171. Nature’s Balance Sheet: Kevin Webb Invests in Biodiversity with Superorganism

[00:00:00] Teaser

Kevin nature is undervalued, whatever that amount is, it is dramatically undervalued relative to how it's priced into our economic system. For too long, we've treated nature as an externality INTRO

Erum Hey Carl, how's it going?

Karl Iam, do you ever think about what happens when AI takes over? Yeah,

Erum I'm thinking I'm gonna be on a beach with a drink just taken in the sun, with a lot of sunscreen and probably under umbrella. But what do you think?

Karl I hope you're right and I hope that I could be joining you somewhere on a beach. but there's a story that's just gone viral from. Citrini Research, which is, uh, financial analysis firm, and they've written a piece called the Global Intelligence Crisis of 2028, where they talk about how the entire global economy and financial systems are built on one idea: that human intelligence is a scarce and valuable research, but unfortunately, AI is gonna threaten that and destroy it permanently because that so-called intelligence premium doesn't matter to ai. So [00:01:00] how does that change your thinking about being on the beach once AI takes over?

Erum Yeah, I guess it depends. Obviously there's gonna be winners and losers. I would just say one thing, and actually I've been thinking about this for a while, and because you said like, our financial systems are built on the assumption of human intelligence.

Erum I had been thinking about this and really our financial systems are built on trust. If we don't trust the AI, then we might not use it. Right? Like, um, even money, right? Like the dollar. There's a whole reason why it's people accept it is 'cause we trust it. And you know, this is like the question of cryptocurrency. People aren't using it 'cause they don't trust it. So I would say that as an aside of like our whole financial system and economy, um, is built on trust. but yeah, I mean. The intelligence premium. I think with the rethink a system, I mean there's, there's AI intelligence that's artificial, but then I'm thinking of like, [00:02:00] what's more dangerous than artificial intelligence?

Karl Yeah. Okay. Before you talk about what's more dangerous than artificial intelligence, I just wanna, direct our, our listeners to This article because it kind of shows how the system is built on this idea of human intelligence. But then as companies invest more in ai, they create this flywheel where they need less humans. And then these smart humans who have been, these white collar workers are getting displaced and they end up going into blue collar jobs, And that in terms. Puts pressure on those jobs which don't need ai, because then you have more people trying to do those jobs. But then it ends up really wreaking havoc in the financial system because so much of the financial system is predicated on different companies making money along the way. So subscriptions, SaaS products, even things like credit card fees. And you mentioned cryptocurrency, in this article,

Karl the authors make the point that AI realizes that they're paying so much money to MasterCard, visa, and American [00:03:00] Express, that they could pay less if they use crypto. So crypto becomes more important. But the whole thing is super interesting 'cause it talks about the economic shocks and how we're just not prepared even for this would be the worst case scenario, but it doesn't even talk about how we're prepared for the best case scenario.

Karl So you're talking about what's more dangerous than ai? What's more dangerous than ai?

Erum Well, according to a new show I'm watching it's ui, which is Uploaded Intelligence.

Karl Wait,

Erum what? Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I was on reels like, just looking at videos as one does, and there's a video that came up and they're talking about they're favorite shows and the first one they started with was,

Erum Common Side Effects, which we love that show listeners, if you have not seen common side effects. Wow, what a great story about biotech and consumer biotech and everything in between. Um, since we talk about biotech here on the Grow Everything podcast, it's like the perfect show to watch, That was the first show that they shared. And I [00:04:00] was like, okay, I'm tuning in if you like, common side effects. What else do you like? And the next show that they talked about was Pantheon, which is another animated series, and it's about upload and intelligence. So how human consciousness can live on, in the internet in the virtual world forever. And if you have an uploaded consciousness, if you have a human consciousness that has learned things like feeling and how the world works and tastes and everything, it has learned all the things that humans can experience. It got all that data, that raw data process in its brain that has been evolving for over 3 billion years, and now it's uploaded into this virtual world. Interacting with artificial intelligence, it has more uploaded intelligence or human consciousness has more decision making, it has more motivation, it has other things. clearly human intelligence is dangerous.

Karl where are you watching Pantheon?

Erum I'm watching on Netflix.

Karl Okay. And, do they mention Scavengers [00:05:00] Rain, by the way,

Erum they did mention it, they did mention it out on this like top adult animated shows, I guess you can say.

Erum and yeah, scavengers Rain was also on there, but this pantheon, Carl, wow. I mean the storylines, this is why I like Common Side Effects and now Pantheon is 'cause these storylines are so rich. Yeah, and you can do so much more with animation in terms of like highlighting drama, not just like technology, which is of course there.

Erum And that also helps. But I binge watched it, which means I, us, I watched two shows in a row. and I don't think I've done three.

Karl how many episodes are there?

Erum I don't know. I just kind of got hooked, but I definitely recommend watching it. Is there biotech in there?

Erum Yes.

Karl Oh, okay.

Erum It shows up in a very interesting way, but it would be a spoiler if I talked about it.

Karl Alright, well, since we're talking about AI and since the Grow Everything podcast is about biotech, I think it's also worth,pointing out that CI trainee, the research company I mentioned has written an investment thesis that,

Karl [00:06:00] Investment will move from bits to atoms, which is part of our thesis here at Grow. Everything as this AI bubble shifts,investors will realize that we have to go back to building hard things. So I'll make sure that we put links to both of those in the show notes, and we'd love to hear from you listeners what you think about those.

Erum Yeah, Besides research writing about this, I did write a LinkedIn post.

Karl Oh, I'm sorry Erum. I know you did. Yeah,

Erum no, I only, mine was just a few words, like enough of the AI hype, which I mean more of the focus versus like what is capable of, of course it's capable of brilliant things, but it's more like, it's like hyping up the internet. It's like, oh my gosh, I'm building this company on the internet. And you're like, okay,

Karl we launch a new website.

Erum And it's like, yeah, everything runs on the internet, so it's like everything runs on ai, but what are you actually doing? What are you actually making? Or making more efficient with ai? I mean. [00:07:00] Obviously there's B2B and like that's all about efficiency gains and being able to, make things cheaper or the bottom line than top line, but like, what we are talking about. Yeah. Use AI to create amazing biotech products that can revolutionize the way that we experience the world and how we consume products and I'm really excited about that. It's something that I've been thinking about a lot.

Erum one of the lenses of biotech products that we have been looking at is bio dyes, which we are going to have a bio se, bio dies series in a month or so.

