Ep. 187 - She’s Raised Millions to Teach AI How to Talk to Wild Animals—And Save Companies Real Money
SHOW NOTES
Every year, wild animals collide with human infrastructure millions of times; birds striking airplanes, deer and moose wandering onto train tracks, predators attacking livestock. The result isn’t just tragic for animals. It also costs industries billions of dollars in damage, delays, and safety risks.
What if instead of fencing wildlife out—or killing them—we could simply communicate with them and let them know of the dangers ahead?
Today’s guest has built technology that’s doing exactly that.
Sara Nožková is the founder and CEO of Flox Intelligence, a company developing AI systems that detect animals near critical infrastructure and then use species-specific signals to guide them away from danger. Airports can reduce costly bird strikes. Railways can prevent deadly train collisions with wildlife. Farmers can protect crops and livestock—all while allowing animals to remain part of the ecosystem.
In other words, it’s technology that aims to be good for business and good for both animal welfare and biodiversity.
In this episode, Sara and I talk about how she built an AI that “speaks wildlife,” what animals may actually be saying to each other, whether this technology could help humans and wild animals finally learn to peacefully coexist, and even if it might help us one day communicate with aliens.
DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE
Flox has raised roughly $3 million from investors.
“Upstate New York company uses artificial intelligence to communicate with animals”
The Earth Species Project works to communicate with nonhumans.
Koko the Gorilla learned and used more than 1,000 ASL signs to communicate with humans.
Prairie dogs also have their own language that scientists have begun decoding.
It turns out that chickens also have dozens of different “words” they use to communicate with each other.
Sara recommends checking out Rewilding the World and A Bit of Optimism.
Get to Know Sara Nožková
Sara Nožková is the Co-Founder and CEO of Flox, a wildlife intelligence company using AI and applied wildlife science to prevent human–wildlife conflicts across transportation, infrastructure, and agriculture.Named Sweden’s Female Founder of the Year 2025 and recipient of the Swedish King’s Young Innovator Award 2025, Sara has spent the past decade working in the transportation sector — building scalable, autonomous solutions that make coexistence between humans and wildlife possible.She founded Flox out of the AI research lab at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, and recently relocated to New York to lead Flox’s North American expansion. Sara is passionate about redefining how technology interacts with nature — creating systems that protect both people and wildlife, from airports and railways to farms and cities.
TRANSCRIPT
Sára Nožková 0:00
Animals have been communicating with each other for 1000s of years, and they are actually signaling danger and territory and movement through sound. And when I found it flocks, I kind of came up with how can we combine artificial intelligence with wildlife science to decode that communication and use it to guide them away from dangerous places.
Paul Shapiro 0:22
Welcome to the Business for good podcast where we spotlight people making money by solving some of the world's most pressing problems. I'm your host, Paul Shapiro, author of a nationally best selling book on food sustainability, and CEO of a company in the same space. On this show, I speak with founders, investors and thought leaders who prove that doing good and doing well can go hand in hand. The biggest challenges facing humanity are solvable and are often profitable too. My hope is that this podcast informs, inspires, and maybe even helps repel you to build a business that makes the world a better place. I'm glad you're here. Welcome friend to Episode 187, of the business for good podcast. Thanks to all of you who offered your feedback on our last episode with leafed foods about their work to harvest protein from leaves and use that nutrition to replace dairy and other heavy impact proteins. And thanks to those of you who've given feedback on the new YouTube videos as well. This show is now not only audio, but also on YouTube as full video conversations as well as short video clips. And for those of you watching rather than listening, you may have noticed that I've continued to take my wife's advice and experiment with not shaving. Not sure where this may be headed, but she reports that she likes it so far, so perhaps it'll go on a little bit longer. We'll see. Okay, here's your wild fact for this episode, and it's appropriately about wild animals. This episode is about using AI to understand what animals are saying? Did you know that scientists have discovered that prairie dogs use a sophisticated language that can describe the size, shape, color and speed of a predator. In experiments, prairie dogs even produce different alarm calls for a tall human in a yellow shirt versus a short human in a blue shirt. While I know that brings us to this episode. Every year, wild animals collide with human infrastructure millions of times. Birds striking airplanes, deer and moose wandering onto train tracks, predators attacking livestock. The result isn't just tragic for animals, it also costs industries billions of dollars in damage, delays and safety risks. What if, instead though of fencing out wildlife or killing them altogether. We could simply communicate with them and let them know of the dangers ahead. Today's guest has built technology that's doing exactly that. Sarah noshkova is the founder and CEO of phlox intelligence, a company developing AI systems that deter animals near critical infrastructure and then use species specific signals to guide them away from danger. Airports can reduce costly bird strikes. Railways can prevent deadly train coalitions with wildlife. Farmers can protect crops and livestock, all while allowing animals to remain a part of the ecosystem. In other words, it's technology that aims to be both good for business and good for animal welfare. In this episode, Sarah and I talk about how she built an AI that quote, unquote, speaks wildlife what animals may actually be saying to each other, and whether this technology could help humans and wild animals finally learn to coexist, and even if it might help us one day communicate with aliens. Yes, that's right. I'll let Sarah tell you the flock story. Sarah, welcome to the business
Sára Nožková 3:17
for good podcast. Thank you for having me.
