most of us – not activists.

With Ailuna we wanted to create a solution for the many millions of people who have just begun their journey of becoming more sustainable. But also a tool people, who are already very green, can use to recommend to their less green friends, to kickstart their green journeys!

It was also important for Helene and I to create something that was based on science and is proven to work. Ailuna is very unique. Rather than having you do a new thing every day, which doesn’t drive lasting behavioural change, Ailuna has developed a range of “dares”. Dares are fun, personal training programs with stages of 1 to 2 weeks durations, where you do each new thing for a period of time.
 

How has the company evolved during the pandemic?

 
Ailuna has largely been unaffected by the pandemic since the company from its inception has been set up based on remote working and flexible conditions in terms of daily/weekly hours. We’ve got people in the UK, US, Germany, Denmark, Lithuania and Australia. Many of us have never met in person, but thanks for Slack, RingCentral, Google G-Suite and Drive, Instabug, Helpshift and other tools, we have become a close knit and very productive team.

Also, we have created an internal Slack channel called #weekend-warriors where we share what we have been doing the weekend, whether it being sports, family activities, sustainability, etc. So also outside work we’ve built great teamwork. All virtually. But I must admit that we look forward to the day when we can meet in person again. It’s been too long!
 

What can we hope to see from Ailuna in the future?

 
We’ve got a very exciting roadmap ahead of us. You should expect seeing much more in terms of gamification, people being able to take dares & compete in teams, further capabilities around impact measurement. Also, functionality aimed at enterprise, government, education and charities & NGOs. Most exciting perhaps is that we will bCe releasing new dares in more categories so there is always something new to explore. We’ll also continue publishing great content.

Product development and growth doesn’t come for free and we are keen to hear from seed/angel investors who are interested in joining and supporting us on our journey. We’re building a real business here.