The NatureBacked Podcast

A trip to a refugee camp in Bangladesh led to a documentary and sowed the seeds for a material startup, which promises to cut plastics production costs and emissions using cellulose, said Alex Blum, founder of Applied Bioplastics. “What we’ve done by mixing cellulose with regular plastic in a way that is inexpensive to accomplish is that we’ve created a replacement for durable plastics that cost l...

United Nations’ biodiversity summit COP15 finished with a historic deal earlier this week in Montreal. At NatureBacked, we discussed the essence of the agreement and how protecting biodiversity will become common. Nations agreed to protect 30% of the planet by 2030 and to protect vital ecosystems such as rainforests and wetlands and the rights of indigenous peoples. The Montreal Summit was seen as...

There are numerous opportunities for a revolution in the coffee industry, said guests at Naturebacked’s holiday-season coffee episode. We talked first with Josh Ziegelbaum from Miami-based private equity firm and asset manager Legacy Group, the key investor behind Green Coffee Company, the largest coffee producer in Colombia, which it built from the ground up starting in 2017. The Green Coffee Com...

Pressure from consumers will likely be the key driver pushing climate tech towards the mainstream over the coming years, said James Vincent, co-founder of brand advisory and investment firm FNDR. “We’re a few years off from that because we haven’t done the homework yet. We haven’t shock-absorbed the need for culture to absorb the new metrics of what’s important in the world,” Vincent said. James V...

Surging growth in distributed energy production, driven by innovations in solar and battery technologies, is helping the energy sector to cope with climate change, said Tim Hade, COO and co-founder of Scale Microgrid Solutions. “We’re getting to the point right now where distributed energy is starting to displace coal and gas - that’s going to be sort of a choppy road over the next decade or two,”...

Industries have too often left the control over the end of the product lifecycle to individuals at a time when it could open many opportunities for the reuse of materials, said Joe Macleod, founder of andend, the world’s first customer-ending business.  “There’s a massive gap at the end of the consumer lifecycle that holds circularity,” Macleod said. Learn more about: Solutions for better off-boar...

Climate investing and the climate, in general, is the biggest opportunity we’ve ever had, said Matt Ward from early-stage climate investment syndicate 4WARD.VC. “Either we pull it off and succeed or pretty much we all effing die and go to war, and the world goes to absolute s-h-i-t. So what would you rather bet on? Would you rather bet on humanity being creative, coming up with solutions, and doin...

A universal basic dividend that would distribute some of the profits generated by corporates in industrialized countries to the citizens in low-income countries would be a step forward in the current troubled situation, said Anders Wijkman, Honorary President of the global think tank Club of Rome. “If you look at the world at large, we are moving in the wrong direction. Almost every possible envir...

Action and information sharing are keys for fighting climate anxiety, said Itamar Weizman, the head of climate investments at Israeli investment firm Firstime who suffers from self-diagnosed climate anxiety.  He said the five stages of climate anxiety are similar to the five stages of grief. "A lot of people are stuck in denial, especially in America, right? People are just: I don’t want to hear a...

Industrial agriculture, one of the most significant contributors to climate change, is facing a revolution that will move meat production to factories from farms, said Daan Luining, a co-founder and CTO at cultivated meat startup Meatable. The 2018-founded Dutch startup Meatable - one of the frontrunners in the new field of cultivated meat - has raised $60 million so far. It aims to sell its first...

Rules of capitalism need changing to move the needle in the fight against climate change, said Yoann Berno, a partner at the Nordic investment firm Climentum. “Unfortunately, our leaders, political leaders, are too short-sighted. They’re just responding to this crisis as they responded to COVID. As they will respond to the next crisis, I think it would be a great moment to pause, reflect, and then...

Oslo-headquartered Norselab looks for startups transforming resource-intensive industries like food, transport, and construction, said Maria de Perlinghi, a partner at the Norwegian impact investment firm. “We believe that the next frontier or the code that we have to crack now is in the major global industries, where we know that there are huge challenges,” she said.  “We’re not at all shy of goi...