Erum and we had teased it with, we had an episode that announced the future of Fungi Award winners and one of those winners. As Ricky Cassini of my chroma, we had a quick, like 20 minute interview, during that episode, but we'll have him back on for a full episode. And why I bring this up too is because I recently went to the Color Factory, which is this [00:08:00] immersive experience in New York City, had taken my son there for his birthday. it was a whole birthday party, It's my son's fifth birthday. I was like, you know what, everyone, we're going to the color factory and wow, Carl, I know your kids are older, but you have to go to this place.

Karl Yeah. Okay. So one of the things you told me was there was a lot of very vibrant colors being used for food there. Do you think they were using any biologically produced dyes, or do you think they've just resorted to what is on the shelves from whoever makes not so great dyes?

Erum Yeah, I, think some of, so this immersive experience has a multiple rooms and one, the first room has this conveyor belt of fortune cookies that are colored in different colors and they're super vibrant. So I'm like, these are definitely not natural dyes. And if they are color factory write to me tell me all, tell me I'm wrong. but then there was like,there's ice cream towards the end and that was like a really light blue, which could be made with spirulina. And if it isn't, that's a missed opportunity to introduce, natural [00:09:00] dyes into food ingredients. but it was incredible. One of the rooms had names of different colors and like, oh, I wish, lemme see if I can look at it quick. Carl, the names of colors would be great company names.

Karl Yeah, some of them, some of them for sure, and I'm sure it's been done. I actually have a book, or my wife has a book that has one color per day. So it tells you, what is your, the color for your birthday and, what does that color. What does it mean? What does it say about you?

Erum Yeah. This one, I'll have to tell you some of these names. Actually, I'm gonna pull it up right now. So here's some names of colors and so people, if you need some inspiration for our company names you have to look at colors. Check out this name. is one phe. Watch it. Zant thick. Uh, some of

Karl those don't sound real to me.

Erum Heliotrop. Yeah. Goose turd green, which Okay. Yeah, that one really is one.

Karl Sounds like a booger color.

Erum Yes, it is. Dutch orange. I mean, obviously Terracotta [00:10:00] Umber. Verdes

Karl Verree, but that's actually pronounced verdigris.

Erum Verdegris, yes. Egyptian balloon, of course. Lead white. I mean there's, mixing the actual color with another word. But anyway, I was like going through this color factor. I'm like, oh my gosh. The world of color can draw so much inspiration, not only for our everyday lives, but also when we look at making biotech products, we know we, experience the world through color, so it's interesting to look at, again, stay tuned for a bio die series and we'll talk more about that.

Karl what I think is interesting is that, nature is not monochromatic. It's polychromatic. There's all these colors exist in nature and, I think we in many cases take 'em for granted.

Karl But someone who doesn't take nature for granted is our guest today, Kevin Webb. Erum tell us how we got introduced to Kevin.

Erum So, Kevin Webb is a managing director of a venture fund called Super Organism.

Erum What an amazing name. And I had met [00:11:00] him after the hack summit where they were co-hosting, like a after conference happy hour event, and it's here in Brooklyn. Um, and we were just got to talking about, what the thesis is of Superorganism, looking at not only biotech companies but climate tech and he's gonna go into their whole thesis. And we also, got doubly introduced to him through our

Erum friend Kit McConnell, who you know very well, Carl

Karl yeah, we've known KI for many years. She was at Ginkgo and then she left and worked at a couple of other companies, and we've seen her a number of times over the years at, bio Fabricate conference. So we were very happy that she landed at Superorganism. So, with that, let's let Kevin take it away and talk to us about what Superorganism does and why biodiversity matters. INTERVIEW

Karl Kevin Webb Super Organism. We are so happy to have you on the Grow Everything Podcast.

Kevin I couldn't be more excited to be here.

Karl So let's kick it off and give our guest a little bit of background on who you are. Your background spans, venture [00:12:00] investing, human biology, sustainability science, biodiversity. Now you're focused on biodiversity focused capital, which is something we're super interested in, but what was the catalyst that shifted you from backing marketplaces and SaaS? Unicorns, depending on ecosystems and biodiversity.

Kevin So I've been working in VC for 15 years. I originally was working with a family run VC shop outta the Bay Area called the Web Investment Network. we did exactly what you talked about, worked with some incredible founders. but my original focus back in undergrad was in biology. My personal passion has always been around natural history. I loved getting outdoors. my bookshelf was filled with books about nature and what we could do about it.

Kevin and I was finding increasingly that I was finding startups that didn't really fit inside of our mandate. Right? They were touching climate or biotech. they were sustainability oriented. They had some really innovative, interesting business models. And at the end of the day, our fund was really incredible world class at enterprise software [00:13:00] marketplaces, security, and came to the difficult but very eventually obvious decision that I wanted to chase this idea of building a VC fund for biodiversity, where we could break apart the problem of biodiversity loss into venture sized opportunities. and that was just too far outside of scope for what my last fund was, was really built for.

Erum Yeah. That's amazing. Amazing. Yeah, I love that. I just, I was first exposed to this idea of biodiversity being a measurement tool for environmental health. When I went to the. World Biodiversity Summit. it was in 2023. I mean, they have it every year, but that's when I first went to it and I was just blown away about by first there's a lot of companies that are looking at it under the sustainability lens, doing specific projects. Obviously there's some technology, which I'm excited to, learn more about your portfolio companies, but we often hear, of course climate is investible, but biodiversity has historically been seen as harder to [00:14:00] quantify. So what change that made you believe that biodiversity could become a venture scale opportunity?

Kevin Yeah. Great. let's first talk about the quantifying part. So this is really important, which is the amazing thing that we have with climate related technologies is. I'm sure if they were a meteorologist or a climatologist in the room, they would yell at me. But the great thing about climate related opportunities is you can evaluate the apple's oranges against this one metric, which is carbon dioxide equivalent, or CO2 E. whether you're emitting carbon dioxide, whether you're drawing it down, whether you're talking about methane, which has a, slightly different impacts in the atmosphere. It all sort of rolls up that way.

Kevin Biodiversity so much harder. and there's no one metric, at least that we've seen that does a really good job of capturing what it is that we're trying to do. Right? You have different geographies, you have different value sets. You know, are you going to value species that are really rare and only exist on one particular island? Or species that [00:15:00] happen to have more benefits to humans. Are you going to talk about looking at the ecosystem level, the individuals of a species, the genetic diversity within those populations? we've seen a bunch of different schemes, and there are some really, really smart people who are working on ways to try to financialize these. These indices, in a way that's useful and actionable for, uh, the poor sustainability managers at companies who are being tasked with how do we account for our biodiversity impacts across our supply chains?