Paul Shapiro 3:18
Hi. Yeah, it's really great to be talking with you. You know, I had read about your company because it looked like a really interesting mix of my interests, which is using technology to help animals. But a friend of mine, Stephanie Heath Reiner, recommended you also to me, and I thought, well, if Steph is endorsing your work, certainly it's worth talking about. So shout out to Steph, but I want to say, thanks for what you're doing to help animals and hear the story. You've raised about 3 million US dollars so far for this idea. What are you pitching to investors? If they're biting on what? Why are they interested
Sára Nožková 3:52
in this? So my one liner is usually that we build AI that speaks with wild animals, and we do it to keep them away from critical areas where they are not supposed to be, like airports or train tracks or roadways.
Paul Shapiro 4:06
Okay, so it sounds like something that would be good for animals, and I'm sure you're going to say that collisions with animals are also detrimental economically to them. But what led you to think of this? Were you, Sarah, like, interested in animal welfare before this company, and you thought this would be a good way to advance that interest of yours, or did you think this is just a good business idea and will also appeal to people who care about animals, like, what's your background that led you to think I'm going to create AI to talk to wildlife?
Sára Nožková 4:34
Yeah, so it's been a journey for sure. I founded phlox intelligence out of AI research lab at KTH, which is the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden. And it's been six years ago now, so it's been a while and I had been working at KTH, especially within transportation, so everything connected to ground transport. Systems, autonomous vehicles, drone technology and so on. And at the same time, I kept reading in newspapers about all the collisions between trains and moose in Sweden and all the bird strikes at airports. So that's kind of how I came up with the idea, how can we use new technologies to instead coexist with wildlife. And I think flux is kind of at an intersection of technology, but also wildlife, science and nature. So I've been always very interested in linguistics as well. I speak five languages, and I also have spent a lot of time in nature growing up. So I think that's kind of how it how it started. But I've also been very kind of interested in animals in particular and as flocks, think the best way to describe where we come from is that animals, you know, have been communicating with each other for 1000s of years, and maybe you have heard wolves howl or birds call or foxes bark, so they are actually signaling danger and territory and movement through sound. And so when I found this flocks, I kind of came up with, how can we combine artificial intelligence with wildlife science to decode that communication and use it to guide them away from dangerous places so that the result can be safer infrastructure and fewer disruptions and also a better world for both wildlife and us humans. Yeah. How interesting.
Paul Shapiro 6:38
Okay, so you mentioned Sarah that you speak five languages. So obviously you're fluent in English. You were in Sweden, so you speak Swedish as well. There must be three others, though, and I know you're not native to Sweden. So what are these three other languages?
Sára Nožková 6:52
Yeah, so I'm from Czechia originally, so Czech is my my first language, and then I've been moving around and living in different countries in Europe. So I spent a couple of years in Madrid in Spain, so Spanish and also working with a European Union in Brussels. So French is max does.
