Growing a Forest of Innovation - The Journey of Brainforest Cohort #5

The Brainforest Venture Program’s Cohort #5 brought together five visionary startups. Over the course of the program, this group of founders received far more than an ordinary accelerator experience… They embarked on an intensive journey of learning, collaboration, and transformation. We will retrace their journey, highlight the program’s value to the startups, the support they received, the pivotal growth moments for each founder, and why OnlyPlants emerged as the standout venture of the cohort.

🎥 Before we get into the stories, listen to what the founders had to say about journey and takeaways.

From seed to scale - The value of Brainforest’s Venture Program

Brainforest’s 5th Venture Program (Cohort #5) was designed to help early-stage startups thrive, and it delivered. For ten weeks, the cohort of five nature-based ventures engaged in hands-on support including: workshops, mentoring, web design, business model reviews and pitch training. The program provided an environment where “ideas met expertise, investors met founders, and new connections began to take root”. In other words, Brainforest offered exactly what young mission-driven companies need to reach the next level.

Key support pillars of the program included

• Mentorship: One-on-one guidance from experienced entrepreneurs and domain experts helped each founder navigate challenges and grow their leadership skills. Weekly sessions featured topics like founder storytelling, customer insights, and even founder wellbeing, led by seasoned mentors.

• Access to Networks: The cohort tapped into Brainforest’s global ecosystem of experts, investors, and partner organizations. This opened doors to concrete business advice, future pilot opportunities and strategic partnerships that would otherwise take years to cultivate.

• Business Model Refinement: Targeted clinics helped the teams stress-test and refine their business models. From market research deep-dives to sales and distribution strategy, founders iterated on their plans and adapted their models and vision.

• Strategic Guidance: Beyond tactics, Brainforest challenged the teams to clarify their 2030 vision and long-term impact goals, and then chart the strategic steps to get there. This guidance was tailored to each venture’s context, ensuring relevance whether the startup was piloting hardware in forests or launching a food product in local markets.

• Funding Readiness: Through pitch coaching and data room compilation, the startups became investment-ready. They spent days sharpening their pitches with a professional coach and received critical feedback from investors, business angels and mentors. By Pitch Day, every founder could articulate their value proposition and growth plan with confidence.

• Digital Support: Each venture also benefited from our in-house creative support. From website and logo creation to pitch deck refinement, branding systems, and social media templates, startups were equipped with the visual tools needed to tell their story and build trust with partners, customers, and investors.

Together, these forms of support created a fertile environment for growth. The following founder stories illustrate how each startup in the Spring 2025 cohort leveraged this support to transform their business.

Founder journeys: From challenges to breakthroughs

Each of the five startups began the program at an early stage, brimming with passion but facing crucial challenges. Through Brainforest’s venture program, they navigated obstacles, refined their models, and accelerated their progress. Here are some highlights from the cohort’s journey:

Aqua Viridi (Brazil) - Harnessing Amazonian microalgae for sustainable agro-industry.

Founder Fabiane Almeida entered the program after years of bootstrapping a science-driven venture in the heart of the Amazon. She had overcome immense personal and systemic barriers to launch Aqua Viridi, but now needed help attracting private investment and expanding her leadership toolkit. “I’ve come to realize that resilience alone is not enough to scale a science-based, climate-positive company in one of the most logistically and economically complex regions in the world,” Fabiane noted. Brainforest provided the “safe and empowering environment” she was looking for, along with strategic mentoring in fundraising, global partnerships, and team building. By the final weeks, Fabiane had sharpened Aqua Viridi’s growth strategy and gained the confidence to position her microalgae innovation on the global stage.

FlameSense (Chile) – Preventing wildfires with smart forest sensors.

For Maximiliano Militzer Umaran, an engineer dedicated to stopping catastrophic wildfires in the Amazon, Brainforest’s network was a game-changer. FlameSense’s innovation is a smart device network that detects ignition risks inside forests to halt fires before they start. Maximiliano came in with an ambitious vision – by 2030, to protect 10 million hectares of forest and prevent 30% of wildfires in high-risk areas. The program’s hands-on support helped him translate that vision into an actionable plan. Through coaching sessions on sales and business development, FlameSense refined its go-to-market approach for forestry agencies. Introductions to international advisors opened doors to pilot deployments beyond Chile. As Maximiliano put it, “The knowledge and connection[s] of the program [are] unmatchable. With Brainforest, we expect to reach the next step for FlameSense.” By Demo Day, he had not only improved his pitch but also secured ongoing dialogues with potential partners to scale FlameSense’s life-saving tech.

OnlyPlants (Kenya) – Alternative proteins from indigenous crops.

For Marie-Louise Wiegert, co-founder of OnlyPlants, the Brainforest experience was transformative. OnlyPlants is developing plant-based foods using African indigenous crops to boost nutrition and support smallholder farmers. Marie-Louise entered the program with early traction – her team was already selling plant-based sauces and nut butters in Kenyan retailers, and they had just formulated a novel Bambara groundnut milk in the lab. Her biggest hurdles were scaling up production and expanding market reach with limited resources. Through Brainforest’s mentorship, she tackled these challenges head-on. “We’re looking forward to joining the Brainforest program to scale our business and deliver nutritious, affordable food products that drive tangible biodiversity outcomes,” Marie-Louise said at the start, and by the end she had positioned OnlyPlants to do exactly that. The venture emerged with a clear growth strategy and was ready to seek investment to build out production.