Kevin We're, we're long on this opportunity. but I would say for now, Our view is that biodiversity technology driven companies are being started, have always been started. It's just they haven't really been given one central home. So we end up investing in a lot of companies that might be raising as ag tech plays, climate plays, or biotech plays or, you know, your typical deep tech, approach. But where conservationist could benefit.

Karl I have [00:16:00] a kind of related add-on question to that because I'm under the impression that we don't really have a sense in terms of what the value of nature is. We extract a lot of oil and we have this very extractive culture, and I've heard different people talk about, hey, we're gonna, really figure out what nature is worth, which is probably in the trillions of dollars. How does that impact what you guys think about

Kevin I think we could have some very interesting debates about the degree to which nature is undervalued, but I, as a very early stage VC, get to be a little hand wavy here, and my answer is whatever that amount is, it is dramatically undervalued relative to how it's priced into our economic system. For too long, we've treated nature as an externality, right?

Kevin You, you wouldn't have rational economic actors who are. Doing mass deforestation, if the value of trees in the Amazon were properly reconciled in, their incentives, right? the fact that that still occurs means that we have work to do to try to make those, those [00:17:00] externalities internal to, decision making.

Kevin and then for us, as we think about our investment, you know, we are really. Sometimes we have to be really skeptical because we assume the world isn't going to dramatically change. Um, but our portfolio structure et where if those values were recognized, a lot of our companies will benefit that much more.

Karl Yeah, no, that's super interesting. could you give us a picture of Superorganism for our listeners? If someone steps inside your portfolio, what kind of companies, technologies, landscapes are they gonna encounter?

Kevin Yeah. It is gonna surprise no one that we're nerds. So at a high level, we're building this VC fund to do two things, right? It's, it's invest in companies that fit a VC shape, right? We have to believe there are billion dollar plus outcomes. We have to believe in the founders, we have to believe in the market opportunity, all of that.

Kevin But the second thing, which really is our, special differentiating sauces. We have to believe that that company can make a difference for nature. Term. Term and then at least proportionately at scale. that [00:18:00] takes us to three big areas where we see investible opportunities. The first is we're obsessed with what industries have been tied to nature loss historically, and we are vetting them through how much can the startups that we're evaluating disrupt, transition them to better, more sustainable practices and make a big dent on the literal extinction drivers that are contributing to nature loss at scale. Right? So can this startup make a dent on pollution, invasive species habitat loss, or over exploitation of natural resources?

Kevin The second big theme for us is where we most intersect with climate. So we are evaluating climate related startups, but specifically how they intersect with biodiversity. So we are doing technology for nature-based solutions, technology for nature, as adaptation to rising sea levels, rising temperatures, things like wildfire, soil, water. We're not gonna be the people who are doing mobility or renewable energy deployments, but we would look at how do we do all of that and move faster on the environmental permitting [00:19:00] side? and then we do a lot of deep tech, so ai, remote sensing, biotech places where we want to find cool, shiny, new tools. And then we could be the ones who are like, oh, we have a conservationist friend who could do some really, really interesting stuff with this.

Erum Yeah. Oh my gosh. So fascinating. And two of your portfolio companies have been on this podcast Foray Biosciences and Sway, so we'll link to those episodes in their show notes so people can hear how Superorganism has supported these types of companies. I'm so excited to share that.

Kevin two companies so far.

Erum Two companies so far. Yes. yeah, we're gonna get, I mean, this is a great, partnership to get more guests on. I mean, we looked at, I looked at some of the other portfolio companies and yes, they are great ones that we would love to have on. but let's first talk about this term, super organism. First of all. Great name for a band, and I think there is a band called Superorganism. Mm-hmm. but Superorganism suggests interdependence and networked intelligence. How does that concept shape the way that you think about venture strategy and portfolio [00:20:00] construction?

Kevin Totally. Great question. Do we have time for me to tell what the original name was going to be?

Erum Yes,

Karl yes.

Kevin Because I think it's a good contrast. So yes, we were originally gonna be Wildlife Ventures. It turns out there's so many different VC funds out there that take nature inspired names. You know, Sequoia, a bunch of others. Sequoia is great, by the way. Yes. But they don't necessarily have anything to do with nature of their strategy, right? Like it turns out, nature's great for metaphors and all sorts of things. and so we had a really hard time coming up with a, fun name. We eventually landed on wildlife ventures. I was ready to be done with it. My partner, Tom, who's also incredible, was kind of getting ready. we. We're about to pull the trigger. Talked with one of our advisors who's done a lot of work in the conservation space and this is David Lang, also. Great, good guest if you haven't had him. and he was like, I see where you're coming from. But please God. No. when I hear this word, it's loaded, right? When I, hear this word, I think of, polar bears on ice caps that are dying and humans are the problem. And I think what you're trying to do is [00:21:00] something more abundant. Mm-hmm.

Kevin And I left that oid 'cause I knew he was right. and I went away. And when I came back, Tom, my partner, had written up on the whiteboard and big letters, super organism. And it was, it was pretty perfect. it talks about that abundance mentality. It talks about, you know, the, the biological word is basically think of an ant colony where it's all of the individuals together contributing to a greater whole acting as one. there's sci-fi implications of multiple different species, multiple different systems. Technology can feel like it fits into there.

Kevin and it's really. Core to our philosophy, right? So, we're really trying to live at the interstitial between conservation and entrepreneurship, and we'd love forming these kinds of connections and getting outta the way.

Erum I just have one quick, follow up to that too. you mentioned abundance a couple times, and this is something that, Karl and I had talked about, a few times in recently and it has come up. there was a do Davos, Larry Fink of BlackRock, interviewed Elon [00:22:00] Musk and he's, they were talking about abundance a little bit. Obviously at the Elon way, you know, get abundance to go off planet interstellar colonization. Okay. That's one thing. But to be able to have abundance. how does, how do you see biodiversity relate to abundance?

Kevin I mean, in many ways biodiversity is the source of abundance, We have inherited the greatest genetic diversity in the history of the planet, the greatest species, diversity in the history of the planet. We are the first species in the ever to be able to understand the lineage of these things. we are spending a ton of resources to try to find life on other planets, but we have. The best life diversity in the known universe right here. Right. and that's led to drugs and to food security. it's a pretty high proportion of the planet that depends on wildlife nature for daily sustenance.