Paul Shapiro 7:14
And I know that you recently have moved to Syracuse, New York, and so now you're living in America, where I would guess the vast majority of people speak only one language. And you know, it's always impressive, like when Americans are talking to each other and you find out that someone else speaks one other language, like, wow, you also speak Spanish, and you like impressed that they're smart enough to speak too. But you will be exotic in America Speaking five languages, for sure, but hopefully you'll have a chance to practice all the others, because maybe Spanish. I don't know how many people speak Spanish in Syracuse, but where I live in California, it's a lot of Spanish spoken. But that's very cool. That's very cool. So you mentioned you started it six years ago. I feel like, in AI terms, six years ago may as well have been an eon ago, right? Like that's so long before we had everybody using llms, like, were you considering this AI at that point, or were you just trying to figure out how to decode what wildlife were saying, even without the type of advanced AI tools that we have today?
Sára Nožková 8:13
Yeah, so the original idea wasn't about decoding. It was more about how can we use machine learning to detect and identify different species from different vehicles like drones or trains or from different stationary devices, and then apply the correct sounds to try to keep them away. But it has been kind of, I would say, more connected to the research that has been done by different wildlife scientists. So when I started the company, I immediately started to work with different leading wildlife biologists, so different people that have been studying wolf howls or carnivores, and different people that have been working with bird vocalization. So that has been kind of the idea. But I think the field has been evolving so much, and especially over the past two years, I've seen that there has been a lot of things happening with, for example, Earth species project, or interspecies Internet, and there is a lot of different associations and kind of communities that both attracts different scientists and and companies and try to kind of work together to really try to unlock what animals have been saying all along. So it's very exciting, and it's something that right what we are doing now at flocks is something we could not have been doing even a year ago, because the kind of the technology has not been there.
Paul Shapiro 9:46
Yeah, it also makes me wonder, one year from now, what you will be doing right, like, what doesn't exist now that it does exist a year from now, I think about this topic a lot about communication with non humans for a variety of reasons. So first you think about the revolution in our understanding and appreciation of whales, when we began to learn that they are actually singing to each other, when we had underwater microphones and we could hear whale songs, and how that really helped to launch a lot of the environmental movement to realize that these whales had a culture that was far more advanced than anything that we would have ascribed to them before. Similarly, we have also been able to decode many prairie dog sounds, so that we know that they speak to each other with syntax. They can communicate different threats to each other, what type of threats, whether it's from the air, even chickens, we've learned to have different calls for different types of threats so they can signal to each other. And it really makes me wonder, how much do we have to learn about these animals before we stop harming them? So much, right? Like, it's very intellectually interesting to see that we can learn that there is always some vocabulary that chickens have, or prairie dogs or whales or maybe moose in the case that you're mentioning about these trains. But does it, like I've often thought, does this actually translate into better treatment of these animals, right? Like, does knowing that chickens have a vocabulary make anybody more or less likely to eat chickens or to treat chickens the way that we do on factory farms? And I don't know the answer to this, but it sounds like you're trying to present an idea that could actually lead to better treatment. So explain Sarah how that actually works, right? So if you have birds at an airport, or you have moose near train tracks, what is phlox doing that actually leads to them not getting hit by trains and planes? Yeah, so
Sára Nožková 11:41
I would say in in simple terms, we have developed our first product that we call flux edge. It is a unit that is stationary at airports. You can deploy, deploy them, for example, at the fence per meter or at different hot spots. And basically, what the unit does it it works 24/7, and it monitors the airfield using AI vision and sensors to kind of identify the species, the gender as kind of everything that we can see about the animals in order to work with them. And then we deploy tailor made playlists that are kind of tailor made to each unique scenario, not only the species, but the context, the intent, the landscape. And so we are pairing the playlists with the right behaviors. And that's kind of how the unit is also learning and is getting better and better each day. So that is kind of the first that is the first product. But the same thing, we already are testing as well directly on trains, which is quite exciting. So we have also global partnership with Alstom, which is a train manufacturer that has trains in about 60 countries, all of the all over the world. So we are on a couple of trains in Sweden and piloting the technology there. So I see our software being being deployable on different hardware carriers in the future, as well as like drones or others.
