Ep. 188 - One VC’s $26 Million Dollar Biodiversity Bet

SustainabilityEnvironmental Protection
Written By Paul Shapiro

SHOW NOTES

Is biodiversity protection a venture-scale opportunity?

Climate tech has attracted hundreds of billions in capital. AI is on fire. Fintech won’t slow down. But biodiversity? Forests, soil microbes, invasive species, bird-safe glass: are these really  investable categories?

This episode’s guest, Tom Quigley, is a co-founder of Superorganism, one of the first venture funds focused entirely on biodiversity. They just closed a $26 million fund to back startups that aim to slow or reverse species loss. But here’s the real question we dig into:

Can protecting nature really generate venture-style returns?

Over half of global GDP depends directly or indirectly on nature. As ecosystems degrade, supply chains destabilize. Insurance risk rises, commodity prices spike, and entire industries face exposure they barely understand. If biodiversity loss is a systemic economic risk, then companies that reduce that risk might not just be ethical. Some of them just might be inevitable.

So what does a biodiversity VC actually want to see in a pitch? Tom gets into what he’s seeking, including areas where he doesn’t necessarily see a technological fix. We discuss:

  • Are animal-free proteins part of the thesis?

  • Is bird-friendly glass investable?

  • Can AI that protects wind farms change the game for offshore wind?

  • Where does behavior change fit into venture returns?

If you’re building something in food, materials, climate, AI, supply chains, or deep tech, this conversation is for you.

DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE

GET TO KNOW Tom Quigley

Tom Quigley is the founder of Superorganism, a venture capital firm for tech startups that benefit biodiversity. A coral reef conservationist turned startup operator and investor, Tom has worked at the intersection of technology and nature for his entire career. He has advised many early-stage nature tech teams through Superorganism and through his past work at Conservation X Labs, a leading conservation innovation org. Previously, Tom was founding team at Real Vision, a video-on-demand platform for investors, where he ran operations then growth. Prior to tech, Tom spent years in the field in Australia, Madagascar, and the Cayman Islands.

TRANSCRIPT

Paul Shapiro 0:00

Over 50% so really, 55% of the global economy, global GDP, is moderately or heavily reliant on nature. 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 188, of the business for good podcast. All right, we have gotten a lot of positive feedback on our last episode with Sarah nashkova, the CEO who's raised millions of dollars to create AI that warns wild animals how to avoid dangers like airplanes and trains. Her work, which is designed to make money by sparing wildlife, is directly related to the topic of this episode as well. So here's your wild fact of this episode. In 1970 there were about 3.7 billion humans alive. Fast forward half a century to today, and we've more than doubled our population to over 8 billion. In that time, the world has lost about 70% of its wild animal populations, not just species populations, humans and the animals who we raise for food now make up 96% of all of the mammalian biomass on Earth. Wild mammals like elephants and whales and Lions make up only 4%

Paul Shapiro 1:33

it has been quite profitable to deforest the planet so that we can feed all of these animals who we farm so we can eat them, but part of the cost has been tremendous biodiversity loss. Well, what if it were actually profitable, not just to destroy biodiversity, but to actually protect it? In other words, could biodiversity protection be a venture scale opportunity? Climate Tech has already attracted hundreds of billions in venture capital. AI is on fire. FinTech or financial tech won't slow down, but biodiversity, forests, soil microbes, invasive species, bird, safe glass. Are these really investable categories? This episode's guest Tom Quigley says yes. He is the co founder of superorganism, one of the first venture funds focused entirely on biodiversity protection. They just closed a $26 million fund to back startups that aim to slow or reverse species loss. But here's the question that we really dig into, can protecting nature really generate venture style returns? Over half of global GDP depends directly or indirectly on nature. As ecosystems degrade supply chains, destabilize insurance risks rise, commodity prices spike, and entire industries face exposure. They barely even understand if biodiversity losses a systemic economic risk, then companies that reduce that risk might not just be ethical, some of them may be inevitable. So what does biodiversity VC actually want to see in a pitch, Tom gets into what he is seeking, including areas where he doesn't necessarily see a technological fix. We discuss whether animal free proteins are part of his thesis is bird friendly, glass investable. Can AI that protects wind farms change the game for offshore wind? And where does behavior change fit into all of this venture style return anyway, if you're building something in food or materials or climate or AI or supply chains or deep tech, this conversation is definitely for you. I'll let Tom tell you the rest of the story. Tom Welcome to the Business for good podcast.

Tom Quigley 3:23

Hey. Thanks so much. I'm really excited to get into it.

Paul Shapiro 3:25

I am really excited to talking with to be talking with you as well. Now I am familiar with conservation X labs because I am personally a donor to the organization for which you used to work. I'm extremely interested in hearing about your transition from a nonprofit world to becoming a venture capitalist. It's not a well worn path that many make. But before we do, where'd you come from? Tell us about conservation X labs. What do you guys do?

Tom Quigley 3:48

Yeah, sure. So the conversation goes further back than that. Even I was a ski instructor in high school and then went to college and became a climbing instructor, and then graduated college and became a diving Well, a dive master. I shouldn't say dive instructor for people ready to fact check me in the background, but I

Paul Shapiro 4:05

it just presumes that people know what the difference between a dive master and a dive instructor is. I would have presumed a master was a higher level. Is that not true?

Tom Quigley 4:13

Which is the better? Which is the great part about that name? Right? Yeah, I can say that I'm a dive master, and people assume that I'm, like, Lord of the ocean, but actually a dive master is a slightly lower working title than a dive instructor.

Paul Shapiro 4:23

So maybe, maybe I'll be a podcast master. That sounds like a good title for me.