Kevin so nature is already core to infrastructure and what we're talking about is not something radical. It's just as we build systems that no longer are quite as [00:23:00] dependent on, direct extraction, as we once needed, how do we build a future that is healthier, more sustainable, good for people? Also leaves a lot of space for wildlife.

Karl Yeah. And I think it goes back to what I said earlier. you're absolutely right. We've in inherited this incredible biodiversity and unfortunately we take it for granted. And I'd like to think that. that's gonna change maybe during the course of our lifetimes, when people are gonna start to understand what nature has given us and how important it's, and I think about it, you know, also just purely from. I'm also a nature guy. I love hiking. I'm usually out hiking if I'm not in the city. But also from a purely technological point of view, like this is the fantastic thing about biotech. It's like there's microbes that can do everything, but we can engineer them to do other things that we need and where else, is that possible? at least in the solar system, we don't know yet, but we're very lucky.

Karl Let's talk about [00:24:00] the investments that you guys have made because you go from idea stage to IPO. What's different about supporting biodiversity founders compared to the traditional tech entrepreneurs that you've worked with previously?

Kevin Yeah, so this surprises a lot of people. It's. In a lot of ways not that different, right? You've got people who need disproportionate passion. You've gotta believe their backgrounds, you've gotta believe their motivation.

Kevin starting a company is inevitably hard. Starting a company that also supports nature at the same time, I would argue, is harder. but the good news is the amount of resolve that we find in our entrepreneurs is at least. Commensurate with that. I'm sorry for saying commensurate. that was, that was,

Erum Alright, great. It's allowed.

Kevin We're all nerds. Alright. but yeah, so there's disproportionate passion that's there. I think the piece that is different is a lot of these companies we're solving from first principles with them, right? Like, we've got a company that is making Inversa, making high-end luxury leather out of invasive species. [00:25:00] I'm unfamiliar with anyone else doing this. they are now partnering with state governments like Florida to help with a lot of the work that they're doing with managing their invasive Burmese Python problem in the Everglades. there's not really a roadmap and so we get to have calls with RV and hear what they're working on, what they're thinking about, and then roll up our sleeves.

Kevin Ashley from Foray you've spoken with. They're doing some really, really cool stuff technically, and, being able to make connections across the conservation world, is what gets us excited.

Erum Wow. Yeah. Python invasive pythons to make. Wow, that's great.

Karl Haven't you seen, like they have bounty hunters or they, the state of Florida has bounties for people who go out there and catch these pythons and they're enormous. And because they're an alpha species, they've basically destroyed the ecosystems. I mean, these pythons are eating the deer. It's,

Kevin yeah,

Karl so it's incredible.

Kevin If we have time for a small tangent on pythons. Yes, yes. I've been kind of obsessed with this, this issue since I was in high school. And I remember [00:26:00] reading a paper, about how well the pythons were adapting to the Everglades and the tone of it was like, oh, they're actually kind of carving out a new niche. and then a year later, as I remember it, um, who knows how good my memory is. Year later, same paper. Totally different tone. It was, oh my God, there's pythons everywhere. They blended perfectly. They're eating everything. Mammal numbers are declining. We have no idea how many there are. and, so what's cool about versus is now they've, they've had the most successful harvest working with a lot of those bounty contractors. That's ever happened in the history of Florida. so we're hoping that this could be consistent pressure and help to manage the problem.

Karl Yeah, just another tangent, what it reminds me of too is the hippopotamus in Columbia that have taken over the river, and those have been brought by Pablo Escobar as pets, and now they're a huge problem because hippos are incredibly prolific and they are also super ferocious, so you can't go near them. Anyway, that could be, that [00:27:00] could, maybe that's the next market is hippo leather from Columbia.

Erum Oh my gosh, this is crazy. We really went on a tangent ever comes on. You should ask him. No, let's continue Erum. Bring it in. Bring it in. I'm reeling it back. I'm reeling it back. So like this idea of invasive species, it's like, okay, the, ecosystems are out of balance. And you know, you mentioned, that these pythons were eating deer. But deer's also becoming invasive up here in the Northeast. Sure. And so there's a balancing act I think is really interesting 'cause okay, you're going to, especially if there's like an economic, incentive to get rid of the pythons and if they're all gone and used, then will there be an abundance or an invasiveness of another species 'cause they aren't kept in check. So it's very interesting balancing act.

Kevin Yeah, totally. so first on deer, technically not invasive. Mm-hmm. They're over abundant. Mm-hmm. we've removed [00:28:00] a lot of predators and they've done really, really well with the kind of infrastructure and landscape we've built, where they adapt well to lawns and things like that.

Kevin Really great book called Crossings that has a whole chapter on the abundance of deer and how they've, they've picked up in, in numbers. I need to stop talking on this one or I'm gonna keep going. And then on, on pythons and a lot of the things that in versus going after, we spent a lot of time on this, of. You know, do you end up having a perverse incentive to not remove all of the animals? We personally think it would be amazing if they worked themselves out of a job because there's thousands of invasive species around the world that could help manage still, and it, what a great story. Oh, unfortunately no con conservationist that we talked to thought that it would be possible to do complete removal. Um. So we're, we're hoping that this is continued pressure.

Erum Okay,

Karl great. Yeah. I'd like to see examples of, success where a species is introduced to, combat an invasive [00:29:00] species. because I think that it's like, it sounds like an easy fix to things. I imagine it always goes wrong, but I wanna see the examples of where has actually worked.

Kevin Yeah, I mean, invasive removals on islands have been a major success story. a friend of ours, Carl Campbell did a lot of work with goats in the Galapagos. and, you know, you're able to do that and then you end up having less pressure and you can have giant tortoise populations come back. so it's, it's worked really well in islands. it's an ongoing concern. In the mainland, it's a lot trickier in the mainland 'cause you've got huge numbers you're dealing with in vast areas. Um, but with effort it's. It's really cool. There's some also really cool stuff about removing rats and then that, on islands and that having downstream positive effects for coral reefs of all things.

Erum Oh

Erum Nice. Oh, I like to hear that. Okay. All right, so let's get back.

Karl Reel

Erum it

Karl in.

Erum Reel us in. Thank you. So, talking about nature. Here we go. Let's see if I can segue this. Okay. So talking about nature and [00:30:00] nature often operates on long time horizons, but venture capital often works on compressed timelines. So how do you navigate the tension between ecological reality and investor expectations?

Kevin The answer is we're picky, right? We are one instrument. VC is a great instrument at doing some things, a terrible instrument at doing others. We have a 10 year obligation to our investors to return capital. that precludes us from a lot of things that are really interesting, that are very nature positive, right?