Paul Shapiro 13:18
So just to be clear, flux edge, it has some type of a detection and speaker device that is on the outside of a train, and it is calling out in a way that will make animals not want to cross the tracks. That's what you're saying. So we have,
Sára Nožková 13:36
I would say, the core of what we do is we can detect animals, and we can speak with them in their kind of own language, and we can, in real time, understand how they are, how they are behaving, how they are responding to those calls, and that's how we learn. But then there is also, I mean, the edge device is a stationary unit that can be deployed by train tracks or highways or at farmlands. But then the same technology that we have in those units is an intelligence that can be on different hardware carriers like trains or drones in the future. So right now, we are commercializing the edge devices, but we are also piloting in on other hardware carriers, like trains.
Paul Shapiro 14:18
How interesting? Because I would imagine trains go so fast, even in the United States, you know, you have trains going 60 miles an hour, which is a fraction of the speed of some of the high speed trains elsewhere. But at least, you know, for wildlife time, it's pretty fast, right? Like I would imagine, that hardware on the train, it's hard to signal to a moose, if the train is going 60 miles an hour, that the train is coming, right? I don't know how that works. Am I wrong? Is my is my skepticism wrong?
Sára Nožková 14:44
On that count? Kind of there are different requirements, for sure, but it is also why we work with the train manufacturer directly. So it's kind of a partnership where we work with rotta. Hardware and the software and kind of integrate, integrate in the train directly. So we are testing a lot of different cameras. We have developed speaker that is tailor made to do this. So it's been many years since we started, and it's for sure, it's hard, but it's not impossible. So that's why we we are doing this.
Paul Shapiro 15:23
Now, cool. So the fox edge, I've read that it's, it's $3,500 for the first year subscription, and then you're basically paying $500 a year or $50 per unit that you needed. Is that is what we're doing, accurate? Okay, so the company is already generating revenue with these pilot programs that you're mentioning, right? So you have customers who are paying you. Customers who are paying you $3,500 for
Sára Nožková 15:44
that subscription. Yeah, and we've, we've had, so we've had pilot customers pretty much since we started. We've had our first prototypes out there for about two and a half years now, working with the Swedish transport administration or WWF or different airports in Scandinavia. But now, since last year, we have also expanded here to North America, so working both with international airports in the US or different dots in in Canada as well.
Paul Shapiro 16:18
Wow. Okay, and how are the results going okay? I'm sure you're measuring what is actually occurring. So how are the results for these years of pilots that you've been
Sára Nožková 16:27
doing so far? Yeah, so we've been able to work with different species that are kind of common for both North America and Europe. So in our library today, we have 27 species that we've been working with the smallest ones are of a size of a rabbit or a squirrel. But then we work a lot with different birds, different carnivores, like coyotes, wolves, we've started to have deployments with grizzly bears in Canada as well, or mountain lions in California. And ungulates are a big one as well. So moose, reindeer, elk, deer, and so far, we have deterred slightly over 60,000 animals from critical infrastructure and danger. So yeah, we've been around for a while. The first years have been really about studies and validating the technology, and now we are commercializing more at scale. That's exciting.
Paul Shapiro 17:30
You're talking about deterring animals from train tracks from airports, but you're also doing agricultural protection, right? You're also trying to protect fields of crops, perhaps from being trampled on or grazed by wildlife.
Sára Nožková 17:44
How does that work? Yeah, so we've been working with different agricultural companies, seed producers or different farmers for a couple of years, and applications that we have seen is both crop protection. If you have birds or deer or elk causing damage to your crops, so keeping them away while coexisting with them. We have different vineyards as well. And then livestock protection is a big one, so making sure that we we create good boundaries with with especially wolves and livestock. So keeping livestock safe, but still making sure that we can have wolves in the areas where,
Paul Shapiro 18:29
where do you? How does that work like? How do you persuade a wolf not to eat a sheep or a calf? Like, what is like? I presume these ranchers have fences, and that sometimes the wolves get through the fences. So how do you I mean, I would guess a calf is pretty attractive to a wolf. So what are you doing to make it less attractive?
