Leonardo Bonanni is the Founder and CEO of Sourcemap. During this conversation, he discusses global supply chain mapping and transparency, the role of AI in streamlining processes, legislative advocacy, and his love for chocolate-based indulgences! 

Sourcemap’s enterprise-grade supply chain mapping and regulatory software helps companies automatically trace their entire upstream supply chain to the raw material. Their platform allows customers to comply with every global supply chain regulation with one audit-ready tool that creates reports directly to customs authorities worldwide. 

1. What is Sourcemap’s mission? 

Our mission is to raise standards across global supply chains. What makes us unique is that, since founding the company, we've focused on enabling collaboration across international supply chains. 

We're not here to replace human connection - we're here to expand it.

The core principle, which aligns with due diligence laws, is that you need to know who you're doing business with, even if they are several tiers removed. This awareness helps you identify risks, and if issues arise, you can engage directly and put a plan in place to mitigate them. 

Sourcemap is the only true social network designed specifically for supply chains. We’re connected to five and a half million customers - that’s not just data, it’s real connections, reaching all the way down to tiers 5, 6, and 7, including smallholder farms. 

This depth is possible because of our automated cascading system. As soon as a customer signs on, within 24 hours, they’ve discovered tier 2 and tier 3 suppliers they didn’t even know existed. Typically, they identify 10 to 25 times more suppliers within just a few weeks, tracing all the way down to raw materials - often within 60 days. 

What also sets us apart is our global reach. Companies can meet both U.S. regulatory requirements for forced labour compliance and EU regulations for deforestation using the same software. It’s completely industry-agnostic - whether it’s mining metals, polymers, or agricultural products, our software can trace every transaction. 

And that’s the final, crucial point: we operate at the transaction level. We’re not just mapping connections - we’re collecting actual receipts as deep as tiers 3, 4, and 5. This proprietary data has never been in the public domain, and it’s what enables us to verify supply chains with a level of accuracy that AI-based solutions simply can’t match. In essence, we’re the transaction database of record for the upstream supply chain - across industries and global regulatory requirements. 

2. What have been the most significant milestones in Sourcemap’s journey so far? 

In 2011, what started as a student research project quickly turned into an enterprise software company. I defended my thesis at MIT in March of that year, and coincidentally just a week later, the tsunami hit Japan. On April 13, we incorporated Sourcemap. 

From day one, we had customers who realised their SAP databases lacked critical information on where their products were actually made. That realisation pushed us straight into supply chain mapping. 

A year later, in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, we were hired by the Bloomberg administration in New York City to help map post-disaster supply chains. The storm had severely disrupted food and fuel supplies for weeks, proving just how fragile and poorly mapped supply chains were in times of crisis. 

Over time, we expanded our capabilities to address geopolitical risks. The civil war in West Africa caused a spike in cocoa prices, driving us to develop real-time data solutions that enabled US-based companies to monitor cocoa farms halfway across the world. We also tackled challenges like the Ebola outbreak, allegations of child labour, conflict-driven disruptions, and deforestation. 

As demand grew, we achieved product-market fit, which allowed us to expand into a regulatory solution - particularly with the rise of forced labour laws, EU sustainability and due diligence laws. 

3. What do you look for in the perfect customer?  

We look for companies with a clear understanding of their needs. Some have no compliance or responsible sourcing function in their supply chain and must build an entire team to meet these regulations. Others have been mapping their supply chains for years and simply need to scale up their efforts through automation. 

Ultimately, it comes down to the willingness to engage with the supply chain.

Can companies have meaningful conversations with their suppliers about secondary and tertiary considerations - such as quality, authenticity, sustainability, and labour conditions? Have they moved beyond a basic code of conduct and started collecting real data? If they have, they’re already far ahead. But for those that have never spoken to their suppliers about sustainability, the journey must start there. 

4. What are the foundations of growing a great team? 

While we initially set out to assist with all aspects of responsible sourcing, mapping, tracing, with commodities and regulation specialists - our focus has shifted. We now have a company that is mostly engineers, a shift that has been driven by automation. 

What once required human effort is now handled by machines - integrating with SAP, triggering and cascading information requests, collecting and validating data, and assessing risks.

We’re currently in a pilot program where data is going by API to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in real time, delivering valuable data. 

Full automation demands real system integration experts, solution architects, and engineers. Along the way, we've also built a growing team of AI specialists to sift through massive amounts of data, identify patterns, and surface meaningful insights. When you’re discovering 10,000 to 20,000 suppliers you didn’t know you had, you need help making sense of all that data.  

When new regulations emerge, our team can build and deploy a software prototype within weeks, and because we work with multinational giants, they can immediately see the impact on procurement decisions. 

It’s a fast cycle - problem, solution, impact, and iteration - which keeps the work meaningful and dynamic. The mission isn’t just important; it’s what drives everything we do. 

5. How do you incorporate GenAI/advanced technologies, and what will be your next major digital innovation? 

We see AI as an amplifying tool, not a source of supply chain data. There are so many risks involved in using AI to get a probabilistic idea of upstream supply chains because the necessary data doesn’t yet exist in digital form.

Our role is to maintain a complete and coherent system of record for global supply chains, ensuring that all data comes directly from verified suppliers. 

We use AI, however, to reduce manual effort across key areas. It streamlines supplier onboarding and support, enabling communication across multiple languages and regions to assist our 5.5 million suppliers worldwide. It also enhances document processing and reconciliation, reading, translating, and cross-checking financial records across complex supply chains. AI further assists with compliance by matching supplier names and addresses against global watchlists to flag potential risks. 