Kevin So we're not doing projects, we're not doing, conservation technology that's really vectored toward just conservationists. we are trying to. Thread the needle and do both. and we think that there should be a lot more types of financial instruments at play. That's it. We're, we just have to be picky.

Karl Yeah. That's like a whole other conversation we should have. I know you Erum you're thinking this too, because we see it particularly with, biotech where you're still, a lot of times the VC's [00:31:00] investing in science that the market isn't ready for. And so the incentives are misaligned and so there's a lot of room for other kinds of financing to come in there that is able to be a little bit longer term.

Karl but let me ask this, because you've studied humans. We've talked about changing environments. You also have talked about infectious diseases. How does that lens of looking at so many diverse things influence the way you think about biodiversity? Is infrastructure for health and economic stability.

Kevin Oh, I love this question. It doesn't come up nearly enough. we've seen with major diseases in the past decade that what's happening on our landscape and what happens within our communities is, is interlinked, right? From COVID to, you've got Lyme disease happening at, uh, at higher than ever rates here in the Northeast.

Kevin When you encroach on intact habitat, you have more opportunity for disease spillover. when you create an environment where we have a super abundance of deer and, you have ticks that are really [00:32:00] well suited for warm temperatures, so they don't die off in the winters as often as they usually do because now we have. Warmer winters, you have more likelihood of disease. So one answer is doing a better job of keeping ecosystems intact and, having better monitoring systems.

Kevin I think there's other health dimensions at play though, with and biodiversity focus, right? So you've got. One of the things we talk about doing is trying to avoid pollution in the first place. Pollution is really bad for species ecosystems. turns out other species are genetically related to us by a lot. And so when you're releasing microplastics and, PCBs or whatever else you want to talk about, and that has a negative impact on other species, very frequently, it's not great for us either.

Kevin And so I could talk about having a biodiversity mindset. But that also is going to directly translate into human health benefits. so you're, you've got a lower, lower load of health risks. and then beyond that, there's a lot more of a body of research around the mental health [00:33:00] benefits of being out in nature. yeah, and I think that's gonna be increasingly important too.

Karl Yeah. I mean, the thing with ticks and Lyme, the ticks that are carrying Alpha-Gal disease, Oh yeah. You know, which is, which

Kevin sounds like a conspiracy.

Karl I know it does

Kevin does.

Karl Yeah. And maybe we should explain it to hers.

Karl Yeah, yeah. Maybe we should.

Kevin No,

Karl don't start

Kevin that rumor.

Karl The way I understand it, and correct me if I'm wrong, is Alpha G basically makes you allergic to meat or meat products.

Kevin Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's, it's super pre or it's prevalent in like Texas where you least want that, right?

Karl Yeah, exactly. And so because of climate, this disease is making itself further, available the, into the north. So it's definitely something I think about when I'm gearing up to go hiking. I used to always hike in shorts. I never do anymore or hardly around. Yeah, and I've been bit by tick several times, so I know what it's like. But thankfully no alpha gallon, no lime.

Erum Oh my gosh. Yeah. That's terrifying. and hopefully, yeah,

Karl exactly.[00:34:00]

Erum Yeah. I mean, okay. But this idea of biodiversity in human health, I mean, another thing that comes to mind is the idea of, diverse produce and how we've, mono cultured our way to having one type of corn versus like 10,000 different varieties, as was before we industrialized agriculture, potatoes. Peppers. All of it. All of it. And now we're left with, I mean, it still looks pretty abundant in some supermarkets, but it could have been a lot more diverse and all the nutrients that we might have lost because of the biodiversity loss that keeps our health in check. And I think that's something that. if there's anyone working on a technology to support biodiverse produce, I mean, that would be super interesting.

Kevin Totally. Like if you could manage that, complexity of produce, but in a way where it feels as simple as having one monoculture crop, to the farmer to every step along the way. I fully believe [00:35:00] we've got technology to do that now. It's super interesting.

Erum Yay. Yay. Awesome. Okay. But we still are looking for, founders. And technologists to be able to build the things we need to have a more biodiverse planet. But in your conversations with founders, what's the biggest misconception about building in the biodiversity space right now?

Kevin Yeah, I'm gonna give an answer for right, right now. which is unfortunately a little bit of a hard truth, which is you're not gonna get extra credit for doing the right thing for biodiversity in the venture ecosystem. You will with us. we care a lot, but you know, we're, we're a $25 million pre-seed seed fund. We'll invest a little bit in prorata, but we tap out pretty quickly. And so when we are thinking about our businesses, we have to think a lot about who comes next and how does this play with the right kind of partner, whether it's a generalist, whether it's a climate fund, whether it's a sustainability or a biotech. How do we make sure that their success metrics are baked in there and then we could do the heavy lifting with them to try to make the biodiversity [00:36:00] linkage built in difficult to remove, over time.

Karl Okay. So you just mentioned you're a $25 million, fund. You just raised that amount. What surprised you most as you were out there,fundraising from your LPs, and what does it say about where the market is heading?

Kevin okay. First of all, I assume you have some other GPS starting funds for the first time who listen. I would give one strong piece of advice, which is know who you're raising from at least to start, before you start. That would've been a really smart thing to do. The benefit of how we did our, our raise though, was several things.

Kevin One, we, we had a really differentiated thing that we were trying to do. So we, got good first meetings, we got people who were curious. the amazing thing that happened over time was we got to meet a lot of fellow travelers. So there were family offices, individuals, foundations, donor advised funds, groups that, we eventually through connections got connected with who were grappling with the same thing of we have these assets. We want to invest some of them, and [00:37:00] we want to do that in a way that aligns with the work that we're maybe doing in, in the philanthropy that we're doing over here. and we're starting to see some really interesting business opportunities that don't really belong in anything that we've, we've invested in so far.

Kevin and so the, the biggest thing has just been getting to know the right people. We're not in the, the world of trying to convince anyone. I feel very lucky to get to work with our partners on this.

Karl That's very cool.

Erum question, and you don't have to answer this, I'm not sure if it's public, but can you share who your LPs are?

