Venture For Nature
Unpacking our three thesis areas for venture investing in biodiversity.
🪸 We’re Superorganism, the first VC for startups that benefit biodiversity. Each month we publish thoughts from the frontline, company updates, and a round-up of new happenings in the nature tech world.
Happy Earth month! In celebration of the best planet, we wanted to dig into one of the questions we get most often: how do we invest into biodiversity-positive startups?
With any startup we evaluate, we’re looking for two primary factors. First, could this business realistically grow to become a billion-dollar business? And second, as the company scales, will its ecological impacts scale too? We’ve narrowed our investment thesis to three areas where we think we’ll see both.
Extinction Drivers
Our first thesis looks for startups using new technologies and approaches to disrupt the industries most responsible for extinction.
We assess impacts to biodiversity through the lens of the IPBES extinction drivers. These are land use change, overexploitation of resources, invasive species, pollution, and climate change (which gets its own thesis, below). For more on drivers, we recommend this, this, and this, in order of complexity. These pressures are the direct causes of biodiversity loss, and many are driven by industry forces. We invest in startups that counter those forces.
Take overexploitation of timber, where conversion of standing forests is a leading cause of deforestation. Our investment Cambium Carbon turns trees that fall in and around cities into saleable wood products, creating a local supply chain that reduces pressure on forests. Funga accelerates tree growth through rewilding of soils, which creates more lumber from the same area of land.
Or take pollution, which can have many forms: plastics, oil, persistent organic pollutants. Sway replaces thin-film plastics with a performance-parity, compostable alternative made from seaweed, which both replaces a hard-to-recycle plastic and creates demand for a regenerative ocean resource. BluumBio creates enzymes to break down pollutants like PFAS and petrocarbons, which can help remediate land and water.
Other investments we’ve made through the extinction drivers thesis include:
Planet A Foods, which avoids land use change through chocolate made with precision fermentation
INVERSA, which transforms invasive species into luxury leathers
Climate x Biodiversity
Our Climate x Biodiversity thesis works at the intersection of climate change and biodiversity loss, solving for both crises while bringing nature to the forefront.
Climate change has had catastrophic impacts to nature like megafires and ocean acidification, and subtler but measurable changes to migratory patterns, geographic range, breeding seasons, and more. Past mass extinctions, like the Permian-Triassic (aka “The Great Dying”), have often followed sudden global climate swings, and the latest IPCC report found extinction rates very likely to increase as temperatures continue to rise. However, nature-based climate solutions also have the potential to meet 30% of the targets set in the Paris Accords, and are shovel-ready, broadly popular, and offer numerous co-benefits to ecosystems and humans alike.
The immediacy of climate change has created business opportunities for nature preservation and restoration that were unimaginable decades ago. We’re very interested in the technologies that can underpin and aid this restoration work, and in MRV tools to measure its impacts for both carbon and biodiversity. We also focus on problems at intersection points between climate and nature, like wildfires and soil.
To address climate change, the world is going to need to deploy renewable energy infrastructure at breakneck speed. We invest in the tool stack required to meet our climate and energy needs, while minimizing harm to species and ecosystems. We’ve just committed to a new investment leveraging AI to monitor bird and bat species near wind farms.
Some examples we’ve invested in:
Funga - rewilding the fungal microbiome in forests
Rosy Soil - biochar-based potting soil to avoid peatland degradation
Stealth - robotics for coastal restoration
Enabling Tech
In our Enabling Tech thesis, we invest in startups building next-gen technologies with market-shifting commercial potential, that also enable conservationists to better protect the planet.
With this thesis, we’re inspired by businesses like Esri and Planet in mapping and imaging, Oxford Nanopore and Twist Biosciences in genomics, and Edge Impulse and OpenAI in AI, that have built pioneering technology for large industries, but made it more available and affordable for anyone working with biodiversity.
It’s an exciting moment in history. From AI to biotech, new tools can now measure, design, and restore nature like never before. Examples abound. We’re in a golden age of AI that has barely begun to scratch the surface of what’s possible. The cost of sequencing a genome has fallen faster than Moore’s Law. Falling costs for payload on space launches have unlocked new potential in earth observation, and as reusable rockets emerge, that cost will plummet even further.
By understanding the real-world challenges conservationists face, we can proactively look for technological breakthroughs that can help. By funding those next-generation technologies, we get them into the hands of conservationists sooner, and help startups de-risk by providing willing communities of scientists that can put them through the hard paces of fieldwork. We’re currently interested in rapid genomic detection and sequencing, remote sensing, edge computing, acoustics, AI, and mapping and imaging.
Some examples we’ve invested in:
Cecil - data infrastructure for natural capital
Amini - AI for environmental data in Africa
Array Labs - 3D planetary imaging from nanosatellites
Future
Stepping back, it’s important to stress that this is how we invest in biodiversity-positive startups today. We can’t wait to see what startup opportunities emerge as new secular and policy tailwinds grow this biodiversity ecosystem. A few tailwinds we’re particularly excited by:
The EU requires 60,000 of the world’s largest companies (CSRD) and seven of the largest commodities (EUDR) to report and manage their nature impacts from 2024.
Voluntary commitments to TNFD comprise companies with over $4T in market cap.
Last month the EU passed the Nature Restoration Law, aiming to restore 20% of Europe’s habitats (more on that from last month’s newsletter).
For those with wild ambition
Did this sound like you? Our email is always open, feel free to drop us a note (with a deck) at hello@superorganism.com. Bonus points if you include a photo of your favorite species.
