OpenTabs And Save Forests

Look up on your screen and notice how many tabs are currently opened. How many do you open in a day... a month... a year? Umberto Greco’s startup, OpenTabs, turns this seamless action into real environmental impact, saving a tree with every five tabs a user opens.

OpenTabs is a browser extension that can be installed within four clicks. With every new tab, the browser adopts a beautiful, customizable home page, with a small ad from which all profits go directly to The Rain Forest Trust.

“The idea of being able to make an impact without spending any time, money, or effort is extremely powerful!” said Greco, who graduated from the Bachelor in Business Administration in 2021.

This project began in 2017, during Greco’s first year as an IE Business School undergrad student. Since then, it has garnered recognition as a non-profit startup, winning the IE Sustainable Entrepreneurship student competition and receiving the Google AdGrant for non-profit organizations among others.

“In a true Lean Startup fashion, the first iteration of OpenTabs was a minimum-viable product in the truest form, and one that would have made any entrepreneurship professor proud,” said Greco.

“Over time, we have iterated on our product by improving our design and adding new features.”
Umberto Greco, co-founder of OpenTabs

According to their official website, OpenTabs has been able to save over 2,211,234 trees, a number that increases by the minute, as it counts in real time the trees saved by the 40,000 active users around the globe.

As the impact grows, so does the organization. Greco has partnered up with Catharina Doria, new co-founder of OpenTabs and IE Masters in Business Analytics & Big Data student.

“The brilliance of the product is what brought me in,” said Doria.

“We’re providing people with a small product that allows them to transform an action that they do every day into something that's actually good.”
Catharina Doria, new co-founder of OpenTabs and IE Masters in Business Analytics & Big Data student

According to the founders, the launch of a new OpenTabs extension will take place this December. The extension is completely re-designed and includes a number of new features that involve gamification of the product and personalization tools.

“We’re launching our biggest update to date in early December,” said Greco. “We’re aiming to reach 200,000 users by the end of the year, and develop our initial idea into an ecosystem of passive-impact products.”

The IE community has been key in supporting this initiative and generating word of mouth through which it’s grown beyond Spanish borders.

“IE’s ecosystem provided a great launchpad for our project. We received mentoring from professors, support from friends, as well as a safe space to try-and-fail through activities such as the Labs and Entrepreneurship Evenings,” said Greco.

Both Greco and Catharina are working towards using the skills developed in their years as students and professionals to keep growing and developing OpenTabs.

“I actually quit my job last week to work on OpenTabs full time, and I'm super excited to work on growing our operations and impact!” said Greco.

“Ethics and data is something that I’m really passionate about and it's something that I’d like to grow within. I would like to keep creating products that make people's lives a bit easier and the world a better place.”

“Ethics and data is something that I’m really passionate about and it's something that I’d like to grow within,” said Doria. “I would like to keep creating products that make people's lives a bit easier and the world a better place.”