Tom Quigley 4:27

It is a giving anything like that site, and it's all one word as well. So it really does give Poseidon vibes. Through that time, I was doing a lot of learning and trying to, you know, sense, make and find my way through the field, and becoming a lot more interested in ecosystem services and environmental economics, and really the value argument for nature and and what business can and could do to be able to, you know, have good effect for biodiversity and for, you know, global conservation. I had an opportunity doing a startup as employee number two, very early stage media star.

Tom Quigley 5:00

Called real vision, and that seemed like a really great way to earn some business chops. And so I took that opportunity, and I plunged head first into a startup world. And so for three years there, I worked alongside the founders, helping scale that company. We did very well for an early stage startup that didn't really know what we were doing at that time, and we did over a million dollars in revenue in our first year of operation, pretty much from opening the doors and and people really loved what we were building. And most importantly for me, like, I got bit by the tech bug, and it just seemed there was so much in there that was very, very interesting. After coming out of that experience, I had this sort of, like, one lobe of my brain that was very startup focused, and one lobe of my brain that was, you know, always ever going to do, be doing conservation work, and I found this great organization called conservation X Labs, which was really at that time and still today, one of the few organizations that you would go through if you were looking to blend those two disciplines. But working at conservation X labs really helped me think about the drivers of biodiversity loss at the higher level, and thinking about, how does over exploitation, land use change, pollution, invasive species, climate change, the five primary drivers of biodiversity loss. How do those all you know, how do they, how do they work as pressures to both directly and indirectly, drive nature loss and species extinction. And so it was through that that I got a really deep steeping in the industries and the problems that drive biodiversity loss across a lot of different geographies and across with a lot of different types, from, you know, tropical rainforest deforestation to invasive species to behavior change practices and and through a lot of different technology types as well, to provide solutions. So my co founder, Kevin Webb, comes from a long venture capital background. He had been at that point in venture for almost a decade. He, you know, himself, had made, you know, some many great investments in the venture world. And many you know, as happens, like you just see, a lot of things play out. And had done quite well, but had always been nature obsessed, and was currently at Columbia doing a master's and focusing in on all of the different topic areas that he thought would be most relevant for focusing on a venture thesis for nature and biodiversity. And so he and I met in 2019 we started talking about what it might look like to Angel invest, directly invest into some of these startups. What would outcomes look like, what would a portfolio look like? I started connecting him to some of the companies that we were working with more, and he had just got to see firsthand how supportive he was and a really terrific

Tom Quigley 7:43

partner to a lot of these founders that we're building. And so in 2021 we started talking more seriously angel investing together and thinking about what it might look like if we were to take a full portfolio approach to buy versus you lost. And then finally, you know, we couldn't find enough reasons to not try anymore, so we went out and started shaping the fund and raising for the fund. We did our first close in the beginning of 2023 and fast forward to today. We've now just closed our first fund, 25 point 9 billion fund, one with a lot of really terrific LP backers that we're extremely excited to work with, a lot of really great companies and founders that we, you know, love working with every day. And we are putting that money to work to add another 15 or so companies to the portfolio over the next year and a half. And, you know, and that's, that's where, that's where the world is today. And we couldn't be more excited, cool.

Paul Shapiro 8:48

So you mentioned you have these LPs. You've raised about $26 million to close this first fund. First congratulations. Now my question for you is this, do these LPs? How many of them are motivated by an altruistic desire to prevent biodiversity loss, which is, of course, your driving motivation, right? This is what you've devoted your life to. It's just so happens that venture capital is the manifestation of that right now for you, but you are, I would presume, more of a missionary than a mercenary in this respect. What about your LPs? Are they thinking, Yeah, this is like, I'm going to get above market returns if I invest in startups that are combating biodiversity loss. Or do they think, hey, you know, I think that I trust my money with these guys, and I also really am motivated by the mission. Yeah, I would

Tom Quigley 9:33

say that, like on the missionary mercenary spectrum, we are probably even closer to mercenary than I think most people expect when they speak with us. I think that comes across as well when we speak with LPs, is that some of our messaging is kind of first and foremost. The business has got to work. The venture returns have to come through. Like, this is a fund. It's we are returning you your money, and several stacks on top of it, like, that's very much the messaging, and it's very much our focus. And so you. We equally weight the whether we think that this business is going to work from a venture lens, and whether it will have global impacts on biodiversity at the sort of speed and scale that we need it to.

Paul Shapiro 10:11

So Tom, let me ask you, if you are more close to the mercenary side, what's the thesis? What is the argument that startups focused on preventing biodiversity are going to generate above average market returns. So there's a

Tom Quigley 10:24

lot of you know, when we started talking to people about biodiversity, very much, the reaction that we got was like, do you mean forest carbon? Do you mean ecotourism? Like, what are you talking about? And the way that we approach is like this, if you think of us, let's start with climate tech. If you think climate tech and say, Okay, we're in this Overton window where people do some people do see that you can make venture capital returns off of the climate opportunity, as long as you are working with large existing industries solving very you know, paint strong pain points for them, aka creating value, probably using new technology approaches that make it worthwhile for them to be buying and putting their budget lines towards this, while also sort of incidentally and accidentally solving for climate change the existential crisis. If you can do those three things, then you can have a good venture looking business and driver turns off of that for us, you kind of just swap the lens of climate change out for biodiversity loss. And what that means is you see a lot of different stuff. The drivers of biodiversity loss are different than the drivers of climate change. Like I said before, the five drivers basis, VC, silver exploitation, land use change, pollution and climate you you see a whole different suite of stuff. That means you're not investing in DAC, you're not investing in grid resilience necessarily. You're not investing in batteries, necessarily. And all of those things mean that you get to see things around, like invasive species that would just not really be on thesis for other people before, but because it is purely for us, we get to look at those companies, and we get to make those types of investments where it makes us from a venture lens. So there's a couple of, like I said, we, you know, it has to pass both tests for us. It has to look really good from a venture perspective and really good from a biodiversity perspective for us, like that. And there are several sort of macro drivers around what we, you know, what we think is driving better business through some of these biodiversity companies, and also they all look different. We're a generalist fund. We focus on the things that have those impacts to biodiversity. So our impact thesis around each one of these companies is going to be different. We have several thesis areas that are our core three pillars that we think, yeah, we're going to find businesses in here that do both those two venture looking at and global impacts piece, they'll live in the middle of that Venn diagram. But all of these companies are going to look different too.