Sára Nožková 18:46
Yeah, so in our case, we create kind of like a virtual fence, so making sure we can detect the wolves approaching and make sure that we can tell them to stay away before they approach the livestock. So that has been something that we've been working with, with sheep associations in Sweden and with WWF in Sweden as well. And how do you tell the wolf
Paul Shapiro 19:09
to stay away? Is there a particular wolf danger call that they know? Like, is it a gunshot? Like, what is the message to the wolf that says, Turn around?
Sára Nožková 19:16
Yeah, it's a, I would say it's a little bit different location to location, and also kind of working with them over time. But we can achieve a lot with kind of their own communication. So different world howls, sometimes we work with other predator calls as well, but it's a lot kind of about applying their own language about territory or
Paul Shapiro 19:41
so on. Yeah. But how do you know what you like? You know, wolves have their own language. Presumably, there is a different type of hell for there's danger here. Turn back and hey, there's a really tasty calf here. Let's go. So like, how do you know that you're telling the wolf the right wolf message?
Sára Nožková 19:56
Yeah. So we always have different hypotheses. Coming into each deployment, and we work with different carnivore experts. So we do have playlists that we start with, but then we learn which is with each interaction. So there is different events that kind of help the system to be smarter and see kind of what works and doesn't work. And different wolf packs have also different responses and so on. So kind of a way of working with them and outsmarting them, or at least try to all the time.
Paul Shapiro 20:32
Okay, and how do you know you're not causing them distress? Or is it worth it to deter them, to cause them distress like obviously the goal is to prevent a negative interaction that's kind of a bad outcome for the wolf or the noose or whoever, but how do you know that you're not doing something that is really upsetting them? That's a really good question.
Sára Nožková 20:49
So, I mean, for us, it's always important that we comply with all the ethics and so on. But this is quite, I would say it's quite a new field, and we don't know necessarily exactly what we are saying, but we are we have pretty much good idea. And I always think about, what is the alternative? You know, they can either be shot or they can be different ways to manage the populations and so on. But with us, we try to essentially just communicate in their own language and help help them, in a way, to be part of the ecosystem, but stay away from certain areas like livestock.
Paul Shapiro 21:33
Okay, let's talk about the economics a bit. So you've raised 3 million US dollars, and you're now intending to scale, and you want to put this at farms and airports and train tracks and presumably many other places as well. If the company succeeds, what do you think the world will look like? So what is your vision for when you're pitching investors, and you're pitching them on this vision of what the future is going to look like, because the company has succeeded, what is
Sára Nožková 22:01
the outcome? I always say we are creating a world where humans and wildlife finally coexist. So that's kind of our vision, and why we are doing what we are doing. We are also establishing kind of a new category of wildlife intelligence. It's something that maybe hasn't been so popular before, but now I see there's more and more focus on biodiversity, climate in particular. So I would really love people that have human wildlife conflicts to think of flux intelligence when they when they experience those. So that's, yeah, that's what we are working towards.
Paul Shapiro 22:43
You're working a lot, Sarah, with animal behavior data, trying to figure out how to speak wolf so to speak, or how to speak moose, so to speak. Has it changed how you personally think about these animals?
Sára Nožková 22:56
Yeah, it has. I think it has allowed me to connect with them on on a different level, and I I also see kind of myself, being more open to to listening to wild animals when I'm walking my dog in the forest. And that's kind of my hope as well. So for Fox intelligence, we are all about avoiding human wildlife conflicts and really keeping wild animals away from critical infrastructure or danger. But I think if we succeed, it's also about teaching everyone that we can connect with wild animals in a way that has not been possible. So that's kind of my, my hope as well.
