A venture studio building and scaling nature-based companies that restore healthy ecosystems.

Our vision is an ecologically intelligent future.

AEI is the first venture studio for nature-based startups. Natural ecosystems are the planet’s best business model: diversified, regenerative, and designed to create compounding returns. Business solutions designed to restore soil, water, and biodiversity have the power to outperform traditional investments by capitalizing on the natural abundance of those healthy ecosystems.

We call this approach Ecological Intelligence, and we use it to create and invest in startups that deliver return on investment by restoring the healthy systems needed for all life to thrive.

THE STUDIo

Startup Studios (also known as Venture Studios or Venture Builders) are a new way of building companies that is outperforming, in pace and value, traditional venture capital investment. Studios are institutional co-founders that invest real human and financial resources at day one; increasing the likelihood of startup success by using repeatable and rigorous processes and building an ecosystem of entrepreneurs and tools focused on solving the worlds greatest challenges.

AEI is the first studio to focus solely on ecological systems based solutions; integrating Ecological Intelligence at every step to ensure compounding financial and environmental returns.

IDEATE

What are we solving for?

Integrated solutions focused on restoring the health of ecosystems and the biosphere are the bullseye for AEI. We know we will have been successful, when ecological solutions prevail to help drive cost effective, rapidly scalable measured success such as:

Food security and quality is achieved through regenerative practices

Water is honored and valued as the precious resource it is
Biodiversity on land, sea, soil, and in our gut is respected, vital, and acknowledged as the connective tissue of life
Soil health is re-grown, as a climate solution supporting the health of all life on earth
A return to personal and corporate responsibility resurrects natural resources as a shared commons in all we do
The motivations for positive land-use focus collaboration across property lines to achieve a shared and motivating vision of land health

Where do we find ideas?

Our founders and partners are ecological pioneers and have been innovating and applying solutions for decades to the most pressing challenges in food, sustainable farming, land management, restoration, and conservation and business finance. There is an urgency to do more, faster. Working together with co-founders and mission aligned funders, we continue to identify and clarify the gaps in need of global scale solutions. We value collaboration and welcome ideas.

How will we do it?

Our innovative startup studio model incorporates rigorous processes to effectively validate, create, spin-up and scale solutions. This model was designed applying best principles, strategies and tools from 40+ years of research, project management, and application of global scale solutions. As with natural systems, each solution is unique and the model will flex and constantly improve.

The Ecological Intelligence framework sets the AEI studio apart. Each solution is designed to:

Have just cultural and economic drivers
Engage public and private landholders
Generate many co-benefits for each invested dollar

Create healthy ecosystems
Be scalable, responsive and cost effective
Create rapid change, adoption and endorsement

Pipeline

Ideas coming to life.

Available soon.

Get nourished while restoring the planet.

Revaluing and remonetizing lands and their Natural Capital.

VALUES

Our values inherently mimic nature and embody how we, as humans, must collaborate with nature in order to succeed.

Science
True and applied, the basis for all our work.

Systems
Everything is connected. Reductionist thought has no place here.

Curiosity
Exploring the unknown without ego is how we find solutions.

Authenticity
Measurement, transparency, and integrity.

Effective Action & Results
Action and Results Oriented

Hyper-Collaboration
Collective human + ecological intelligence

Joy
We recognize nature as joyous and abundant and we strive to be as well.

Diversity
Humans and nature are meant to be diverse. All need to be included, respected, and considered.

TEAM & ALLIES

Our team possesses over 180 combined years of experience in investment management, entrepreneurship, conservation finance, ecological restoration, social impact, education, retail, food systems, and organic and regenerative agriculture. Our allies broaden and deepen this experience with specific areas of expertise and wisdom to fortify our process and hold us accountable.

Steven I. Apfelbaum, M.S.

Founder, Chairman, Executive Director & Senior Ecologist

Founder, Chairman and Former CEO/President, Applied Ecological Services, Inc.

2010 Recipient John T. Curtis Lifetime Achievement Award from the Aldo Leopold Foundation

Visionary Steve Apfelbaum is the inspiration driving AEI. For over 40 years, Steve has proven to be one of the worlds most innovative ecologists creating and scaling one of the most successful applied ecological firms, Applied Ecological Services, Inc. He is a pioneer in the fields of regenerative agriculture, carbon measurement and sequestration, soil health, conservation finance, landscape scale restoration and watershed management technologies as well as many other ecological innovations. Steve believes there are many unrealized ecological-based solutions that can be productized and commercialized and will rapidly change the direction of a depleted earth to one of ecological abundance. He believes that these solutions simply need to be vetted, properly incubated and accelerated into commercialization through a tactical force of Ecological Entrepreneurs supported by a team of seasoned business owners and academics and properly financed by impact focused investors. He believes these change agents can co-create a thriving life for all generations.

Featured