Paul Shapiro 12:46

So you've made a strong case that biodiversity investing is different from climate investing, right? You mentioned DAC, which, to the uninitiated, is direct air captures, or like doing carbon dioxide capture directly from the air, right? And why invasive species prevention may not be attractive to climate investors, and direct air capture is not of interest to biodiversity, necessarily investors. But what is the case for not just that it's different from climate investing, but that it's going to generate above market returns. Like, why would somebody who doesn't care about biodiversity, per se, who's an LP, and you're pitching them to say, hey, please. You know, consider our fund. What's the argument that biodiversity is going to you know, biodiversity accentuation is going to perform better than just putting it in an index fund or in any other general VC fund or a tech fund or anything else.

Tom Quigley 13:41

There's a couple of things that are sort of underlying that are often surprising. So one is that there's far more risk exposure from the global economy to biodiversity loss than really was previously thought, even five years ago. So there was a seminal study that was done pretty recently in sort of the early 2020s that found that over 50% so really, 55% of the global economy, global GDP, is moderately or heavily reliant on nature. And there's some that you would expect, like timber and fisheries, and there's some that you wouldn't expect. They're getting indirect benefits from healthy biodiversity being fully intact through really the ecosystem services that those things are providing. And so as that fabric erodes, and it is eroding in the last you know, since 1970 we have had a decline of 73% of wildlife populations. So a really tremendous decline of biodiversity. In our lifetime, over a quarter of species are at risk of extinction. Again, within our lifetime, those individual species losses and population losses result in a fraying of the general fabric that knits around the work that we do as humans and economies and industries that we built. And so you can think of it like a risk multiplier, as you lose biodiversity, that all of a sudden stuff starts going wrong more frequently the things that started. That used to happen pretty continually, like pollination services on your farms, water provision, services from forests nearby, and watershed support, storm surge and storm prevention from the mangroves on the coast. So all of those things start suddenly to go away, and for businesses that we have now started to like we are entering this era of awareness where those large corporations are starting to understand that, oh, there are really high impacts to my business as usual, from the degradation of biodiversity. And I think this is another key piece that you can get very cheap, very popular and very effective risk reduction and impact reduction by improving nature and biodiversity in your and around your supply chains. And so both of those two drivers of the like the risk, risk reduction and benefits gain. I think that those are really key core components of why we see a lot of corporations that are starting to push towards all of these different technology or restoration efforts as they're starting to put more money into their supply chains to make sure that they are resilient over time, we've seen things like the cocoa crash in a few years back, where the price went absolutely through the roof. Those were climate and and biodiversity related problems, and that had a very concrete, real impact on not just people's lives on the ground, but but industries and so we're seeing an increase in interest. We're seeing an increase in investment into solutions, and we're seeing large corporations put together individual like innovation hubs that are working to step some of these startups up through their large supply chains so that they can have different options. They you know, in 2345, years time. All of that is is coming into the conversation around why biodiversity. Some of this, also, I would say, is, you know, there are things that we see as benefiting biodiversity or or conservation that other people may not even think about. So it's probably worth voicing over three thesis areas that are sort of strategic areas that we think that we're going to find both returns and biodiversity impact. The first is looking within the industries that have driven biodiversity loss historically, the ones that you know through those five drivers have really led to a lot of the harm. Where are we able to invest in some of those areas that can either disrupt those industries or accelerate your transition away from those harmful practices, that, because those markets are very, very large, already leads to scale and speed very quickly, as long as you're also driving a lot of value through them. So that's one. The second is the overlap of climate and biodiversity. We, you know, we're not the ones that are going to be focusing on electric vehicles or, you know, a lot of the stuff that the climate industry has focused on, but we are going to focus on stuff that overlaps nature very heavily, so areas like soils, oceans, wildfires, things like the net zero transition and where we're able to do that without too many harms to nature. All of those things are opportunities for us to catch tailwinds from the climate and the climate movement, while also putting wins on both scoreboards. And the third area is enabling technologies, where we are really

Tom Quigley 18:27

focusing on a pure, deep tech thesis. We're looking at any types of companies, from AI to genetics to robotics that have their own industry arcs, but focusing in on the things that we know through our work with conservationists, would create whole new capability sets for them, and so being able to really look at know what they need, see the deep tech landscape, and pick out the ones that we feel from the earliest stage have incredible growth arcs. And also would add a whole new arrow in the quiver for conservationists doing the work. So through those three areas, there's a lot of industry drive to start using these tools. But every one of the you know as a generalist fund, every one of those individual companies, is going to have a different industry, different market, than they need to play through. We need to get over the line to believe that that market needs, it wants it, that there's excitement and traction and and then that at scale, there will be

Paul Shapiro 19:24

impacts to nature. So you have referenced a couple of times now the leading drivers of biodiversity loss, and I want to get into that. So if you look at the Center for biodiversity, a nonprofit organization, I was looking at their website, and you know their assertion is that meat production is by far the leading driver of biodiversity loss, and this is why they are such advocates for creating animal free meats, either plant based or cultivated meat and so on. Vox recently had a story about biodiversity loss and where forests are disappearing, and I'm going to quote from the World Wildlife Fund. On Vox it says it's not toilet paper or hardwood floors or even palm oil. It's beef clearing trees for cattle is the leading driver of deforestation. By a long shot, it causes more than double the deforestation that's linked to soy, palm oil and wood products all combined. So it seems like you know, the nonprofit organization, so their Center for Biological Diversity, or World Wildlife funder Stacy saying meat is the biggest problem. It's not comparable to the other reasons why we're experiencing biodiversity loss. What are you guys looking for in companies that can help wean humanity away from animals as a food source and toward more sustainable solutions for protein? Yeah, you're very right that