Kevin Yeah. Yeah. So we just announced Fund one a couple weeks ago. so we're working with great number of folks. Jeff Jordan from Andreessen Horowitz, who previously was CEO at OpenTable I've known for a long time. we're working with Builders Vision, which is Lucas Walton's family office. does a lot on climate, on oceans and on agriculture. They were excited about the biodiversity element because it kind of cuts across all of those themes. also working with some nature focused family offices, so A and B holdings, [00:38:00] understory Ventures out of Australia, corporate foundation. So Cisco Foundation, BTG tig, which is, major forestry player ended up investing. They've been great partners for us. When we're looking at things like a Foray, like, uh, a fun

Erum it's interesting about the Australia partners because I believe the longest living continuous rainforest and most diverse is in Australia and Northern

Karl Australia.

Karl Yeah,

Erum yeah. Northern Northeast's, like 180 million years old. Um, definitely on a bucket list. maybe you guys can have like a super organism retreat there. That'd be cool and gonna

Kevin come, I know,

Erum raising

Kevin my hand for that one. Yeah. I'm, I'm not upset about having LPs out of Australia. it's not the worst.

Erum They know.

Karl Yeah. They

Erum know what's up.

Karl And we're, we're also under the impression that these family offices are much more willing to take this long-term point of view because, they're trying to preserve and grow capital. And so investing in nature and biodiversity just seems like it would make a lot of sense. Do you [00:39:00] agree? Is that, uh. Yeah.

Kevin I agree. Going back to the, question of what's VC good at? We're that high risk, hopefully high return element in a blended portfolio for many of these allocators, right? Yeah. They're invested in other VCs, but also nature-based solutions. They're also doing direct conservation philanthropy. they're may be invested in some forestry projects. and if we can end up being successful, and then we can ultimately help subsidize some of those other things in the future. Amazing.

Erum Okay, so now we're gonna do some visioneering. I love, that words. I always say, great. But looking ahead a decade, what breakthrough either it's technological, financial, or cultural, do you think will most dramatically shift by diversity from a niche concern to a mainstream, to a mainstream asset class?

Kevin Okay, I'm gonna cheat on this one too.

Erum Okay, go for it.

Kevin I believe if you have a strong viewpoint of what you wanna see in the world, you are short shifting yourself. If you limit yourself to [00:40:00] one theory of change and going back to nature's categorically undervalued, and there's so many different ways that you could have that value show up, I think there's a lot of cool things that could happen in the next decade that.

Kevin Could dramatically shift things. So one regulations, right? So the EUS, some really cool ones, C-S-R-D-E-U-D-R, tasking companies with measuring their biodiversity impacts, in one case for showing that their products are deforestation free. there's a voluntary thing called TNFD, the task force on nature related financial disclosures.

Kevin I resent that. I've had to learn so many acronyms too. Um, but it's a voluntary, agreement that trillions of dollars in assets under management have been out, uh, have agreed to comply with, where you're trying to account for your nature impacts as a, as a major corporation. if that starts flipping really interesting.

Kevin the other piece on regulations is, you know, we spend, last I saw two and a half trillion a year on subsidies for [00:41:00] nature harming practices. If you just started putting pressure on some of those things, you leave a lot more space for more nature, positive, businesses to be a little bit more competitive.

Kevin so that would be really, really leveraged.

Kevin Okay. Technology, technology is a big one, right? So it is possible to imagine measuring nature everywhere in the world in real time, in the not not so distant future. You know, you've got satellites, you've got genetics, um, you have got, Really, really powerful camera traps and things like that, thanks to cell phones, making all of these sensors way cheaper and so it's becoming possible where any product you have will have that, that lineage, that accountability. It won't just be a commodity. It's a commodity with provenance and known impacts. That gets really exciting for me. Uh,culture. If we have a massive cultural shift, maybe in the wake of ai and as all the staring at screens that says, nature's really important, we really care. We're putting in place policies like the [00:42:00] UK is really leading on this with Rewilding work and, and biodiversity net game.

Kevin Um. And then our theory of change for Superorganism is we want more proof points. Like we wanna back the next Chris Tompkins or Yvon Chouinard from Patagonia, or the next Jack Dangermond from Esri, who are building really powerful, big companies, and show that you can do so in a nature positive way. and we hope that that helps activate more capital downstream.

Erum Yeah.

Karl I seem to remember a poll from a few years ago that the majority of Americans across all party lines consider themselves either conservationists or outdoor enthusiasts. Totally. And that is to me, such an incredible statistic because it just shows that there is a lot of people who really do appreciate what nature offers and they understand how important it is. But then there's been this division across politics that have separated. And I think that like that's one of those forces that we politically could tap into.

Kevin Totally. There's a really cool organization [00:43:00] called Nature's Nonpartisan. Worth checking out.

Karl Yeah,

Erum yeah, yeah. I mean, I, there's so much to unpack with that too, with the cultural shift.

Erum I'd watched recently, Michael Pollan was being interviewed and he has a book coming out about consciousness. it's called A World Appears It's gonna be, uh, released on Tuesday. Not that, we're getting, not that their spots or us or anything, but I, I'm paying attention because, a part of this. part of his research has been about the consciousness of animals and, quantifying that, observing it. there was an XPRIZE that is either being made or I don't know if it's been released, about understanding, animal communication to be able to speak to animals. And to be able to see that.

Erum And I know we, a lot of, a lot of us have pets, so we know that there is, consciousness in some type of relationship. But to be able to see that on a larger scale with more diverse animals, that gives you pause and think, okay, well maybe there's something there. But then of course at the other side of it is like the morality side, which is, are you gonna kill all [00:44:00] these animals?

Erum it's like, well, we have to eat. And like, you know, there's a, the whole I guess the whole idea of, interacting with conscious beings I think is really interesting as people learn more about it.

Kevin Oh my goodness. I, I so strongly agree. And that was, that was the other fringe point for what could happen in the next 10 years. I believe very strongly that if it's ever going to be possible to decode animal language into something that is probably not going to be one-to-one with human language, but something that's understandable. It's gonna happen in the next 10 years. and, you know, grapple, the same way that other species share a lot of our biology. So when we pollute and emit something that's not great for them, it probably isn't great for us. Same thing with consciousness and intelligence. Right. we did not evolve in a vacuum.

Erum Yes, exactly. Oh, great. Way to end the interview part of this. But now we're getting to the next quick segment or our next segment, which is our quick fire [00:45:00] round. And so we're gonna ask you a series of questions, quick answers.

Erum all right.

Erum Here I go. All right. Species you'd invest in if nature had a pitch deck,

Kevin really any keystone species. But I'm gonna go with sea otters. Sea otters are obviously, scientifically speaking, adorable. But, really, really important from a carbon management perspective. They used to exist continuously all the way from California through to Japan. they were over hunted. They're coming back in some places. There's some places where they're absent. We've lost a lot of kelp. You do that, you uplift a lot of other species around them too.

