A few months ago, I was trying to explain to Niklas Azinger from Infinita Fund why Bio Bureau, my company, didn’t fit into a health technology event.
I found myself focusing on what we are NOT: ocean technology, climate technology and even biotechnology – a term that can be misleading, as it is often associated with the pharmaceutical industry.
The current color-coded system used to categorize various fields of biotechnology (e.g. blue for marine biotechnology, green for agricultural biotechnology) is not very useful, as it requires remembering a code without clearly explaining the underlying work.
As I ran through this list of what we are not, I realized that defining us by exclusion was not effective. That’s when I said: “We’re a biodiversity-tech.”
It felt right because it was a term that reconciled all our initiatives: harnessing DNA technology to identify and catalog various species within Brazil’s rich ecosystems, working to introduce the first environmental gene-drive on the market, using environmental PCR to detect and track invasive species in the ocean, going beyond genes, genomes, genetics and genetic engineering to incorporate fieldwork, modeling, remote sensing and ecological studies to promote biodiversity conservation.
It felt right, as it reconciled all our initiatives: using DNA technology to identify and catalog various species in Brazil’s rich ecosystems, introducing the first environmental gene-drive on the market and employing environmental PCR to detect and track invasive species in the ocean. The work goes beyond the tools of biotechnology: genes, genomes, genetics and genetic engineering, to involve fieldwork, modeling, remote sensing and ecological studies to promote biodiversity conservation.
I increasingly appreciate the power of a simple statement: biodiversity-tech.
You don’t have to struggle to explain how identifying biodiversity and combating the invasion of sun corals, as well as controlling the golden mussel population, fit under the same umbrella. While this may be obvious to us, it was difficult to articulate in the space of an hour, let alone in a single word.
Biodiversity matters! Even more so than the environment, oceans and climate. Biodiversity is what makes our environment meaningful! There are many environments in the universe, but it is biodiversity that makes ours truly unique. Historically, biodiversity may have been neglected due to the lack of technology to identify, measure, understand and use it effectively. But that’s exactly what biodiversity-tech wants to fix.
With Biodiversity-Technology, our aim is not only to define our operational area, but also to encourage other companies to join us in the effort to identify and conserve species.
We have been in the top 10 in the biotechnology category of the 100 Open Startups ranking for the last three editions. However, we believe that biodiversity-tech deserves its own segment and we will defend it.