Tom Quigley 20:40

cattle is one of the, if not the leading, driver of particularly tropical biodiversity loss. I mean, if you're starting to look at things in like oceans, then it depends on the geography, it depends on the the type of cattle, but the 100% this is, this is one of the most important drivers, because it contributes for several reasons. One is because it contributes to a number of those individual drivers beyond just the one, right? So there are several vectors through which cattle is, is, is very harmful to biodiversity. One of those vectors in particular, is clearing of tropical rainforest for pasture, which can you know is wholesale wipe out of individual species and populations that live in those areas, but also things like runoff, also things like methane production towards climate. And there's, there's numerous we could go on if you were going to try to look at cattle, then you need to have a thesis around what cattle, what type of beef? Where are you looking at things like dairy? Are you looking at things like leather? These are things that are byproduct of the beef industry. And will, you know, sometimes, like 10 to 20% of the cost on a cow comes from some of those byproduct so there is no, in my opinion, silver bullet. I think that there's a lot of behavioral change that is needed as well. I think that when we're looking at solutions, it's a little too easy to get focused on an individual solution type, rather than the complex of different solutions which are needed and which matter in different geographies. So, for example, you know, solutions that are most focused on the tropical rainforest deforestation piece need to be focused on farmers. They need to be focused in areas like Brazil and South America where there are, you know, individual livelihoods very much wrapped up in the in the cattle and the and the herds that they are running there. It needs to be focused on alternatives and economic stability for those people, and being able to think about, how do we prevent new loss of land? How do we restore degraded land? How do we also provide good alternatives with that also provide dignity and consistency and benefit for the people that are doing that work? All of those have to matter. So, you know, I'm not necessarily like a tech Silver Bullet guy. I really, you know, I come from a conservation background, and I've seen a lot of some of those poorest areas in the world.

Paul Shapiro 23:22

So let me ask you Tom, if we were, let's say I was sitting here not talking to Tom Quigley from super, super organism. Let's say I was talking to somebody who was running a Climate Fund, and I said, Hey, you know, fossil fuels are a huge driver of climate change. What are you looking for to help replace fossil fuels. And that investor replied to me and said, Well, you have to think about the type of coal, where the coal was being produced, what's going to happen to the coal miners? Would they say that? Or would they just say, well, actually, I think geothermal is going to help get us off of coal and oil. Or would they say, I think nuclear or wind or solar or whatever they're into. My question for you is what like, what do you think are the primary ways that we can reduce the number of animals used for food? I realize that you're concerned for the farmers who would no longer be raising animals, but in terms of companies that you might back to help solve this problem, what are ideas that you think are investable right now that could help say, Okay, well, we're going to raise fewer cattle because we have to raise fewer animals, right like there isn't a way to get around it. Yes, it will involve behavioral change. But you know, every time that we have displaced animals in the economy, it's been behavior change, whether horses transition to bicycles and cars or carrier pigeons to telegraphs, or whale oil to kerosene and eventually electricity, or using goose quill pens, there's eventually to metal fountain pens. Like there have been a lot of displacements of animals in the economy that resulted in people losing their jobs. But transition to new technologies are there new types of tech? Technologies that you think could help displace the use of animals for

Tom Quigley 25:02

food, definitely, I mean, and I recognize that it can be unsatisfying to talk to tech investor and hear that, you know, actually, maybe the number one thing that we could be doing is probably not tech. And I think that that is important, though. I think it's really important to start there, because it is far too often and particularly prevalent with VC. I think to start, you know, having hammer nail mentality, where it's like, Oh, I know, we'll just throw this tech solution at it, right? Because what we have is a hammer, but there are an awful lot of different types of nails out there, and this, you know, it's important to do really good solution and problem fitting. And, you know, I don't necessarily know that there are super strong like that. There is one tech to rule them all that is an equivalent to saying, like, Oh, okay. Like, we just need to move off of coal, and we need to move all fully to hydrothermal and we need to yada yada. Now, the problem is demand, right? The problem is that we have such strong beef demand, and that is what is really driving all of the, you know, the increase in consumption, the high price data dot that needs to change. I think that that is largely a cultural and behavior change thing. I don't know that that is necessarily a VC thing that I need to be going to do to play in it needs, you know, I think that there are a couple of terrific organizations out there that are really focused on behavior change, if you look at something like wild aid, wild aid has done terrific work in changing behaviors around direct exploitation of endangered species and the use of things like Shark 10 soup as a cultural movement. That is terrific work doesn't really have like the pure play tech, VC, investing side. Another great organization that I like to cite a lot on the behavior change side is rare. Rare is a conservation organization that focuses entirely on behavior change and behavior change in some of those areas in the tropics, where you really are focused on making sure that they're taking a lot of lessons from public health efforts and global development efforts that have happened over the last 2034, years. How do we do effective behavior change efforts to be able to reduce some of those drivers? So I recognize that's an unsatisfying answer, but I do believe that tech really plays a role in some of this. And so there are a couple of companies that I could like point to as good examples here. I think working trees is a really nice example of where you can start moving some of these degraded pastures and working with cattle farmers to finance and and support the move to sell the pasture, where now you are starting to provide another alternative marketing income type for that same land. You're also going to trees on the land, which is, you know, a strong portion of what they plant are native and biodiverse plantings that can never be taken down, and you get more yield out of the cows through silver pasture approaches because of less heat stress that you're getting from those shaded cows. So that is one type. I mean, there's other types, like moving entirely, like a group, like a pontera that is moving to fully restoring, like and switching from being cattle farmers to being restoring, you know, land protectors, and we are, you know, they're fully planting, native plantings and biodiverse sort of rainforest types in those areas. I think that those are really good approaches in those specific areas. So again, geography, culture, all of that matters. They are all using technology quite a lot to be able to support that. I mean, there's a lot of GIS work, there's a lot of software building to be able to manage those plantings, to track those plantings. The MRV is associated with all those those are the types of things that we might invest in. Those are the types of sort of force multipliers for the work that needs to be done. It is important to take that view. And I don't, you know, necessarily think that we need to just kind of have a one size fits all approach, because I don't think that that's the

