Michael Smith (Regeneration.VC): The future wins by being superior, not moral

0:00Before I spent my days thinking about supply chains, material, biodiversity, and climate, and launching a VC firm called Regeneration, I was a DJ. For nearly a decade, I traveled the world playing music and opening for artists like Diplo, Avicii, Snoop Dogg. The funny thing is, while I thought I was traveling through cities, I was actually traveling through systems. We don't have a consumption problem. We have a design problem. The real question for me became, can consumption become one of the greatest forces for positive change the world has ever seen? Most people think the greatest force for change is government.

0:42Others think it's philanthropy. But I came to a different conclusion. The most powerful distribution platform for impact ever created already exists. It's the supply chains of the world's largest corporates. The future doesn't win because it's moral. The future can win because it's superior. Then I realized something. Even circularity isn't the destination. Circularity says, how do we eliminate waste? Regeneration asks, how do we restore life? We are live. We are live. And five. We are live. Four. We are live. Three. We are live. Two. We are live. One.

1:32Before I spent my days thinking about supply chains, material, biodiversity, and climate, and launching a VC firm called Regeneration, I was a DJ. For nearly a decade, I traveled the world playing music and opening for artists like Diplo, Avicii, Snoop Dogg. All the time, I thought my job was simple, to help people forget about the world for a few hours, to create joy, to create connection, to create energy, and I loved it. The funny thing is, while I thought I was traveling through cities, I was actually traveling through systems. Different countries, different cultures, different languages. But eventually I started noticing the most beautiful places were starting to break down.

2:19The same products, packaging, the same waste, the same growing disconnect between humanity and natural systems that support us. And I became fascinated by a simple question. Where does everything come from? The shirt I'm wearing, the food I'm eating, the phone in my pocket, furniture in my hotel room, the materials that make modern life possible. And where were all these things going when we were done with them? The deeper I looked, the more I realized that every product has a hidden story. Behind every product is a supply chain. Behind every supply chain are factories. Behind every factory are materials.

2:59And I realized that behind every material is nature. Every product ultimately comes from the earth and eventually returns somewhere. Like in this linear system here, usually is waste. And that's when I had my first big realization. We don't have a consumption problem. We have a design problem. Eight billion people want better lives. They deserve them. Consumption isn't going away. The real question for me became, can consumption become one of the greatest forces for positive change the world has ever seen? Because if products can damage ecosystems, then products can help restore them. If supply chains can destroy biodiversity, why can't supply chains rebuild them?

3:47In our world, we call that regeneration. Not simply reducing harm, not simply slowing decline, but designing systems that leave the world better than we found them. Systems that restore ecosystems, rebuild biodiversity, and create value for people and nature at the same time.

4:09Most people think the greatest force for change is government. Others think it's philanthropy. But I came to a different conclusion. The most powerful distribution platform for impact ever created already exists. It's the supply chains of the world's largest corporates. Every day, billions of products move through companies like Ikea, Amazon, Sony, Henkel, among others. Their decisions shape what gets grown, what gets mined, what gets manufactured, what gets shipped, and ultimately what gets discarded. If we can redirect these supply chains, we can change the world, not gradually, exponentially.

4:50And that's why I started Regeneration VC, because we wanted, not because we wanted to fight business, but we wanted to reinvent it. Starting to ask questions like, what if waste became a feedstock? Our company, Gray Parrot, works with Suez, Biffa, Veolia, scanning tens of billions of items a year right now of waste streams. What if a product remembered how it was used? This is our company, Tulu. It works with Dyson and Karcher and Bosch. People share electronics and goods in their apartment buildings instead of having to buy them. And what if biology replaced toxic chemistry? Nature has all this amazing color in it.

5:32So our company, Colorifics, takes DNA from plants, animals, and makes dyes that replace harmful chemical dyes for apparel. And we did that with H &M. We did that with LVMH and Caring Group. So what if products are designed to come back? What if the economics are actually better than the systems they're replacing? And what we've learned is something incredibly important. What we're doing at Regeneration isn't charity. It's business. The better environmental solution can be the better economic solution. Less waste, more value, less extraction, more resilience, less pollution, more profit. The future doesn't win because it's moral.

6:14The future can win because it's superior. Then I realized something. Even circularity isn't the destination. Circularity helps us stop making things worse. Regeneration helps us to start make things better. Circularity says, how do we eliminate waste? Regeneration asks, how do we restore life? For years, we've talked about sustainability. And sustainability is important, but sustainability is fundamentally defensive. It asks, how do we maintain what remains? I think our ambition should be much larger. What if we created more nature, more forests, more wetlands, more coral reefs, more life? not simply preserving what we inherited, creating something even better.

7:07I call this vision supernature, a future where humanity becomes nature's greatest ally, a future where tech and nature are no longer opponents, a future where they become partners because tech doesn't have to be the enemy. Poor design is the enemy. The same human creativity that built global commerce can rebuild natural systems. The same innovation that created industrialization can create regeneration. And for the first time in human history, we have extraordinary tools. AI, robotics, synthetic biology, advanced materials, autonomous systems. Imagine AI protecting ecosystems. Robots removing waste from rivers and oceans.

7:50Supply chains becoming more restorative than extractive. Imagine humanity actively increasing biodiversity instead of reducing it. What if our ambition was to create 10 times more biodiversity by the end of this century, enabling new plants, animals, fungal networks than things we've never even imagined? Not because nature does the work alone, but because humanity finally starts working with it. That is supernature. Every generation gets a mission. Previous generations built railroads, built cities, built the internet, put humans on the moon. Our generation gets something bigger. We get to imagine Earth, reimagine Earth.

8:34We get to partner technology with nature and create a world more alive than the one that we inherited. Because the ultimate measure of our success won't be how much damage we prevented. It will be how much life we created. Thank you. Thank you.