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When Josh Silverman<\/span> started shopping around the idea for his methane-eating microbe startup, Windfall Bio, eight years ago, the market just wasn\u2019t ready. Nobody cared about methane, he said. Companies were instead focused on lowering their carbon emissions. But a few years later, the market is starting to come around.<\/p>\n Menlo Park\u2013based Windfall Bio raised a $28 million Series A round to expand its commercialization efforts. The round was led by Prelude Ventures with participation from Amazon\u2019s Climate Pledge Fund, Incite Ventures and Positive Ventures, among others, as well as existing investors, including Mayfield.<\/p>\n Windfall works with industries that produce large levels of methane, such as agriculture, oil and gas, and landfills. The startup supplies methane-eating microbes that absorb methane emissions, turning them into fertilizer. Companies can either utilize the fertilizer themselves, if they are in the agriculture sector, or they can sell it as a revenue stream.<\/p>\n \u201cWe think there is a big opportunity to leverage this natural ecosystem that gives us a low-cost solution without needing massive investments in capital like we are seeing for these other carbon capture technologies,\u201d Silverman said.<\/p>\n While it took a couple of years to really get investors and companies on board, Silverman said that since the Windfall raised its seed round last year and emerged from stealth in March 2023, demand has been high.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have had a massive influx from all continents and all verticals; huge amounts of excitement,\u201d Silverman said. \u201cIt\u2019s profitable for everybody regardless of the industry. Everyone wants to reduce their carbon footprint, and they want to do it in a way where they make money and there aren\u2019t many solutions.\u201d<\/p>\n Silverman says that carbon capture was the only focus for so long because once carbon is in the atmosphere, it lasts forever, compared to methane\u2019s 10- to 12-year lifespan. A few decades ago, when people thought about climate change, they were looking for more long-term solutions. But now that the impacts of climate change are both more clear and worsening, people are waking up to the need for both short-term and long-term solutions.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have literally missed every single climate target we have put in place,\u201d Silverman said. Not a single G20 country has the policies needed in place for it to reach the Paris Agreement\u2019s emission-reduction targets<\/a>, for example. \u201cIf all you are doing is looking out in the future and not doing the day to day, you miss those targets and miss what is right in front of you. We need to manage the short-term climate factors, or we won\u2019t be around to deal with the long-term.\u201d<\/p>\n The lack of attention to methane is also surprising because methane actually can create a better ROI for companies than their carbon-reduction efforts.<\/p>\n Carbon is waste, which means that when companies capture it, they do so largely just to get rid of it, as opposed to turning it into something else. In comparison, methane is energy, which means it can be captured and repurposed much easier than carbon. Essentially, companies can reduce carbon for potential cost savings down the road, or a super legit carbon credit, while focusing on methane can actually make them money if they work with a company like Windfall.<\/p>\n This deal also stood out to me because Windfall lies within a growing category of startups focused on mitigating the climate issues of today and not just the ones down the road. While it is good for companies to be focused on mitigating the long-term impacts of climate change or trying to prevent future climate-induced events, we need solutions now.<\/p>\n