Paul Shapiro 28:50

what's needed. Yeah. Okay, that's interesting. Yeah, I, I do think, like the idea of helping cattle farmers shift to reforesting their land and not raising cattle. But reforesting is a great idea. It's good for that land, as you pointed out, though earlier, it is very difficult without reducing demand for beef, because somebody else is going to grow cattle somewhere else, as long as the beef demand remains the same. And there's, of course, a huge crop of companies, from Impossible Foods on down, who think that they can create the beef experience for people without cows. And so whether they'll succeed or not is another question altogether. Right? So far, none of them have but the you know, in the same way that you have a whole host of clean energy startups saying we're going to replace, you know, instead of saying reduce demand for energy, they're saying demand for energy is going to keep on going up, but we're going to fight, we're going to help satiate that demand for energy without fossil fuels. And I think the people like, if you were to talk to those from the Impossible Foods, types come type of companies, they would say, Yeah, beef demand isn't going to go down. That's why we have to create beef without cows, whether it's from plants or animals or fungi or fermentation or whatever it is. Now I know that you've already addressed this. I don't want to harp on it. I do want to. Also point out, on the shark fin soup side, I do have an idea, which is, you know, plant based meat as a category right now is very unpopular with investors for the most part, largely because there haven't been any big winners in this space for many years. But still, Fintech is very popular with some group of investors. And so I wonder maybe somebody should create, like, a plant based or cultivated shark fin soup, and call it FinTech, and then tech, oh, look at this. Then you get the then they get the attraction. They start attracting the FinTech investors. So that is my idea. So people can do that if you want. I'm not gonna love it. You know, it is really worth continuing, though, to like, I love the FinTech idea, and I'm, by

Tom Quigley 30:39

the way, if you have a pun name on your startup that you're pitching me, you're already gonna get, like, one foot in the door. We're very heavy

Unknown Speaker 30:46

on the one fin and one fin in the one

Tom Quigley 30:48

fin in the door. Yeah, exactly. We're very heavy on the word play in super organism. But, you know,

Unknown Speaker 30:55

it is, it is worth

Tom Quigley 30:57

continuing to stay on how things like this can be effective and like we can there have been several approaches that have looked like that and seemed very glossy, like for example, in the in the rhino horn, there was an approach to do 3d printed carrot and rhino horn that's identical to the same and fled the market, and was a kind of an economic experiment, and it didn't really go anywhere. And there were, you know, reasons for that, including some legal challenges on that from different activist groups that disagreed with the approach. But you look at something like wild aids work in mainland China. They're 20, you know, 2006 you know, they did a campaign with Yao Ming, when the buying stops, the killing can too. And really pushed awareness across this in China, and it led to an 80% drop in consumption in shark fin soup since 2011 right? 80% decline in sales, complete price collapse. 50 to 70% price collapses. The prestige of the dish evaporated. So, you know, there are extremely good, high leverage solutions that don't necessarily look like tech solutions, but still can have an extremely strong effect. Now, will that same type of thing work for beef and cattle? I think that the American consumer, particularly, which is the driver, like the largest driver, and Europe, to an extent, but you would know better than me here. I don't want to get out above my skis, but how do you, how do you really affect the American consumer and their behavior change? Like, I don't know that you're going to get an 80% drop in in beef from a similar thing, but you look at something like, you know, how you tackle these, these thorny problems? Well, microplastics in Netflix just put out this documentary about how microplastic plastics are affecting male fertility. And you know, holy cow, is that I think going to drive a pretty big movement around people making sure that trying to, like, remove plastics and other things from their lives. So these are super pernicious. We need to have both tech and innovation and investing at the edge of that which we are, and also these really unique and innovative approaches as well.

Paul Shapiro 33:01

Yeah, I just want to comment on the rhino horn aspect, because I was very familiar with this. So this company, ambient, was trying to create rhino horn in a lab and then flood the market, and then, you know, scale and flood the market to crush the price of rhino horn. And they didn't take off. And, you know, in my own view, with all respect to the founder and the people who work there, I don't think that it was like so called activist groups opposing their projects. I think they couldn't raise capital because it was a difficult thing to raise capital for and their you know, their boogeyman was activist groups that were giving them a hard time. But you know, lots of startups have all types of problems with advocacy organizations from time to time, and they make it through. So that didn't work. But it's an interesting idea. It's a pretty interesting yeah, for sure,

Tom Quigley 33:50

very fair, no. And, you know, I think we need to be able to take more shots on goal, like, there's we think about, like, the one thing that I think that is important is, when we think about impact, it's important to us that we are not thinking about like a J curve of impact, right? We want linear, exponential impact, but we don't want impact to drop negative in approach to impact growing to positive, where you would see the kind of like the classic venture fund J curve of like, you know, returns are going to go down, and then they're going to go up as then things exit. But, you know, we don't want to be causing more harm on the way to causing good. We ideally don't want to be causing deep harms in one area and solving very, you know, solving, solving some goods in another. So all of that is important for us to kind of roll up in this wax ball as we're considering each