Notes from the Field
Updates from our portfolio companies, and from us at Superorganism
🛰️ Array Labs announced a partnership with Esper Satellites to combine 3D and hyperspectral imaging into a single data product.
🌳 Cambium Carbon made Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies 2024, and is hiring a VP of Finance.
🍫 Planet A Foods was highlighted in the Foodtech 500, and is hiring a social media manager.
🪸 As for us at Superorganism in March…
We were named IA50 Emerging Impact Managers by Impact Assets.
Headed to SOCAP this year? Vote for our panel on nature-based solutions!
Superorganism will be supporting the World Species Congress with panels on innovation and investing in nature during their 24-hour live stream. Register!
We’re getting geared up for SF Climate Week on April 21-27. Will you be joining us in the Bay? Let us know!
Kevin was interviewed in Brighter Future, spoke on a Climate Collective panel, and will be speaking at the upcoming EarthX E-Cap and HackSummit.
We committed to invest in two new companies (stay tuned!)
Ecosystem News
⚡️ Climate
Are We in the ‘Anthropocene,’ the Human Age? Nope, Scientists Say. | NYT
Climate change: The planet just shattered heat records for the ninth month in a row | CNN
Rare Toad, Clean Energy Face Off in Clash of US Green Priorities | Bloomberg
Nations Are Undercounting Emissions, Putting UN Goals at Risk | Yale E360
Climate Change Is Altering the Earth’s Rotation, Affecting Global Timekeeping | Yale e360
The SEC adopted rules mandating climate disclosures | SEC
🦧 Conservation and Policy
Biological field stations deliver high return on investment for conservation, study finds | Mongabay
Biodiversity scientists must fight the creeping rise of extinction denial | Nature Ecology & Evolution
Should Wildlife Advocates Help Set Hunting Rules in Vermont? | NYT
Lake Mead Infestation Could Impact Water 800 Miles Away | Newsweek
New ecoregion proposed for Southern Africa’s threatened ‘sky islands’ | Mongabay
We Can Still Save the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge | NYT
Kwita Izina: Where Baby Mountain Gorillas Are Introduced to the World | Revelator
Biden administration restores threatened species protections dropped by Trump | AP
💵 Nature Finance
Are biodiversity credits just another business-as-usual finance scheme? | Mongabay
EU takes the ax to green farming rules | Politico
Australia’s carbon credits system a failure on global scale, study finds | Guardian
Differences between the corporate biodiversity metrics | Joshua Berger
🔬 Science and Technology
Fungal community composition predicts forest carbon storage at a continental scale | Nature Communications
Animals as Earth System Observers | NASA
Bird flu discovered in U.S. dairy cows is ‘disturbing’ | Science
Ecological countermeasures to prevent pathogen spillover and subsequent pandemics | Nature Communications
On-site sensory experience boosts acceptance of cultivated chicken | ScienceDirect
The hidden secrets of a simple birdsong, explained | WaPo
Climate Change Threatens Resilience of Sri Lankan Rainforests | Yale
Teenager Creates AI-Powered Invasive Bug Zapper | Extremetech
🌎 Ecosystem
Paleogeneticist (and Superorganism mentor!) Beth Shapiro is the new CSO at Colossal
Have a nature-positive solution? Apply by April 5 for a CHF100,000 prize from Innovate 4 Nature here.
The WEF’s 1t.org is seeking new ecopreneurial solutions that promote the conservation, protection, and restoration of biodiversity. Apply before April 22nd here.
WILDLABS is recruiting for its Women in Conservation Technology Programme, Tanzania 2024. Apply by April 19 here.
Marble Studio is hiring its first Principal.
🪲 Other content we liked
Jane Goodall Is More of a Dog Person, Actually | NYT
Study of slowly evolving ‘living fossils’ reveals key genetic insights | YaleNews
Thank you!
Thanks for reading and for supporting Superorganism, and a special thank you to everyone who went above and beyond this month with introductions, diligence, advice, and help to founders:
Rich Aberman, Isabella Akker, Beth Axelrod, Gustavo Behring, Marcel Bock, Karla Brollier, Tim Coles, Vinicius Contieri, Helen Crowley, Skye d'Almeida, Alex Dehgan, Erin Duddy, Lis Evans, Ben Fenton, Camila Ferraz, Pascal Finette, Jim Fournier, Laura Francis, Maggie Fried, Hannah Friedman, Sarah Garland, Liza Gellerman, Sophie Gilbert, Elias Habbar-Baylac, Liz Hadly, Ben Harries, Taylor Holshouser, Danielle Joseph, Kate Kallot, Sean Keegan, Christie Lagally, Mark Lewis, Alex Logan, Radhika Malpani, Armando Mann, Brock Mansfield, Jean-Guillaume Marquaire, Julia Marsh, David Meyers, Lisa Miller, Steve Molino, Michael Neril, Lara Nuchowicz, Tom O'Keefe, Daniel Oberhauser, Ryan Orbuch, Heath Packard, Josh Parrish, Sierra Peterson, Lauren Popov, Matthew Portman, Thomas Prufer, Phil Rosedale, Sam Ruben, Diane Schrader, Nick Schroer, Jordan Soriot, Tony Stayner, David Sternlicht, Daniel Swid, Carl Tremblay, Caitlin Wale, Kaja Wasik, Maynard Webb, Kate Wharton, Jack Wielebinski, Amy Yin, Helen Zelman