From Behind the Curtain: Reflections from Biodiversity Accelerator+ Founders
Key takeaways from this year's cohort
It’s hard to believe, but this year’s edition of the Biodiversity Accelerator+ has officially come to a close! The founders in this year’s cohort have made many achievements over the course of the programme worth being proud of, including but not limited to:
Winning over new customers – From Ocean Ledger nailing down the sales pitch during competitive bid processes against established players, or 3T’s onboarding of Kansai Electric
Presenting their businesses at COP16, alongside panelists from the World Economic Forum, Innovate 4 Nature, and NaturaTech.
Nailing down key documents for their dataroom, including robust financial models and clear pitch decks
Forging new relationships with experienced mentors, fellow innovators, and like-minded investors
To round us out, we sat down with the five of our founders to reflect on the journey. Here’s what they had to say.
1. Based on your own experience and what you've learned during the BA+, what do you think are the most important elements of any company's success?
Paige Roepers (Ocean Ledger): First - Stay focused on what your company/product is the best at. Second - Being easy to work with is highly underrated (both as a leader and also with customers). And last but certainly not least - Don't chase funding. Focus on traction and building a sustainable business instead.
Ian Shimizu-Pughe (3T): To Paige’s last point, the best advice I've ever seen is 'just don't die'. It’s deceptively simple, but so underrated. One of the BA+ mentors shared that timing is the #1 component of success for a company, and I think exactly to that point - a large company's success has to do with improving and surviving until that moment arrives. Next to that is having a brilliant, driven team.
Megan Pillsbury (Dunya Analytics): I second what both Paige and Ian have shared - Based on my experience, the three essential ingredients for a successful startup is finding product-market fit, managing cash wisely, as well as effective leadership and team cohesion.
2. What advice would you give to your fellow nature tech startups to find success in those dimensions?
Ziad Matar (Veridi Technologies): A lot of this boils down to creating value for your clients - Focus on their needs, not wants.
Megan: Absolutely - it is really important to understand what motivates your customer to pay for your product!
Ian: You also have to make sure you’re aligned as a team on key strategic decisions. The market intelligence workshop by First Matter provided a great avenue for us to do this as a co-founding team. It gave us an opportunity to map a lot of things intentionally, align ourselves, and make sure we were going into our markets armed with the best intelligence possible.
Andre Cheung (Robotics Cats): The advice I’d like to add is to join good, relevant startup accelerators and industry programs to improve quickly and connect to more stakeholders, partners and customers. People are everything.
Paige: Yes! Network, network, and network. It was incredible to be a part of this cohort - in addition to the access to experts that we enjoyed, frankly, everyone one of my peers in this cohort was extraordinary. I learned something valuable from each and everyone one of them.
3. What other components or tools from this programme did you find useful?
Ziad: The theory of change workshops were really helpful, to better understand the expectations of impact investors, and the metrics they use.
Megan: Yes, I thought that was especially helpful given that it can be challenging to define your impact metrics when you are an enabler of others' positive impacts. Besides that, I also found the different approaches to pricing at any stage of business and product maturity really interesting and actionable.
Paige: I also found the impact and theory of change work we did helpful. As an outcome of the early work Ocean Ledger did during the BA+ kick off, we were able to put our well-defined (but simple) impact theory to work: directly linking to our modelling methodologies and approach to impact, representing a cohesive, trustworthy brand that resonates with customers and partners. We crafted a dedicated technical report incorporating our impact narrative, which has majorly streamlined the sales, investor and partner conversations. We also built a sales pipeline to track our progress on key metrics, which was very insightful.
Andre: To echo Megan’s last point, the pricing strategy sessions with Simon Kucher provided great insights into how to generate more value and better fit your customer needs. We also streamlined and improved our investor and customer pitches with better visuals! (Thank you, Lime Agency!)
4. Last but not least - who were some of the people you connected with during this programme that you’d like to shout out?
Megan: Matt Bachle, our EIR mentor, has been a huge supporter, and I hope we keep working with him. Santosh Kumar for building bonds among the cohort. Cameron Dowd (founder of Inverto) for being one of the nicest, most interesting people I have ever met. The BA+ team for their dedication and support, and creating an excellent program!
Ziad: Antony Yousefian was a great EIR mentor, and helped a lot in giving us exposure. Nish & Julian's positivity was always comforting. I had a lot of fun with fellow cohort members like Ian & Cameron.
Ian: Ziad is arguably a polar opposite founder to me - but he is so compelling in his own, cool, composed, and convincing way. It was great getting to know him and somehow we are best friends now. I really valued having our EIR Gerald for having a 'mechanics' and 'systems' view on companies, strategy, and growth! Patti & Kelvin for the inspiration they gave me from their intentional and dedicated effort to contribute to the sector and impact through capital deployment but beyond that via engagement and nurturing startups. Joy for the joy she brings. Clive for the dry humor… And everyone else for their immense effort!
Andre: Ian helped me stay calm and do better with public speaking. Steve O'Connor was a very experience and knowledgeable EIR who provided a lot of valuable suggestions and advice. And Hui Ting Lee was very helpful and creative. I learned from her how to build better pitch!
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