Paul Shapiro 34:38

individual opportunity. Well, Tom, you've given a perfect segue to my next topic here, because we're talking about solving one problem but creating another one elsewhere. You guys are invested in AI detection for birds at windmills, right? And so windmills are obviously trying to solve one problem, which is getting us off of fossil fuels by switching to wind energy, but they kill a lot of birds. You. You know, there's, you know, it's just the truth, a lot of these kill a lot of birds. So I'd love first to hear what AI detection for birds at windmills. One, what does that even mean? And two, why do the windmill operators care how many birds they're killing if it doesn't impact their livelihood or their profit? And then two, I want to also ask you about recent studies showing that simply painting one turbine black. One painting one of the turbines Black can reduce bird strikes by up to 70% allegedly, no new crazy technology, no new AI, just painting one black. It seems pretty riveting to me. But first, what are you guys doing in this world of trying to present bird deaths at windmills? And why would a windmill operator care? Yeah, so I commented on this earlier,

Tom Quigley 35:41

about how it's important for us to make this net zero transition on climate side, but without doing too many harms to nature along the way. And that matters for where things are placed, what types of solutions are placed there, the before life and the afterlife, of the materials that are used in some of this. But it's also really critical that we make this net zero transition, and what we are not trying to do is say we're putting on our biodiversity hat, and that is going to be the only bell that we ring forever, because the, you know, and we, you know, we're just going to fully oppose those other areas, because our dog in this, well, I shouldn't say dogging this fight. Probably we can retire that, that phrase, but that's our, that's our flag to wave. Yeah, and and so we are only ever going to like, we're just going to ignore the we need to solve the climate crisis, and we need renewable technologies and the really rapid rollout of those to be able to do it. Now we know that wind turbines can have impacts on it's also important to note that the impacts on birds compared to things like say, outdoor cats are completely negligible. And it's also important to say that this is a kind of become a boogeyman, to use your phrase in these political circles, that is a stalking horse for the actual just, you know, full opposition to wind energy and being used, as you know, often as this kind of like well, but look at all of that, those bird strikes, that all being said, this is still an existential risk to these wind operators. They know that some of these impacts are happening. In some cases, they are being told that the impacts are happening, but they are not actually happening. So being able to actually defensive, defensively, monitor and show Hey, you all are saying that, you know there are bird strikes on wind turbines. Well, our company that invested, that we invested in here, Spore, which is based in Norway, they worked and did a very long term study with their camera solution that is an AI tool that tracks birds around wind turbines. And they found 10s of 1000s of birds going through these turbines and throughout and they found no impacts, so being able to actually defensively monitor in some of those areas and say, Actually what you all kind of are pointing at from a political point of view, and blocking on permitting, or blocking on on siting, those impacts are not there, and we can start

Paul Shapiro 38:10

getting those, those rollouts earlier. Tom just to clarify, I want to make sure I'm understanding this correctly. When you say there are 10s of 1000s of birds that are flying through the windmills and there's no impact, what you're saying is that these birds are going through not being hit by a windmill, and so they are going through there. And you're saying that, that this technology can basically help the windmill operator prove that the problem is not as bad as the critics of

Tom Quigley 38:32

windmills would say. That's right. So you can say, you know, because this is an existential risk. There were cases, and for example, I think in France, there are enough Golden Eagle strikes from an existing wind farm that had been built that the wind farm was told to cease operations and shut down. That is a huge existential risk for a group like equinor or Orsted, or someone that is actually putting all of that effort into getting those stood up. So if you can site your wind farm more accurately, so that you're actually out of core flyways or so that you are going to have fewer impacts in one area than another. That's critical. If you can reduce the amount of time that it takes to do the impact assessment and get that into the ground sooner, that's billions of dollars, and also a calculable climate impact to being able to reduce that time monitoring during the actual operations of the windmill, to maintain compliance with the with with whatever jurisdiction you're in. And then as we move into sort of next generation of where we're, where we the buck is going on this, you can start doing dynamic curtailment by actually when you see important species that are coming through, and those cameras can detect from just several pixels what type of bird it's assumed to be based on flight pattern and based on recognizable characteristics with their AI model, then you're able to start actually shutting or slowing down those turbines in movement as those continue to sort of fly their way through. So we're actually able to start doing dynamic responses to the biodiversity in the area as those sort of continue to grow and off. Rate. So all of those are the types of impacts that we are like, you know, terrific to be able to help make this net zero transition without so many impacts to nature and, you know, getting out of being able to provide the data to help us get out of our own way when it comes

Paul Shapiro 40:13

to this rollout, to help us get out of our own way, and help birds get out of the way of windmills too. So, yeah, so you raised an issue that is of deep importance to me, right, which is the fact that outdoor cats are massacring hundreds of millions, if not billions, of wild birds, right? It is unbelievable, the numbers, right? Just dwarfing any impact that windmills have. And yet there is virtually nothing that is going on. Even the environmental groups don't seem to be doing anything about this. They don't advocate for policies on it, or even say, put a bell on your cat, which might be able to reduce their effectiveness as a predator if they have a bell on their collar. But there is one other area that kills a comparable number of wild birds to outdoor cats that I'm regularly surprised by is not championed more by biodiversity advocates, and that's bird friendly glass. There are a number of companies out there making bird friendly glass. We've had one of them on our on our show here, or link to that in the show notes for this episode at business for good podcast.com but why is it that bird friendly glass, which seems like a technology that those who care about biodiversity and wildlife protection could easily get behind and advocate in building standards, to say, any new buildings have to have this type of bird friendly glass, or maybe just part of the weed certification program. So you say, hey, part of weed certification should be bird friendly glass, which it isn't. Why not? Is this an investable area? Do you think in bird friendly glass companies?