Polliknow (Ireland) – Measuring biodiversity through insect monitoring.

Meg Brennan, a biologist-turned-entrepreneur, founded Polliknow to fill a critical data gap in ecosystem restoration: tracking insect pollinators. Polliknow’s AI-powered monitors deliver 20× more data at 63% lower cost than traditional manual sampling methods, providing real-time insights into pollinator health without harming insects. Joining Brainforest, Meg sought guidance to sharpen her business model and connect with the NatureTech community. The program matched her with mentors experienced in hardware startups and biodiversity metrics. With their help, she honed Polliknow’s B2B value proposition (leasing devices and software to conservation projects) and fine-tuned her pricing strategy. Just as importantly, she gained validation that her technology was on the right track. “Through Brainforest, we’re excited to collaborate with NatureTech experts to scale our impact and accelerate our growth,” Meg said, and that’s exactly what happened. By the end, Polliknow had lined up a field pilot with a restoration initiative and had a clear roadmap to scale across Europe.

RAMO (Portugal) – Accelerating nature-based carbon projects with geospatial AI.

Co-founders Miguel Correia and Matthew Jordan came to the program with deep technical expertise and a platform, RAMO, aimed at streamlining carbon credit projects. Their challenge was communicating a complex solution in a way that investors and landowners could easily grasp. Over 10 weeks, RAMO benefited from Brainforest’s strategic guidance on storytelling and business development. They shared that “the data room structuring and support on was definitely a major highlight. Another key point was having a Brainforest coach highly available to ask the right questions and driving us forward on the program.” By program’s end, Miguel and Matthew had significantly improved RAMO’s pitch clarity and honed in on a milestone-based growth plan. They can now concretely describe how RAMO will enable 20+ million hectares of verified nature-based carbon projects by 2030, unlocking billions for conservation efforts. Although RAMO’s founders did not have a public quote at kickoff, their journey in the cohort speaks for itself – they gained the investor perspective and strategic focus needed to turn an ambitious platform into a scalable, high-impact business.

OnlyPlants: Selected for investment

In a cohort full of ambitious nature-focused ventures, OnlyPlants stood out as the winner of the Spring 2025 Brainforest Venture Program. At the Final Pitch Event in Zürich, founder Marie-Louise captured the jury’s attention with a powerful combination of product promise, market relevance, and alignment with Brainforest’s mission.

Why OnlyPlants?

• Founder strength and vision: Marie-Louise’s clarity of purpose, entrepreneurial energy, and deep connection to her product and market made a strong impression throughout the program. As a solo founder, she demonstrated focus, resilience, and an ability to articulate both the problem and her solution with conviction.
  
  

• Clear market traction in East Africa: OnlyPlants is tapping into a growing demand for affordable, healthy plant-based products in the region. With products already on the shelves in Kenya and strong feedback on their upcoming Bambara milk, the venture shows signs of real local resonance and early market validation.
  
  

• Catalytic impact potential: OnlyPlants stood out for its ability to deliver both social and environmental impact. The use of a drought-resilient, nitrogen-fixing crop like Bambara nut links their product directly to regenerative agriculture and healthier soils. At the same time, the venture creates local value chains and economic opportunities (especially for women in rural areas) making it one of the most socially aligned startups of the cohort.
  
  

• Strategic fit with Brainforest’s capabilities: The venture’s early-stage needs are well matched with the Brainforest team’s experience supporting nature-based startups. From business model development to pilot structuring and early fundraising, we saw clear opportunities to actively contribute to OnlyPlants’ next phase.

OnlyPlants was selected as the cohort’s winner and received a seed investment from Brainforest to help bring its Bambara milk to market and grow its operations in East Africa. This marks Brainforest’s first investment in an Africa-based venture, and an exciting step forward in expanding our global support for entrepreneurs driving positive change for nature and communities.

Conclusion: Cultivating growth and impact

From the Amazon to Africa, from Europe to Latin America, Brainforest’s 5th Venture Program Cohort proved that, with the right support, early-stage startups can leap forward in a short time. The program provided more than workshops and pitch decks… It built a community where founders learned from each other’s experiences, celebrated each other’s wins, and grew together. The final Pitch Event was a high-energy culmination of this journey, with 80+ attendees (online and offline) witnessing the transformation of these ventures.

For many founders, the experience was transformative. The mentorship and strategic guidance filled critical gaps, the investor feedback sharpened their focus, and the global connections will continue to open doors well beyond the program’s end.

OnlyPlants may have walked away as the winner for this round (complete with new investment and bragging rights) but every member of the cohort is a winner in their own right. Aqua Viridi now strides forward with a stronger leadership approach and investor network to help scale climate-positive tech in the Amazon. FlameSense is a step closer to safeguarding millions of hectares of forest with newfound partners and knowledge. Polliknow has the expertise and connections to deploy its biodiversity monitors where they’re needed most. RAMO has clarity on how to accelerate carbon projects at scale. And OnlyPlants is set to bring a truly sustainable food innovation to market, embodying the program’s ideals of entrepreneurship aligned with nature.

These startups entered as passionate seedlings and left as growth-stage saplings ready to take on the world’s environmental challenges. The narrative of this cohort: their struggles, breakthroughs, and triumphs… will surely inspire future entrepreneurs and investors alike.

Let’s keep growing, together. 🌱