bloomlabs has a new flower 🌸

New look, new product, same direction. The silence is over.

Hi friends,

This year I haven’t been as active with the newsletter as before. I had my reasons. Let me share them (and more) below.

The one-man band era is over

Aggregating market data, consuming everything there is on the topic, analyzing it and finally churning out digestible snapshots of the market was fun. It scratched my geeky itch. It gave me a direct feedback loop of “do X and you will be useful to people“. But it could only scale so much. And I do want to scale.

Throughout all this time, two problems kept popping up:

1. Lack of market data.

   There is no extensive, well-structured and up-to-date view of what’s happening in the voluntary biodiversity market. As promising as they are, there are only fragments.

2. Market education.

   I.e. lack of accessible analysis of that data. Again, there are some amazing resources. They aren’t as comprehensive as they could be, though. One-off market snapshots aren’t enough.

To my surprise, these problems were not getting solved fast enough. Not even close. Some parts (e.g. philosophical clashes between market-based mechanism supporters and critics) are bound to stay. But we can have much more clarity about market facts.

I’ve also noticed that there is a method to making sense of biodiversity credits. My deep dives followed a structure to provide data and insights to the market players. We’ve spent the past months validating that. And we did. We can do much more. And with much less, thanks to some beautiful tech.

What’s changing

Bloom Labs → bloomlabs

A symbolic gesture to mark a new direction for the company. Check it out.

One-man band → team

Martin is joining the team. He’s a force of nature and a co-founder anyone would be lucky to have. I’ve experienced it firsthand in the past half a year. Much of what you’ll see from bloomlabs in the future will be driven by him.

There are more updates here I’m looking to share soon..

Sporadic Substack articles & one-off datasets → product

No more making long link lists of articles and Airtable datasets. All of our work will live in a single, dynamic, AI-powered platform.

Market intelligence platform for biodiversity credits 🐝

The first version will feature all of our datasets with more to come. We’re deepening already the most extensive market database. The goal: become the one-stop shop for the voluntary biodiversity market.

Some features

• Proprietary data. Market data collected and structured from the widest range of public & private sources, built over these 2+ years.

• Deep insights. A layer of proven analysis on top of the raw market data.

• Extensiveness. The most complete biodiversity market database with all market transactions, credit schemes, metrics & market players.

• Data visualization. Custom charts, graphs, and maps. You’ll be able to slice and dice the platform any way you like.

• Dynamic updates. Instead of snapshots, you’ll get access to dynamic, up-to-date state of the market.

• AI agent. Custom-built AI companion trained on our data is in the works.

• and more..

The cool part? This isn’t just about biodiversity credits. Yes, that is our current focus. But the intelligence tech we’re building is applicable to many other markets. I hope to share more in the future 🤞

Our thesis

bloomlabs was born out of a simple thesis: deep, unique and accessible insights matter. It’s a bet that 1. people are extremely intelligent and 2. they know quality when they see it.

We’re simply doubling down on that same thesis with our market data engine. It will dramatically reduce our data collection process and increase the time for generating data-backed insights.

Our goal: 100x+ our provided value with more frequent, more timely and more valuable data & insights, starting with biodiversity credits.

Why now

Even though the space is going through the “Trough of Disillusionment“, biodiversity/nature credits have never been more important.

The decisions that will shape the market are made at this very moment. Some examples:

• European Commission’s roadmap towards Nature Credits looks to 1. analyze the market and 2. using the evidence collected, decide next steps in 2027. It has the opportunity to be (by far) the most important biodiversity market in the world. This is where bloomlabs is already playing a role by participating in one of the very few EU-funded projects to pilot biodiversity credits in the EU wetlands. We’re stocktaking all the relevant credit schemes and creating a scheme assessment & selection framework. And we’re looking for interested credit investors & buyers.

• Dozens of countries are exploring biodiversity credits, looking to add to a $11.7b+ global compliance biodiversity markets.

These decisions must be made with the best (i.e. most extensive, up-to-date and cleanest) data available. The stakes are too high.

Yes, the voluntary biodiversity market (VBM) of ~$8m in total sales is minuscule. But let’s remember that a couple of years ago there was no market at all. This space requires conviction and patience. And, maybe more importantly, VBM is the playground for national credit schemes, both voluntary and compliance. The learnings of the voluntary market are the backbone of many of the national policies.

And, last but not least, we’re seeing how biodiversity credits act as the quality assurance layer for the nature-based carbon credits. This is where the “shadow VBM“ market might be the largest.

What’s next

Beta tests

We’ve been doing beta tests with our early users and are finally opening the waitlist to the public. Sign up! 👋

Data submission hub

We’re also taking direct data collection from the market players more seriously. More information to come..

Newsletter launch

The newsletter isn’t going anywhere. We’re gearing up to launch a more consistent publication, built on our data engine.

Yes, you will probably hear less from me directly over time. You can be sure I’ll be involved in every post though :)

Database access

Apart from the biodiversity credit schemes database, all our public data is being reworked and is currently unavailable.

If you are an academic researcher who wants to do research with the latest market data, reach out to hello@bloomlabs.earth and we will do our best to provide you with what you need.

Special thanks to the paid subscribers

The launch of our paid product means the end of allowing folks to become paid newsletter subscribers. You financially supported my work when you didn’t have to. All of it has been open-source this whole time. I will never be able to explain what this early act of trust means to me.

Once we open the product to the public, 1. we’ll cancel your subscription and 2. will provide you with full platform access for free for 6 months.

Thank you again.

Thank you

Thank you to every single one of you once again. Your trust gave me the confidence to continue this work throughout ups and, most importantly, downs.

Now, together with some amazing folks, we’re building something bigger than us. I couldn’t be more proud of it. And I’m more fired up than ever. 🫡

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p.s. I’m aware that by doubling down on biodiversity credits, I’m parting ways with the bloomlabs’ initial positioning of being “as unbiased as humanly possible”. Now, the commercial well-being of bloomlabs officially depends on the success of this space. I was fooling myself thinking that I could remain *completely* intellectually independent. Maybe I could’ve built a think tank of sorts. But that’s not in my nature.

The most important pillar of bloomlabs will remain: focus on cold hard data. We’re not in the business of only painting the picture :)