Despite these efficiencies, AI does not alter our system of record. By law, the data we collect must come directly from suppliers we know and can contact if issues arise. AI simply streamlines all our verification processes.

 

6. What’s the vision for Sourcemap? What does great look like in three to five years’ time? 

Looking ahead, in the next three to five years, Nth tier mapping will become a core supply chain management function. It will enhance resilience, efficiency, and productivity - while the process of mapping itself will become invisible.

Take the EU deforestation law as an example: our customers no longer have to manually track supply chains. They issue a purchase order in SAP, and we handle the rest - gathering supplier maps, validating them, and submitting them to the EU. Customers are only alerted if an issue arises, such as a bad batch or an unresponsive supplier. 

On the European side, within just a year and a half, raw material mapping will be fully automated. Importers won’t have to do anything to obtain supply chain maps. Their real work will begin once they have the data - figuring out how to optimise their supply chains to be more efficient and sustainable. 

7. What are you doing that is good for the planet? 

We measure our impact in several ways, including the billions of dollars in procurement decisions that are influenced by the data surfaced by Sourcemap. We also measure our impact in terms of human rights and deforestation outcomes. It’s one thing to talk about what our customers do with the data, but when they act on it, they can drive entire industries toward more sustainable buying practices. 

Additionally, we measure our impact through our advocacy work. We’ve been asked to testify and have engaged in discussions with U.S. legislators and the EU regarding new regulations. We represent the perspective of our customers, showing that supply chain mapping is not only feasible, but essential. Our customers don’t want to compete in a marketplace where only some companies are responsible for their raw materials, while others can buy freely from the open market with no visibility. We advocate for the best practices and raise standards through these legislative conversations, even contributing to efforts like integrating supply chain mapping into U.S. CBP’s importer guidance. 

We look at our impact both in terms of how our customers are improving their sourcing practices and in how regulations are evolving to level the playing field and reward companies that hold themselves accountable for their supply chain practices. 

INSTANT INSPIRATION 

1. What is your favourite book/blog? 

I recently subscribed to the U.S. CBP newsroom just a month ago. Every day, they send me five to ten stories, and you'd be surprised by what CBP is involved in. I highly recommend it - it's very interesting! 

2. Who is your favourite inspirational leader? 

I was deeply influenced by a trio of MIT professors who allowed me to develop Sourcemap long before the idea of transparent supply chains was even conceivable. One of them, Bill Mitchell, has left us, but he believed that if we wanted the world to change, we needed to create the software that would enable people to weigh the impacts we cared about. He inspired me to build software that would help companies quantify social and environmental risks. 

Another influential figure was John Maeda, who went on to become the president of the Rhode Island School of Design and later a venture capitalist. He motivated me to focus on making a social impact through the software we were developing at MIT. 

Lastly, my advisor, Hiroshi Ishii, taught me that if an idea is truly good, it should belong in the boardroom, be featured in a museum exhibit, and generate scientific papers. He wouldn’t let me graduate until I had all three in place. 

3. What is your favourite piece of technology? 

I've been fascinated by the ability to map spaces in a more detailed and immersive way. I first learned about this technology from architects we worked with, and I quickly saw its potential. Traditionally, we map the world as if viewing it from 30,000 feet above, but when you have a dense cluster of factories, you need to start mapping inside and around the buildings themselves. 

One of the biggest questions people ask us is: how do you know there's enough capacity for all the products that are supposed to be made? Technologies like LiDAR, which have already revolutionised tools like Google Maps by creating 3D views of cities, will soon provide similar insights into supplier networks, production sites, and shipping capacity. This shift will help us make sense of complex supply chains in entirely new ways. 

4. What is your favourite cocktail or guilty pleasure? 

Chocolate-based indulgences! 

5. What is your favourite way to celebrate success? 

We're based in the financial district, and while we're not a finance company, when we celebrate, we do it in true Manhattan financial district style - we take the whole team out to one of the bars down the street. 

KEY TAKEAWAYS 

1. Supply chain transparency is now a business imperative: With increasing global regulations, companies must have full visibility into their supply chains, tracing materials down to their origins to ensure compliance and mitigate risks.
2. Collaboration is essential for due diligence: Effective supply chain management requires businesses to actively engage with suppliers at all levels to address risks like forced labour, deforestation, and ethical sourcing.
3. Automation is transforming supply chain management: AI and automation are reducing manual effort in supply chain mapping, supplier onboarding, compliance monitoring, and data verification, enabling faster and more efficient decision-making.
4. Regulatory compliance is a growing challenge: Companies must navigate an increasingly complex landscape of international regulations, such as the U.S. forced labour laws and EU deforestation rules, which require audit-ready, verifiable supply chain data.
5. AI is a powerful tool, but NOT a data source: While AI enhances efficiency by streamlining processes like document verification and supplier screening, supply chain data must come directly from verified sources to maintain accuracy and compliance.
6. Supply chain mapping will become seamless: Soon, companies will no longer have to manually track supply chains - automated systems will handle mapping and verification, alerting businesses only when risks or disruptions arise.
7. Sustainability and ethical sourcing are competitive advantages: Companies that proactively adopt responsible sourcing practices and advocate for higher industry standards are not only complying with regulations but also shaping a fairer and more sustainable global supply chain ecosystem. 

About Sourcemap

Sourcemap’s enterprise-grade supply chain mapping and regulatory software helps companies automatically trace their entire upstream supply chain to the raw material. Their platform allows customers to comply with every global supply chain regulation with one audit-ready tool that creates reports directly to customs authorities worldwide. 

About ProcureTechSTARS 

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