Paul Shapiro 23:44
Nice, you know, right now, phlox is nudging animals away from danger. Do you think that one day we may be able to have two way communication with them? So we, you know, we've had two way communication with many animals who we have taught human languages, right? Like we have taught gorillas and chimpanzees and bonobos to use American Sign Language, and many of them have learned hundreds of signs that can have actual, admittedly simple but actual conversations with us in American Sign Language. Coco the gorilla, is one of the most celebrated examples of this, but it's rare that we ever learn to speak another animal's language, right? Like we've never really spoken chimpanzees or we've never spoken dolphinese or doggies, you know, we teach our dogs to understand human commands, right? We tell them sit or stay or turn around or whatever, and they understand what we are saying, but we've never really figured out what they are saying. And I wonder if phlox, if you envision for flux, not just one way communication, but other two way communication that we might be able to have
Sára Nožková 24:50
with them one day. I get this question all the time, I think for us, it's about reaching a level. Where we can tap into the way they communicate, kind of on their own terms, and making sure that they understand the intent of what we are trying to say. Then the next level, kind of engaging in a two way communication. You tell me, I think it's very hard, maybe, maybe in a couple of years, but I'm what we are about this really trying to listen, trying to decode what they are saying. It's something that AI is pretty good at, kind of looking at the patterns in the communication and making sure we can, we can decode different things that we could not be able to hear, you know, with our own hearing. So it's certainly a new field. We will see kind of where, where we are going in a couple of years. But, yeah, I don't really have a good answer to that.
Paul Shapiro 26:03
You see, did you see the movie or read the short story called arrival? Yes, yes, maybe. So for those who haven't seen it or read it, you know it's about aliens who come to earth, and then we have to try to figure out how to communicate with them. And so they send a linguist, this woman who goes and tries to figure out, like, how to speak their language, so we can have a two way communication with them that somehow rational. And I think about this topic surprisingly often, of how we would communicate with aliens, right? Like it's you think about chimpanzees, who share roughly 99% of our genes, and we can't really have any meaningful communication with them. Yeah, we've taught some of them ASL and have very simple conversations, but nothing that the type of conversation we would want to have with an alien, like about physics or the universe, right? And it's very hard to see how we could possibly do that unless there is, like some maybe, like in the book or the movie contact, where there's like a lexicon of math that is used like we think that math is universal, but these aliens share, presumably no DNA in common with us. Maybe they're not even comprised of DNA at all. I don't know. So it's very hard to think how we're going to talk with them if we ever have some communication with some other alien civilization, but maybe you'll be the real life person who they call on to say, hey, look, Sarah has been spending years trying to figure out how to talk to wild animals. Maybe you'll be the person who they send to go talk to the aliens. Yeah, that would be cool. I also need to think it's probably, it's, I think the to the extent that we're ever going to have a so called conversation with aliens, I think it's going to be a conversation in the same way that we have a conversation with like the ancient Romans or Egyptians, like we can read evidence of their existence from the distant past, but I doubt that we will have live communication like they do in the movie arrival, where they're having real time live communications separated by glass. But still, it's pretty amazing. But you know, even if you think about it like we still, you know, have a difficult time even figuring out what the Egyptian hieroglyphics say. You know, we still haven't really decoded that yet, and those are people of our species only separated by like, 5000 years. So it's even more difficult than to think about what what aliens are. In some cases, other species on our own planet may be maybe saying, Have you found that there are some species, Sarah, who are more difficult or easier to comprehend what they're saying.
Sára Nožková 28:25
Yeah. I mean, there has been a lot of research that has been done, kind of showing everything from you know, that elephants or dolphins have even names for each other, or birds like crows have more than 20,000 signals that they used to communicate. So there are different trials and different studies that have been looking into different species at Flux intelligence. We've been working a lot with birds like Canadian geese that are usually quite problematic for different public beaches in Stockholm. So we've been working with them for about four years now to keep them away from polluting the beaches and having the city essentially to to shut down the beaches because of the Biohazard. So we've been working with them quite a lot, and they have been very stubborn in the beginning, but the more we kind of understood how to apply the different nuances, kind of in their own communication, the more we've been able to connect with them. So that has been a journey. We've been also working a lot with roe deer or moose or reindeer here in Stockholm. So yeah, that has been very interesting. There's a lot of different localizations.