Erum Wow.

Karl Amazing. Wow. Most underrated ecosystem on earth.

Kevin I'm gonna say whatever ecosystem is in your backyard is the most underrated one.

Erum Oh, wow.

Karl I love that.

Erum Yes.

Kevin Yeah. Yeah. This feels like a high horse answer, but

Erum No, no, no. That's great though. It's true. It is so true.

Kevin Yeah, and it's, it's important too because, when we talk about climate [00:46:00] change and biodiversity loss, climate change is a really tough problem for you as an individual to solve. Right? It's, you can do a lot. But it's, it's ultimately a systems problem. Biodiversity loss, though you can actually do something about in your own backyard. You can plant native species, you could get involved in your local park, and you could see uplift in the matter of months, years in a pretty material way.

Erum Yeah. Yeah. I love that. I love that answer. Okay. One biodiversity myth, you'd love to retire.

Kevin Similarly to the backyard, it's that nature is out there somewhere. it's everywhere. There's a lot of different places where you can be acting. and then, you know, the other one for us is a, as a business, is we sometimes run into people who are like, you can't make money with nature or biodiversity. Our whole existence is to prove that wrong. So I, I have to mention that one too.

Karl Okay. one species you'd put on your board of directors,

Kevin I thought a lot about this one giant Pacific octopus. several reasons. is they're super smart. two, obviously they [00:47:00] could multitask. That sounds great. all the

Erum arms,

Kevin I've always wanted to know one socially. and then worst case scenario, this one's a little bleak, but you know, sometimes you get a bad board member and you're stuck with them a really long time. Giant Pacific Octopus has only lived three to five years, so, there's a natural succession,

Erum so great. Oh my gosh, that's so good. Ah, I love octopuses.

Erum I sometimes say octopi, but octopuses is a right way of saying it. Such a great answer. Oh my god. I love it. Decentralized intelligence. Multiple arms. It could fit into a hole.

Kevin Pick stuff up. They're mischievous.

Erum Yeah.

Kevin Yes, exactly. They can change colors. You'll know exactly how upset they are with whatever you're proposing.

Kevin Yeah. yeah. Yeah.

Erum desert island, You get one ecosystem to protect forever, which is it.

Kevin And I'm living on this desert island with that ecosystem forever.

Erum Mm-hmm.

Kevin Okay. Coastal Redwoods. no question. I grew up in the Bay Area. I'm a Bay Area kid. That's what feels most like nature to me. the trees are incredible. You get this fog covered, [00:48:00] cool area. Seems like a really nice way to live on a desert island.

Erum Yes. I love that. I love, I love that too. Forest, which is so nice. If I had to choose like a next house would be a house in the woods, in the forest, a lake house.

Kevin Although now my inner conservationist is panicking. I should say, my technical answer is whatever ecosystem is on that island

Erum Yeah. Is there, but in

Kevin hypothetical worlds. Yeah. Yeah. Redwoods.

Erum Right. Redwoods.

Karl Awesome. Kevin, you have been such a great guest. We wanna hang out with you since you're in our neighborhood, and, have you come back on, to see what kind of progress you guys make. And I think we need to look at your portfolio to see who we gotta get on the podcast.

Kevin Absolutely. I've got recommendations. this is a delight. Thank you so much for what you're doing.

Karl Thank you.

Erum Yes, absolutely.

Karl IAM, how'd you like this conversation with Kevin?

Erum I loved it. I'm so happy we had a chance to get to know him more over the podcast, which is, he's here in Brooklyn. [00:49:00] He's, in our little circle, which I'm excited to talk to him more, but what a great.

Erum he has such a great experience, right? He's studied biology, studied sustainability. He's worked at venture funds on the, big B2B SaaS world. And then finally, comes to and arrives. He arrives here looking at nature, looking at biodiversity as the lens into which invest in companies. I was like, this is the perfect person to speak to, and

Erum I really liked his core idea that nature runs through our entire economy. This is something that we always talk about too. we always say that the Venn diagram between climate and biology is a circle. It is the same thing. And we got that from our friend Kristen Ellis, who also worked in venture capital.

Erum And so his, him saying that nature runs through the entire economy is also their investment thesis. So I really like that. What were your key takeaways?

Karl Kevin and I, we talked about it a little bit at the beginning where, we also know that we [00:50:00] disregard the value of nature. We take it for granted. And I've talked about this book free gifts that I have started to listen to, where. Because we take nature for granted. We continue to destroy it and extract from it where we know that, there's a microbe for everything. every problem that we need to solve, on this planet. There's probably a natural solution to it. It might be something that exists wild type, or it might be something that we need to. engineer to work a little bit better.

Karl But what I do appreciate about the way that Kevin presented the company is that they're very clear in terms of their investment thesis. they're tackling extinction drivers. They're going after climate and biodiversity, and they also have deep. Tech, that is across the board on those things. So I think, it's very related to what we talk about here at Grow Everything. And We have had Super organism, uh, companies on the podcast.

Karl Foray and Sway are two of those companies.

Erum Yeah. Which we had mentioned in the episode. So [00:51:00] good to reiterate. But, um,one of the other things that. it gets challenging when you're looking at biodiversity as a, a tool in which to measure the health of the environment and economy.

Erum it is hard but investible, right? So when he was talking about, when it comes to climate tech, there's like really. everyone measures climate solutions by, CO2. Right? But what is the CO2 equivalent for biodiversity? And it's challenging. There's multiple dimensions. Like, we talked about, species, how populated or depopulated different species are in a certain area.

Erum Invasive species. Invasive species. And we also talked about. the biodiversity of plants in a given area. One of the things we didn't talk about, which I hope Kevin, we can talk, bring it back on the pod and talk to him more about, or obviously when we see him in Brooklyn, is the idea of measuring microbes in a given area and how that is [00:52:00] a, it could be a measurement for how healthy an environment is or not. depending on what microbes are there, like, I'm thinking particularly of soil microbiomes, because we know that, the soil microbiomes very important to the health of plants. And being very fertile. And that there is an issue of barren land because of the over harvesting of plants, monoculture plants. So you're not really getting, there's not a lot of diverse microbes there if there's not a lot of diverse plants there. So that's one thing I wanted talk to him about. And the other thing that I didn't bring up that I wanted to talk about, about measuring biodiversity is this concept of EDNA.

Erum Have you heard of that, Carl?

Karl I don't know what that is.

