What Nature Markets Need to Scale

Kevin Webb runs Superorganism, one of the first venture funds built entirely around biodiversity. When it weighs a start-up, the nature markets this Ripple was named after count for nothing. "We basically underwrite nature markets practically to zero when we're thinking about an investment," Kevin said. Ed Thorne of Sand River, the other host and one of the few other nature-focused venture investors, does the same. Both hope they are wrong. Their session was about what it would take to prove it.

The reason is timing. A fund sizes a company's runway from the day it invests, Ed said, and cannot bet that a market will arrive in 18, 24 or 36 months. Sand River avoids purely credit-based business models and is wary of plans that count on synthetic markets. Kevin added a practical point. The next investor in a round wants revenue that nobody questions. If nature markets mature over the next five to fifteen years, Kevin expects many of the fund's companies to gain. Until then it is upside.

Customers first

What the two funds back instead are companies that solve a customer's problem now. Sand River leaves out mobility and the energy transition, which are well served. Ed pictured the planetary boundaries as a pizza with nine slices, of which climate change is one. The fund invests in the other eight, and in the data gap between nature and the economy. A recent investment uses geospatial AI to model water stress across North America's watersheds, far more cheaply than existing systems, for utilities and asset owners.

Kevin's example came from Norway. A company runs AI on ordinary CCTV cameras to track birds around offshore wind farms. It replaces an ornithologist sent out on a boat once a year with monitoring around the clock, and has shown that the impact on birds at a number of wind farms has been negligible. That helps developers choose sites and could speed up permits. Ulysses, a Superorganism company, started by planting seagrass. It became venture-backable because the same technology monitors offshore wind sites, watches harbours for intruders and looks for illegal fishing. Kevin would like to back robots that restore habitat for nature alone, but said the money is not there yet.

If you are meaningfully altering the ecological footprint of an industry, that is nature tech in my view.

Rules that make buyers

Regulation can create buyers fast. Ed said the EU Deforestation Regulation has companies buying plot-level data on where cocoa, bananas and shrimp come from, from a supplier Sand River recently backed. Ed saw the disclosure as a gateway to wider supply-chain risk work, which is worth more. Kevin added CSRD, the voluntary TNFD framework and the UK's Biodiversity Net Gain, which requires developers to leave a site better for biodiversity, on site, nearby or through credits.

Ed called Biodiversity Net Gain a paradox. Businesses sprang up around it, and Sand River briefly wondered whether it should drop everything and fund restoration. Then the rules were watered down and the demand the business models assumed was undermined. Yet rewilding has gone from a niche pursuit of the elite to something common on UK farms, as a second income. For an investor doing due diligence, Ed said, it is a cautionary tale about novel regulation.

Asked what else would help, Kevin named two levers. One is a nature equivalent of the voluntary carbon market, with repeatable demand and agreement on what is measured. The other is an end to the trillions of dollars in subsidies for harmful activities that nature-positive companies compete against.

Waiting for wins

A participant asked why nature funds are so small. Ed said nature tech is only the tip of the spear. Conservation finance, nature-based debt and restoration need far more money, but have no established returns profile and need risk-on catalytic funders first. Kevin cited a $700bn annual finance gap for nature and said the sector needs wins. Planet Labs was one. Detecting deforestation shaped its satellites from the start, even though its main customers have been in defence. Kevin also wanted a bigger tent. "If you are meaningfully altering the ecological footprint of an industry, that is nature tech in my view," Kevin said. By that measure, many investors already fund nature without calling it that.

Exits are less clear. Kevin said Superorganism invests only when it can see a path to an IPO or several strategic buyers. Ed said nobody yet knows who will buy nature-data companies, and expected answers in three to five years.

The last question was how to measure impact without burying young companies in reporting. Kevin asks for one metric tied to revenue. Inversa, which manages invasive species for state governments, reports how many animals it has removed. What Kevin would really like to know is the uplift to the ecosystem, but that is a years-long research project. Until a market pays for that answer, the funds will keep counting what customers already pay for.

This Ripple was hosted by Ed Thorne (Sand River) and Kevin Webb (Superorganism) at The Drop 2026 on 16 September.