Climate tech is booming thanks to troubles in the European energy sector. Still, the proportion of investments in climate tech has to grow from very low levels, said Sebastian Heitmann, co-founder, and partner at Extantia Capital. “The goal is to significantly increase this over the coming years,” Heitmann said. “In our world, the current situation is an acceleration. And we see more interest than...

Making great cheese is the holy grail of plant-based milk products. This company is certain it has found the solution. "The product is identical to what the cow is producing," Sheriff Will Van den Tweel said in an interview on the sidelines of the Startup Day Festival in Tartu, Estonia. Those Vegan Cowboys is a Dutch-founded Belgian startup where some 25 people are working on replacing cows in the...

There's a good hype around climate tech, and some related sectors, like food tech, remain hot despite the downturn, said Helen Lin, a partner at Silicon Valley-based At One Ventures. "When there is an economic downturn, investors typically take a flight to safety. So the more you look ... like a brick of gold to an investor, that is, a stable store of value that is not going to be hugely volatile,...

"Startups do not fail because they run out of cash. They run out of cash because the leaders fail," said Patrick Flesner, partner LeadX Capital Partners and author of the bestseller book FastScaling. Learn more about: How fast is too fast scaling? Should you build a plane while flying or before taking off? How investors should separate good and bad cash burn Is 2 million profit per year enough for...

Nordics and Baltics boast one of the highest concentrations of unicorn startups, and several deeptech firms are set to follow the first unicorns, which have been digital software companies, said partner Juho Risku from investment firm Butterfly Ventures. "Those digital companies were made 10 years ago, 15 years ago, or even longer. I think there are quite a few in the making at this very moment,"...

Scooters and carbon accounting firms grab a major share of climate-related startup investments, said Nina Gunell from Helsinki-headquartered investment firm OpenOcean. "Definitely there are areas that are getting a lot of investments, although there maybe doesn't need to be that many solutions in the end," she said.  OpenOcean was founded in 2009 by the founders and early investors of database fir...

Startups focusing on food, agriculture, biodiversity, and forestry offer some of the best opportunities to impact global carbon emissions significantly, said Max Bauchau, who runs Startup Wise Guys Sustainability program. The 2012-founded SWG has invested in around 300 startups over the years. Bauchau said the accelerator-investor, which boasts an 80% survival rate, will start a new sustainability...

The $450 million Kiko Ventures became the first evergreen climate fund when it launched in June 2022, said Founding Partner Arne Morteani. When IP Group launched Kiko Ventures, it said it plans to invest $240 million in climate tech startups over the next five years. Learn about: focus areas of the fund benefits of evergreen fund structure vs VC funds lubrication-as-a-service a triple whammy for a...

Single. Earth has minted the first tokens from the work nature does to owners of lands in Brazil and Europe, and has started to roll out MERIT tokens to the market, co-founders Merit Valdsalu and Andrus Aaslaid said in this special episode of the NatureBacked podcast. Learn about: the first over-the-counter deals upcoming consumer-launch the impact of crypto-winter  how to grow a team 10-fold in h...

Sustainable technologies and sustainable business models are often intervened in today's world,, said Shahin Dashti, an investor at Frankfurt-based Futury Capital which is working on launching a new sustainability-focused fund. Learn more about the impact of market turmoil on startup investments and about the unique roots of sports and regional policies on the back of Futury. We had a rare chance...

Companies of the future will naturally focus on the environment and impact to be able to make a business for hundreds of years, said Alex Felman from Felman Family Office. Learn more about family offices and what makes investment firms of family wealth different from venture capitalist investors from the episode recorded on the sidelines of the TechChill conference in Riga. In the NatureBacked pod...

Many startups are working on climate adaptation, but there are less-crowded opportunities around climate mitigation, said Dama Sathianathan, partner at Bethnal Green Ventures. London-headquartered Bethnal Green Ventures has invested for 10 years in #TechForGood companies like Fairphone and over 100 other firms. Learn more about open opportunities in the climate tech sector from the episode recorde...

A giant wave of purpose-driven founders, coupled with consumers raising interest in the environment, and the availability of climate-focused capital, should enable a rosy future for the climate tech sector, said Madelene Larsson, an investor at Giant Ventures. London-headquartered Giant Ventures has invested in some 20 companies and plans to invest a billion dollars over 2020s. It had just started...