Tom Quigley 41:47

I think that it is. And I'm glad you brought it up, because there it's important that we are looking at the data when it comes to what things actually make the most difference to biodiversity loss and so things like cats. This is a very unpopular topic with cat owners and lovers, of course, and myself included, I am very much a cat lover. And you can also look with clear eyes on the real impacts of cats, particularly in areas there, like like New Zealand, like Australia. So it is a extremely important problem. Bird safe glass is another great one. We saw data come out in the last sort of like year or two. Maybe that said that it is the cause of one to 2 billion bird deaths per year, and then it's almost significantly higher than previously thought, because the data isn't

Unknown Speaker 42:35

very good, because we thought these

Tom Quigley 42:36

birds made some of them may be hitting and flying off, and it turns out they're hitting and critically stunned, maybe fly off for now, but then are eaten by something, or fall off and are just unable to continue afterwards. So a lot of that data is actually cause is done by counting the birds at the base of those those infrastructures to be able to estimate on sort of total numbers. And so there are some, you know, there's a bunch of solutions here that we can be talking about. Okay? One siting. Siting matters. It matters where you build your building to materials. It matters what you build your building out of, right? There are some things that are just really hard for birds to see and bird safe glass. This is a great, you know, a great area, investable area that we would definitely take looks at. There are things that you can do like decals. There are things that you can do, like glass treatments, that you can work into the glass that would make it visible to the spectrum that birds see and make it easier to avoid. There are things like planning and permitting around where you know, how are you going to decide where you are going to put your building and understanding, in that case, migratory pathways, wetlands, nearby, understanding whether, you know, this is a seasonal thing or a regular thing. I mean, there's a building in Chicago I would, I was very fortunate to get to tour the Field Museum in Chicago, and they brought me back into the stacks, and, you know, showed some different, you know, very, very, very cool for a science nerd like me with this background, and they showed me a sliding drawer of all of the different bird species that had been collected from the base of this building in Chicago. And it was just myriad and species you would not expect to be seeing in Chicago. And so, and a lot of that, I believe, is due to that placement of that building and and where it exists. So using better sort of siting and infrastructure and tools to be able to find where the better positioning is. I even think something like spore can be a great solution here, just on the monitoring and prevention side as well, a very similar tool for spore can just work right on the building itself and tell you how many bird strikes, what species of birds you know, give you an accurate readout of what your situation is, so that you can make new

Paul Shapiro 44:52

choices around it. Yeah. I mean, listen, I think that would be great. I would love to be a part of a species that considered where it erected. Built. Buildings based on how many birds we're going to fly into them, right? That doesn't seem like my experience with humans so far that we would care about that or change what we're doing. But what you mentioned about treatments for glass seems highly possible, right? So there's a company we had on the show called ornalux, which does what you were saying. They manufacture glass that regardless of where the building is cited, is visible to birds, but still see through to us. So to the human eye, it looks like normal glass, but to the bird, they actually see the glass. And that, to me, seems like a good solution, and something that advocates for biodiversity and for wildlife should be advocating become mandatory for new builds, or again, for LEED certification and more. And you know, you pointed out that it's one to 2 billion birds who are flying into Windows that's just in the US alone, just in the US alone, who are being killed, and that's pretty much the same number who are being killed by outdoor cats. The problem with outdoor cats is it's harder. There's no, there's not like a bird friendly glass equivalent that you could do there, right? You have to reduce the number of outdoor cats, which is going to be vigorously opposed by the people who want those outdoor cats. At the same time with the glass issue, it seems like there is an investor, as you point out, there is an investable solution right now that companies could be doing if you could come up with a type of glass that is visible to birds, that is cheaper than conventional glass. I mean, you know, you will end up preventing maybe one or 2 billion birds from flying into buildings every year. It's amazing. And the

Tom Quigley 46:28

last note I'll make on this as well is that, you know, regulatory landscape does matter and compliance does matter. And to your note on like, wanting to be a part of the species that would, you know, make decisions based on this. Well, sometimes those decisions need to be shaped by a broader landscape, and that's just part of what needs to happen as well. I think a regulatory is sign of the immune system that can continue to navigate and shape some of the individual decisions that get made in 2025 the federal bird safe Buildings Act, which was passed, which mandates bird friendly design for many of these federal property so at least 90% of the glass from the ground up, must incorporate bird safe materials. And if more than 50% of a facade of a building is being replaced, the new glass must comply with bird safe standards. So obviously, this is just federal buildings, and it's not all buildings, and you know, and it's going to rely on state and individual building property managers and and I also believe that the better solution to scale is just building a better glass or a treatment that can work with those glass manufacturers that just makes it easier for these, you know, for these decisions to be made that it's cheaper, it's better, you know, it's, it's, it's more UV effective in the inside of the building, all of those things, and also it reduces bird strikes. That just makes it such a nice to have that the market speaks for it, and we can get that level of scale and speed that that will lead to a sub 10 year, highly scaled impact on bird populations.