Paul Shapiro 29:46
Wow. Okay, well, that's pretty riveting. You mentioned these birds. You know, I was looking up how many birds are hit by airplanes in the United States every year. It's 10s of 1000s, which, you know, sounds like a lot, but then you think about what are other causes? Of bird deaths. And, you know, birds windows are, you know, killing over a billion birds every single year. And I wonder, do you think there's something that can be done to prevent bird strikes in Windows this way? Like you have these tall skyscrapers that are made of glass, and there these are basically, you know, birds flying every day into them. Like, if you go in the morning at these skyscrapers on the sidewalks are just dead birds all over the sidewalk. It's really terrible. Of course, bird friendly glass would be one option for these types of buildings, and we've covered that on this show before. But is there some place you think for flocks intelligence on these buildings to help birds see that there is glass and they shouldn't fly straight into it?
Sára Nožková 30:39
Yeah, for sure, not necessarily to kind of show them, to not go there, but communicate with them before, before they approach the area. That's something that we've been looking into. So that's certainly one use case. And there are so many different use cases that keep finding us every day, and a lot of them involve, involve birds. I think, when you So, when you mentioned, for example, the problems with bird strikes, it's, for me, it's not only about like, how many birds actually get hit, but each you know, even a single bird strike can easily cost a million dollars. So for the industry, it's it's a lot, a lot of safety involved, fine financial problems and climate, of course, and that's kind of how they think about it. And aircrafts are also getting faster and more quiet, so they don't give birds that much time to actually move away. So that has been increasing problem in the industry.
Paul Shapiro 31:53
You raise an excellent point, which is that airlines have a strong financial incentive to prevent bird strikes, whereas building owners really don't right, like you have to pay a janitor to clean up the bird corpses in the morning. But that's about it. So so sadly that there may not be as much of a business model there, unless somebody is just ethically motivated and doesn't want their building to be killing all these birds. But yeah, this, that's an excellent point. So Sarah, you've been doing this now for six years. I'm sure there have been a lot of resources that have been helpful for you. Are there things that you would recommend to others, if they're thinking about maybe starting their own company, and what they should be looking into that was useful for you?
Sára Nožková 32:37
I'm a big fan of podcasts, so I actually, I've been listening to your podcast for quite a while. Yeah, and another one that I'm a big fan of is the rewilding the world with Ben Goldsmith. Yeah, that's great. So especially if you are building within the Conservation and Biodiversity space. But also, I think it's called a bit of optimism by Simon Sinek, okay,
Unknown Speaker 33:15
but I am aware of it.
Sára Nožková 33:16
Yeah, that's a good one as well. Cool. Well, we
Paul Shapiro 33:18
will definitely link those on the show notes for this episode at business for good podcast.com so people can check out those other shows, which are all cool shows, no doubt. Finally, Sarah, are there companies that you think somebody else should start? Obviously, you are devoted to Fox intelligence right now. You just raised some money, so you're gonna be doing this for at least some time more, and hopefully a long time more. But are there other company ideas that you have that you thought, gee, this would be a really cool idea for the world. I hope somebody else starts it.
Sára Nožková 33:45
Yeah. So I see that there are many, you know, young, first time entrepreneurs kind of building different AI agents or peer software products that optimize different things. But these are, for sure, easier to, you know, scale faster and attract VC capital. But I've been a big believer in kind of pairing the possibilities with AI and different scientific fields, like the Wildlife Science in kind of our case. So if you can do that and also not be afraid of hardware in order to try solve real problems. I think that is something that is needed. So I would hope that the listeners will pursue AI that actually solves real world, physical problems with measurable outcomes, and especially within biodiversity or conservation, which has been required, I think, an underfunded field, so I would love to see more solutions in that space.
Paul Shapiro 34:47
No doubt, no doubt. That would be fantastic to see how AI can be useful, not just in showing us cool videos of a raccoon teaching us how to cook a dish, but also actually how to save some raccoons and some of their friends and. The wild also. So Sarah, thanks so much. I'm really impressed by what you're doing. It's definitely the marriage of my interest in how technology can help prevent animal cruelty and animal suffering. So I really appreciate what you're doing, and I will be rooting for your success.
Sára Nožková 35:15
Thank you for having me. Thanks for
Paul Shapiro 35:16
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