Erum Yeah. There's this company that I met at that World Biodiversity Summit, and what they do is they take like a device, like an Oxford Nanopore or some other type of device that can, take a sample and see what type of DNA is out there, in a sample and they give a sample so you can take water samples and see what DNA is in that little water sample to see how [00:53:00] much and how diverse.

Erum of life is it in that specific location? which is, I think, with that technology, it'll be interesting to see how a devices are built around that to get a wider lens of how, how diverse a certain area is. And then of course we throw other tools to process all the data and the pattern recognition. where I'm going with what tool I'm talking about here. Yeah, just done talking about it.

Karl Well, there's, there's a couple things. first, there are likened that grow on trees that. Basically signal that a forest is healthy. I didn't know that until Kristen pointed it out to me. And, they're very specific and, very, invisible unless you are looking for them. But this EDNA idea is very interesting too because, measuring the health of an ecosystem seems like it would be some would be very valuable. And Kevin did talk about sensors and sensing, being one of the things that they invest in.

Karl Yeah. So I think that, people working on that, here's super organism and they're looking at [00:54:00] companies that are doing this because understanding the health of an ecosystem is super important. And it goes back to, you know what I said at the top of it. At the top of the episode of the commentary that we don't really understand the value of nature, we take it for granted.

Karl And if we are able to measure what is around us, then I think it gives us the opportunity to be more thoughtful or intentional, or even just consider. These things have value instead of just like extracting and, going, scorched earth on everything.

Erum Yeah, yeah. Well said. Well said. And I will also say that, before, you know, if there, if there are any founders listening before you get really excited about, oh my gosh, my technology or my company is focused on biodiversity.

Erum It's not just biodiversity alone. Narrative isn't the only thing that will win with Superorganism or any company, unfortunately, when it comes to biodiversity or sustainability, those are table stakes. When it comes to biotech hope, well, I dunno about biodiversity. We have to think about [00:55:00] that a little bit more, but we know we say sustainability is table stakes when it comes to any company that's leveraging biotech.

Erum And then this comes back to the thing that we always say all the time is more when we do our messaging lab work, but also on the podcast, is that your technology isn't what wins. It's the outcomes of your company and the value it generates, not only for your customer, but also for investors.

Erum you're, if you're seeking venture capital. So there has to be money being made. When you're seeking venture capital, there's VCs who have invested in science projects, of course. of course that's not why they're investing. They're, they're hoping that a business model comes into fruition and customers come to the forefront and start purchasing. But, to really win How's the money flow? how does that flow through the company into the world and, and back into the pockets of investors.

Erum So, just wanted to point that out because I. And Carl, we're, we're also speaking to founders. I'm, gonna be speaking on a panel in tomorrow, just speaking on a panel about, biomedical startups and what's going on [00:56:00] there. And one of the messages I will always say is that enough with the technology, talk about the outcomes.

Karl Talk about the benefits and

Erum the

Karl benefits, and, sell the sizzle, not the steak.

Erum There we go. I'm gonna use that

Karl classic advertising lingo. I, I just wanna add one, one more thing about, this conversation. I felt like there were some Ministry of the Future vibes going on, with Kevin. Ministry of the Future is a book by Kim Stanley Robinson came out many years ago. and it talks about. not to give it away but one of the things that goes on in the book is this, talk about rewilding parts of the planet. And there's people starting to talk about this a little bit, where you let nature just kind of run its course the way it would anyway. We humans not to be around. And we saw some of this happen during the COVID shutdowns where, dolphins were swimming into bays that they were never in. Wild animals like coyotes and bears are showing [00:57:00] up on streets, in suburbs. And I think that the moment we really start pricing nature correctly via measurements, you've talked about EDNA and these kinds of tools, via regulation and even just like our culture shift, which is something that I talked to Kevin about, then I think. Funds like Superorganism and their portfolio companies are gonna scale really quickly because there is an urgent need to address the climate crisis and what's coming. even if people wanna pretend that it's not.

Erum Oh yeah, it's here. It's here. Yeah. It's, bits and pieces. we're living here in Brooklyn and we don't get to really feel the impacts so much. but, people in other parts of the world, climate is a very real issue and we hope that there's more solutions that are either shared or, I liked the, I liked your, I, Just leave it alone. let, let nature take its course. but of course there are people that help. They're building solutions to help accelerate some climate solutions and making [00:58:00] our planet more habitable and livable and fun place to live.

Erum So,

Karl I'll go back to what I used to say a lot during the beginning of the podcast. We need every solution everywhere, all at once.

Erum that's the next movie to be made. Nice movie title. Um, yeah. So with that, I thank Kevin Webb of Superorganism of joining us on the podcast. Thank you listener for tuning into the Grow Everything podcast.

Erum Find us on all the streaming channels, of course, the one that you're listening to. but there are others. In case you decided to hop streaming channels. please text us. Call us, reach out. We are very responsive to our listeners. We wanna thank some of our listeners for reaching out, asking more detailed questions about what they heard on the podcast, getting clarifying questions.

Erum I'm not gonna say reaching out for intros 'cause it's not what we're gonna be doing, but please, you can find all of our contact information in our show notes, like, subscribe, find us on YouTube. [00:59:00] We're everywhere. Thank you for tuning in.

Karl If that's the pot. Thank you. Key Quotes from Kevin Webb "Whatever that amount is, it is dramatically undervalued relative to how it's priced into our economic system. For too long, we've treated nature as an externality." "We're building this VC fund to do two things: invest in companies that fit a VC shape, but also believe that company can make a difference for nature at scale." "Biodiversity technology driven companies are being started, have always been started. It's just they haven't really been given one central home." "You wouldn't have rational economic actors who are doing mass deforestation, if the value of trees in the Amazon were properly reconciled in their incentives." "We're obsessed with what industries have been tied to nature loss historically, and we are vetting them through how much the startups can disrupt, transition them to better, more sustainable practices." "Can this startup make a dent on pollution, invasive species habitat loss, or over exploitation of natural resources?" "The great thing about climate related opportunities is you can evaluate apples to oranges against this one metric, which is carbon dioxide equivalent. Biodiversity is so much harder." "There's no one metric, at least that we've seen that does a really good job of capturing what it is that we're trying to do with biodiversity." "I came to the difficult but very eventually obvious decision that I wanted to chase this idea of building a VC fund for biodiversity, where we could break apart the problem of biodiversity loss into venture sized opportunities." "We have to believe there are billion dollar plus outcomes. We have to believe in the founders, we have to believe in the market opportunity, but also that the company can make a difference for nature."