Paul Shapiro 48:01

For a while, right? I couldn't agree more. A couple quick comments on that. First, the bird safe Buildings Act that you referenced is proposed legislation. Just want to be clear, it's not enacted. For those of you who are listening here, it's not law, it's a proposed bill, but it's certainly worthy of support. Second, I agree with what you're saying, that bird safe glass would be the best answer, right? Like, we're not going to get people to use less glass, right? We're going to get people using bird safe glass. And I think that the advocates for plant based meat would say the same. We're not going to get people to eat less meat. They just want to make meat that doesn't rely on the really troubling aspect of having to raise all these animals for food. Now, with regard to the type of species we are. It reminds me of a line in the movie, in the book contact by Carl Sagan, where, you know, the aliens are. We're trying to think about, like, why are the aliens here? And are they going to care about us? Are they here to exterminate us? And, you know, one of the people says, Well, you know, when we build a house, like, are we thinking about the ants who are going to pave over? Like, we don't even think about it, right? We don't desire to, you know, extirpate the ants. It's just we don't come considerate, because we want that land for us. Like they may not be here, the aliens may not be coming to, you know, to execute humanity, but they may not care of whether this that's an outcome, right? And my view is the same as so with putting up buildings. Like, I doubt that humans are going to put up a building and say, Oh yeah, let's take into consideration, like the birds were going to fly into it. I wish that was true, but I think you're right that it's most likely just going to be bird safe glass that's going to end up fixing this problem. Now I want to ask you so that's one area. You said you're open to considering bird friendly glass startups that could do what you just said. Are there other types of companies that you wish would exist? You said that you've got, you know, you're looking to make a dozen or so more bets with the remainder of your fund. People listening might want to come pitch you. What are some ideas that you hope that you will be pitched? What are you looking

Tom Quigley 49:49

for right now? You know, I guess this a lot, and I think that one of the great parts of my job, too, is that I am surrounded by people that are smarter than me and that are more deep. Wedded to the individual problem area, either an industry problem or, you know, a solution type, a scientist that's been working on this for their entire life, and they bring it to me, and they say, there's really good research to back all of this up, and now we're ready to roll it out commercially. And I get to say, terrific. That's a really great solution, a great idea for the you know, an example of this is funga. So we have a company, funga, which is founded by Dr Colin Averill, who has spent his entire life and career focused on the carbon flows in forests, focused specifically on the microbiomes of the soil, and those treatments and you can effectively you might be familiar with the human gut microbiome transplants, which are aimed to improve the microbiome from in people for whom that is a problem which can result in an awful lot of overall body health impacts. You can take that same approach for forests and restore the microbiome of those degraded lands and working lands with timber on it, and by restoring that soil's microbiome based the mycorrhizal fungal networks that are meant to be there. You can have a frankly bananas jump in yield. And when somebody brings it to me and says, here's the science, here's the team ready to go, I get to say, terrific, let's go. And so I am. I'm constantly surprised that I'm constantly brought new stuff in areas that I think we are going to see a lot of new innovation. The pace of AI right now is screaming, and if we are able to basically reduce the speed of prototyping and the speed of getting things in front of customers and seeing if their eyes light up to basically zero, then there are going to be a lot of you know that that test and iterate loop goes so far down that we'll be able to see, I think, new innovations come out faster and faster with traction from the large industries that you know, we need to be able to bring them to scale. That is really exciting opportunity for me. And so I'm thinking about, sort of the use of vertical AI within older archaic industries that have impacts on biodiversity in nature, things that are working very closely with supply chains, commodity chains, thing, things like timber and fisheries, which are directly using and pulling from the Natural World, being able to sort of force more lower risk and higher repeatability and sustainability out of those commodities. Feels like an opportunity that I'm going to see more of, and that I'm excited to see more of, because I think it's where a lot of opportunity lies.

Paul Shapiro 52:34

Okay, cool. Well, for folks who want to pitch you, we will include your contact information via the superorganism website to get in touch with you on that finally, Tom, are the resources that have been helpful. You've led a very interesting life, both as a dive master, not a dive instructor, but at least a lowly Dive Master, to being a nonprofit warrior at conservation next labs, to now being a venture capitalist. Are the resources that you have found useful that you'd recommend for

Tom Quigley 53:01

other people to check out. I'll give three of different ilks. One that was useful for me earlier in my career, as I was sort of learning about the value of nature, was a book called What has nature ever done for us by Tony Juniper, which was a really great book for and a very accessible book to walk you through very concrete examples of cases where the ecosystem services of intact or restored nature has led to strong dollar value benefits by communities and people that have been working around them. So case studies around things like coral reefs, things like mangroves, things like forests and all of the trillions of dollars of services that they provide, being able to that was the first time I think that I had really had it put into such concrete terms for me. And it's a great read. The second is a biography, which I have continually come back to through my life and career. Is a autobiography, a ghost written Autobiography of Jacques Cousteau, who is my personal sort of, you know, ocean hero, and has been a kind of a figure in my life for a long time. And his biography focusing on things like public risk, on personal risk, woven through with stories about his life. All of those things are, you know, it's a very good and considerate and wonderful read. And so that one I continue to come back to, and then my most fun, favorite and most recent recommendation is a book called venomous lumpsucker, which is a sci fi book that is a satire of, you know, biodiversity incentives gone sideways in a near future, which basically is a buddy comedy romp of a biobanking industry man and a dyed in the wool conservationist, as they're thrown together in this mission to go and save the last individual of the venomous lump sucker fish. Teach for their own reasons and continually debate the theory and philosophy of conservation in this new world throughout and it is just it drew me right in, and was one of the coolest and most fun books. I recommend it all the time, so I'll recommend it again here.

Paul Shapiro 55:18

Cool. Well, I'm a sci fi lover. I read sci fi quite frequently, and I really appreciate that recommendation, and the others will include links to all of them in the show notes for this episode at business for good podcast.com but for now, Tom, I want to say thanks for everything that you're doing to help preserve biodiversity and help some startups that are trying to do the same and get them off the ground so they can become very successful companies. We'll be rooting for your success. Thanks a lot for having me on for having me on Paul Thanks for listening to the business for good podcast to explore more conversations like this one, visit business for good podcast.com. And be sure to subscribe so you don't miss future episodes of founders, investors, thought leaders and more, turning global problems into powerful opportunities. And if this episode resonated with you, please share it with your network. You never know who you might inspire to be in the business of doing good.

Paul Shapiro
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Ep. 187 - She’s Raised Millions to Teach AI How to Talk to Wild Animals—And Save Companies Real Money