Biology was always a major part of the environmental story—climate change, pollution, toxicity, etc.—but biotechnology wasn’t getting enough attention as part of the solution stack. After failing to build a pollution-focused startup, Dan Goodwin took aim at a deeper, more systemic goal: leveling up the entire field of climate biotechnology. Along with co-founder Paul Reginato, they started Homeworld Collective to fill the holes between private markets and publicly-funded research. Climate biotechnology wasn’t a new idea, but it has accelerated dramatically thanks to Homeworld’s focused effort to create new financial and social infrastructure.
Key ideas:
RIFS — Homeworld’s field-building philosophy: Roadmap, Ignite, Fund, Synthesize. They have refined their field-building strategy to a repeatable cycle. It’s more than just grant funding—they coax the frontier questions out from the collective intelligence of their community, then take bold action to try and solve them.
Problem Statements are a better way to develop questions. Homeworld did something unique with the antiquated format of the grant proposal: they separated the problem statement from the solution idea. This allowed the problem portion to become a radically collaborative document, while also allowing scientists and technologists to keep any intellectual property rights on any private solution ideas.
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