1 Year Anniversary: What's Next?

A reflection of this journey so far & future plans.

Hi friends 👋,

This piece will be a bit different. Why? Well, June 27 will mark the official first anniversary of the Bloom Labs newsletter.

This time, my main goal will be not to provide direct value to you (next piece is incoming though!) but to reflect on what has been a hell of a journey so far and where it is going.

Hope you enjoy it and will also join me for year two. I am so excited about it.

Let’s get into it.

---

---

1 Year Anniversary: What's Next?

How it all started

A common question I get is “How did you even end up doing this?”. It’s a fair one - I’m no environmental scientist. So, let me start here.

I grew up in Lithuania. There we have a saying that “a Lithuanian without a forest is a Lithuanian without a home”. This applied to me, big time. Still, growing up, I chose to ignore the looming environmental crisis. “Making it” in life felt more important. I always wanted to be a founder and I even had a textbook politically correct plan in mind: make it big with my first startup and then “give back” with my second.

The plan cracked when I quit my job at a startup to build my own and realized that behind the glitter of new tech, no problem excites me. I was lost for a year. Then a couple of books rewired my brain: “Less is More” by Jason Hickel and “Sacred Economics” by Charles Eisenstein. They also helped me realize something that I kind of already knew: productivity gains ≠ societal value. Now, consumption contributes to happiness. But only up to a certain point. And many folks in the industrialized world are far beyond it. I had to rethink how to build a business that wouldn’t just lead to increased production & consumption (a problem that's way harder than it initially sounded). It was the nail in the coffin that helped me decide what I’ll do with the rest of my life - serve life.

I decided to focus on one of the systemic challenges - dislocated nature-related money flows. I teamed up with multiple co-founders to build a biodiversity company. Over time, what started as a personal biodiversity credit market research ballooned into something I felt others could benefit from. That’s how I started the newsletter. It was just a way to express some of my pent-up research & thoughts. I was shocked when it resonated with folks in the space.

As I continued the newsletter work while also trying to build a biodiversity startup, I realized that to excel at either, one had to go. So, this January I decided to double down on what already worked and build a media & consulting company around my newsletter.

Where am I now?

Well..

Newsletter

I just hit 2,800 subscribers (my initial goal for 2024 was 2,000 🙂). Some of you also became paid subscribers as soon as I set up the functionality for it a few weeks back. Thank you. 🙏

Social media

Something I never expected happened - I became an active LinkedIn creator, with almost 700k annual views (seriously??).

Consulting

I finally landed enough clients to keep myself afloat.

Industry acceptance

And most importantly, many people I respect showed respect to me. I was accepted by those I admired the most. That’s something you can’t buy.

Some who come to mind are John Ellison, Anna Lerner Nesbitt, Karl Burkart, Joshua Berger, Sonja Stuchtey, Raviv Turner, Edward Pollard, Edit Kiss, Sophus zu Ermgassen, Neal Spackman, Anna Alex and literally dozens more. Thank you all.

Lessons

Most lessons are context-specific, but from my limited understanding, I’ve also taken away a couple more general ones:

Aim to write topic-defining pieces

I once heard a piece of advice that stuck with me: you can’t always be the first to cover a topic but you can try to be the last. You can always try to write topic-defining articles - pieces of work that industry folks will continue to refer to. I can’t say I do that, but this North Star fits my personality.

A trusted relationship with your audience is a superpower (& a social contract)

First of all, I’m pretty bad at it. I don’t communicate with you folks as much as I believe I should. But I know one thing - if you want to be trusted, you must sign an implicit social contract with your audience that you’ll “keep it real” no matter what. That might mean repeatedly contradicting yourself, staying critical about the industry that you’re supposedly a part of and saying no to paid gigs that might create a conflict of interest even though you’re “starving”.

Your email newsletter list is gold

Hearing it a million times is one thing. Experiencing it is something different.

I found that an organically built email list with engaged folks is priceless, especially in the long run. If I continued posting my work only on LinkedIn, I would’ve remained at the mercy of its algorithm (as good as it is, to be honest). Now, I’m seeing more consistency in the engagement & reach of my posts, no matter if it gets viral on LinkedIn or not. That’s mostly thanks to you all!

If you find your instrument, play the hell out of it

I refer to this one the most.

A few years ago, John Ellison shared a metaphor that went something along the lines of “Climate action is a symphony that you cannot control. All you can do is find your instrument, sit down and try to play to the tune of the orchestra.” After almost 2 years of full-time exploration, I found mine: it’s reading countless industry reports, articles & research papers, speaking with hundreds of experts across the field, holding conflicting ideas and synthesizing it all into something readable, immediately useful & as unbiased as humanly possible. Most people I know dread it. Me? I can’t stop doing it.

Ever since I accepted that this is my instrument (and not being a charismatic reincarnation of Steve Jobs, as most founders secretly wish), it freed me to do something others can’t directly compete with.

Plans for year 2

The plan is simple: keep doing what works, try to do it better and see which doors open. Or, in other words, get Bloom Labs closer to becoming the trust and market intelligence layer for nature finance.

More specifically:

Branch out more into nature accounting & nature tech

Without noticing, I became the “biodiversity credits guy”. The feedback loop of me doing the work & people benefitting from it was so direct that I got addicted. But I’m also super curious about so many other topics that I’ve kept a close eye on (e.g. nature tech, other nature finance instruments, carbon markets & especially nature accounting). So, to any corporate ESG managers reading this - I’d love to chat!

More (& more consistent) content

This is my public oath: this year, I’ll do my best to not go more than 3 weeks without publishing anything.

Grow the team

I’m a big fan of solopreneurship. But I want to build something beyond me. And for that, I’ll need a lot of help. That’s why I’m looking for partners to help me scale Bloom Labs, whether in content, consulting or (especially) new product discovery.

If you think you understand my playbook and want to be a part of it - ping me. I want to talk to you.

Explore market intelligence products

I believe that one of the few product categories that would still allow me to unbiasedly geek out is market intelligence.

Explore VC partnerships

I love venture & am in touch with countless awesome nature tech startups. If I could work with even more of these founders for a living, I’d seriously consider it.

That’s why I’m calling out the nature tech VCs who read my newsletter: you got the capital, I got (some) knowledge & great founders reading my work - let’s chat!

Explore newsletter monetization

Up until now, my work has been free, both from fees and advertisements. I’ve kept it that way for as long as I could. This year, I will probably explore some of the different ways I could monetize my newsletter. So advertisers, feel free to give me a shout!

Now, I’m aware I won’t be able to progress on all of these but they are the doors I’m looking into. Maybe we’ll open them together with one (or some) of you 🙂

And with new doors in mind, I have an ask. If you appreciate my work, I’d like to ask you to take ~5 minutes out of your day (I timed it, no exaggeration ⏱) & fill in an existing reader survey. It would help me provide more relevant content to you. Thank you. 🙏

Parting thoughts

I won’t lie, when I quit my job 2.5 years ago, I expected it to be easier. But then again, who didn’t?

All I can think of now is how grateful I am to all the kickass people doing their best in this space. It might be the friendliest industry in the world. Thank you for all that you do.

This year was the year I found my “instrument”. For those who haven’t found theirs yet, finding it is my wish to you.

That’s it. Back to more practical stuff in the next issue.