By: William Jones
What if the next significant breakthrough in technology didn’t come from Silicon Valley, but from the forest floor? From coral reefs, insect wings, or the structure of a seed pod? Natalya Wallin believes the answers to most pressing global challenges, from climate collapse to polluted food systems, are already out there in nature. Humans have just forgotten how to see them.
“We are biologically, psychologically, genetically wired to respond to the physical world with health,” says Wallin, founder of Vitality, a venture fund backing early-stage nature-inspired startups. “That connection has been disrupted. We’ve built lives that distance us from nature, and now we’re paying the price.”
Vitality is her solution: a fund designed not just to address the symptoms of our planetary crisis, but to go after the root causes. At its core is a biomimicry-based investment thesis: one that recognizes nature as the original, most elegant engineer. The fund seeks out founders who ask: How would nature solve this?
“Biomimicry isn’t just inspiration; it’s strategy,” Wallin explains. “Nature doesn’t produce waste. It’s circular. It’s energy-efficient. It’s resilient. That’s not theory: that’s 3.8 billion years of nature’s ‘R&D’ And now we finally have the technology, the AI, the tools to apply that insight at scale.”
Wallin sees ‘nature tech’ as the next significant wave of innovation. It is a wave that could rival or exceed the impact of clean tech and ag-tech. But the magic, she insists, lies in the combination: nature’s intelligence meets advanced technology, applied to life’s most essential needs —how one grows the food, what one wears, and the buildings humans live in. “It’s this moment where two worlds collide,” she says. “We can either keep producing chemicals and microplastics forever, or we can use nature as a blueprint to build smarter from the start.”
At Vitality, this focus takes shape through three themes: Grow (regenerative agriculture), Use (materials such as sustainable textiles and packaging), and Build (infrastructure and construction). Every investment must pass through a biomimicry filter, meaning the startup must work with nature, not against it. Wallin confirms, “We’re not funding ideas that slap a green label on extractive models. We’re funding solutions that redesign the system itself.”
To find these solutions, Wallin didn’t wait for pitch decks to land in her inbox. She spent 18 months on the road, meeting with scientists in Arizona, founders in Colorado, universities in the UK, and innovators tucked inside labs, workshops, and soil-rich farmlands. “I was looking for people who had both the technical depth and the intuitive connection to nature,” she says. “Often, they weren’t the ‘usual suspects’ in venture capital.”
In fact, the first three startups Vitality backed cater to a different industry, each with a unique perspective on both the problem and the natural systems that could help solve it.
There’s Sara Hinkley, founder of BOPA (Barn Owl Precision Agriculture), who comes from generations of farmers and saw firsthand how smallholders were being left behind by industrial agtech. “She didn’t just understand the science,” Wallin says, “she understood the land and built something that could actually work in the real world.”
Then there’s ReefCycle, founded by Mary Lempres and Shannon Parker, who studied how reefs and shells build resilient structures and asked whether that same process could be applied to one of the world’s dirtiest industries: cement. Their breakthrough was a room-temperature alternative to conventional cement. “It’s elegant, efficient, and could massively reduce emissions,” Wallin says. “It’s biomimicry in its purest form.”
The third, TierraSphere, founded by Marcela Flores, takes food waste and applies a naturally occurring process that removes carbon dioxide and sequesters it as stone. “She’s not just reducing emissions, she’s locking them away permanently,” Wallin says. “And she’s doing it by partnering with nature’s own chemistry.”
These visionaries, and the startups they lead, represent only the beginning. What started as a slow trickle of discovery is now becoming a wave. Wallin believes we’re on the brink of a massive pipeline of nature-inspired innovation, especially as new incubators, academic institutions, and policy shifts begin to recognize the value of biomimicry and circular systems.
And while much of this talent has been overlooked by traditional investors, either because the founders don’t speak the language of venture or because their work doesn’t fit neatly into legacy categories like ‘climate tech’ or ‘agtech,’ Wallin believes Vitality can be a hub that brings them together.
“There’s a taxonomy problem in this space. We have a thousand terms: sustainability, circularity, green tech. But what we really need is a clear filter: Are you solving this problem in a way that works with nature? If so, I want to hear from you,” Wallin states.
Her mission isn’t just about investing capital. It’s about re-patterning how individuals think about innovation, and who gets to lead it. “I want to see a movement,” she says. “A flood of founders, the ones overlooked, deeply connected to the land, who are building better ways to grow, build, and live. Because if we don’t repair our relationship with the natural world, everything else breaks down.”
And in that way, Vitality isn’t just a fund. It’s a bet on the future of life itself.
