Building the world’s first biodiversity venture fund – Tom Quigley, Superorganism

In this episode of The Stream, Will Sarni and Tom Freyberg sit down with Tom Quigley, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Superorganism, the first venture firm dedicated exclusively to biodiversity-focused startups.

It’s a timely conversation. Just this week, Tom and his co-founder Kevin Webb announced Superorganism’s first venture fund, exceeding $25 million, marking a major milestone for nature and biodiversity investing.

Before launching Superorganism, Tom spent years working in the field across Australia, Madagascar, and the Cayman Islands, earning a reputation as a coral reef conservationist turned start-up operator and investor. That experience now shapes how Superorganism approaches early-stage investing in nature tech.

We explore why biodiversity has lagged climate in venture capital, how that is beginning to change, and how Superorganism plans to deploy capital across three core areas:

• Industries driving biodiversity loss
• The overlap between biodiversity and climate
• Enabling technologies that unlock new ways to protect and restore nature

It was an honour to speak with Tom about building the fund, the partners, how experience with start-ups will help and the link between biodiversity loss and water.

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We’re delighted you can join us on this voyage of discovery, as we journey down The Stream.

Special thanks to this season's sponsor, Raymond James.

And our charity partner, Frank Water.

And thanks to our knowledge partners: British Water, WWF, Water Alliance, DCU Water Institute, SurplusWater25, Earth and Environmental Science at Berkeley Lab, Water Foundry and Atlantean Media.