Superorganization launched in 2023 as what it claims is the first venture capital firm focused on biodiversity, aiming to serve as an environmentalist on the capital board for nature-friendly startups.
Now, the company has closed its first fund, securing $25.9 million in capital commitments from the Cisco Foundation, AMB Holdings and Builders Vision, among others, along with the likes of Jeff Jordan, a partner at Andreessen Horowitz.
The super-organization supports companies in three categories: technology that slows or reverses extinction, startups working at the intersection of climate and biodiversity, and tools that enable conservationists to do their jobs more effectively.
The company writes checks of $250,000 to $500,000 for pre-seed and seed companies and donates 10% of profits to future conservation efforts.
“You could think of us very much as a climate tech fund, but instead of thinking about where we can emit less carbon dioxide or avoid emissions in the first place, we’re doing the same thing about losing nature,” Kevin Webb, CEO at Superorganism, told TechCrunch.
The super-organization holding company Spoor illustrates the type of startups the company wants to support. The company’s software uses computer vision to track bird movement and migration patterns, minimizing damage from wind turbines to local bird populations. This benefits both biodiversity and wind farm developers, who face strict regulations about their impact on birds—regulations that can delay construction or even shut down projects.
Webb and co-founder and CEO Tom Quigley described their introduction as “kismet” to TechCrunch in 2023. Webb had begun making biodiversity-focused angel investments to see if it could be viable as a venture capital strategy. While doing this, he approached Quigley because he was impressed with his background. The two started talking and eventually started working at the company in 2022.
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The political climate around nature and climate protection in general has changed a lot — in the US at least — since the pair started working on it a few years ago. But it didn’t really stop the company from hitting its $25 million goal.
Quigley said some potential LPs needed guidance to understand what makes Superorganism different from a climate fund, but that becomes clearer when you look at the firm’s portfolio, he said. Their portfolio companies span different categories and attract different types of investors and clients.
“We’re intentionally building a diverse portfolio,” Quigley said. “It allows us to show what the best biodiversity companies look like across all industries, across all types of technology. We think there’s a showcase portfolio for a fund — something that’s really strong and it’s a really solid portfolio that’s not very [affected] from different headwinds in different industries or different government policies of the time’.
Many of these biodiversity issues also transcend partisan battles over climate change, he said. Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSandis recently chimed in Vice versaone of Superorganism’s portfolio companies that turns invasive species into leather goodsfor helping deal with a python problem in the Everglades, he added.
So far, the company has invested in 20 companies and plans a portfolio size of around 35 companies for this fund.
“We recognize that we are the first and we need to be there to get others there who might be interested in making their first bet in biodiversity, helping them find and support the right ones that can move the needle,” Quigley said.
