Over the last decade, the Sustainable Ocean Alliance has graduated from dorm room activism to a thousands-strong global network of experts, investors, and “ecopreneurs” — all of whom believe the best way to save the ailing oceans is to embrace innovation. Founder Daniela Fernandez has steered the ship the whole time, and the SOA is ready to make another splash.
Since Fernandez started it in 2014, SOA’s approach to addressing the climate crisis embraced the emerging startup economy. “Before us, no one in this space was even counting entrepreneurship or innovation as part of the solution,” she told TechCrunch in an interview. “This is an investable industry! And we are so proud to have led the way. I mean, l collectively we’ve deployed almost half a billion into this space.”
It took time for the idea to gain traction, but Fernandez’s invincible optimism and enthusiasm have snared powerful investors (the Benioffs are backers) and countless young folks who want to take action.
“My perspective has always been: Look at the economy of it,” she explained. “If there is an alternative to a company or sector, that’s sustainable while also making money, that is how society is going to shift. And these alternatives are already in the market; the question is how quickly can we scale them — how can we make them the norm? And how quickly can we bring in the capital we need to support this market?”
The organization moved from advocacy to active participation in that market with its accelerator program, which has helped dozens of companies grow from pre-seed to commercialization.
That approach has had to change as SOA identified categories that represent the best chance at breaking through to the mainstream. As it puts them: Greenhouse Gas Reduction, Pollution Reduction, Ecosystems and Species, Blue Foods, and Ocean Data, Literacy, & Research.
The program itself has changed, too, from Startup 101 with a conservation twist to one more focused on making the connections that matter and presenting data that convinces.
“Early on, a lot of these companies were just interested in understanding what the ocean ecosystem needed from them,” Fernandez said. “Like, what’s the product market fit, who are the experts that they can benefit from speaking to? Now that we’ve in essence institutionalized the SOA as a leading organization in this space, it’s more about lifetime support for these companies. This is an association that is beneficial to these founders, that opens a lot of doors. And there is capital that is actively seeking these investments that [other incubators and industry groups] might not be aware of.”
(That includes, perhaps, SOA’s own venture arm, Seabird Ventures.)
“We were also able to collect a lot of impact data from our companies,” she continued. “One of our competitive advantages is we created the industry’s first ocean impact assessment, a framework to assess the effect these startups were having in the world.”
That informed the creation of this new Ocean Solution Label, not just a rubber stamp but involving a close assessment of a company’s methods and impact. The idea is that companies and products bearing the label aren’t just meeting some low bar of “less terrible than most” but actually have a measurable and significant positive impact on the ecosystem. (It’s a tie-up with the Solar Impulse Foundation, which has been doing something similar for a while.)
“The primary target is investors,” she said. “We need to start signaling and moving more capital into this space. Investors are looking at ocean-related deals coming across their table, and their LPs are asking for them to be more deliberate about impact … but there are many companies out there that might be blue washing and trying to raise money against this growing trend. We’re trying to get into the weeds on measurements of the impact, and the benchmark has to be outsize impact on the planet for them to receive the label.”
In the meantime, a new batch of startups is coming through the Ecopreneur system:
- Oneka Technologies (desalination buoys)
- Genevos (hydrogen and fuel cell power systems integration for maritime)
- Vlinder (mangrove restoration and carbon credits focusing on marginalized communities.)
- Phycolabs (seaweed-based biofibers)
- INVERSA (invasive species leather (!))
- Koraï Africa (marine biodiversity consulting and restoration)
- SeaVoir (algae-based health supplements)
- PierSight Space (ocean satellite imaging)
Fernandez teased that another big structure-level change for SOA is coming soon. But what impresses her the most is quite simply the scale of an operation that was once literally just her.
“We’re in 186 countries! Versus where we started from, in my dorm room in Washington, D.C.? And we actually have like … projects, founders, youth hubs on the ground in all those locations. These are people actively thinking about solutions, not just on climate anxiety,” she said. “Applications for our programs are increasing, the amount of young people trying to become an ocean leader or delegate to our events is increasing, the variety of companies we’re seeing is increasing.”
“It’s almost as if being an ocean entrepreneur is so complex, because it’s such a multi-dynamic industry, that the only way to do it is with a systematic, macro-level approach … which we have taken.”