Ryan Bethencourt, Founder of Wild Earth Inc.
Ryan Bethencourt is CEO of Wild Earth, Inc focused on the future of food for companion animals and a Partner at Babel Ventures investing in Seed and Series A Biotech companies. Ryan is one of the 21st century’s most prolific biotech investors and entrepreneurs through his work funding and building 70+ biotech companies over the last decade.
He previously co-founded and built IndieBio, headed up of life sciences at the XPRIZE Foundation, was formerly the founding CEO of Berkeley Biolabs and spent a decade developing human therapeutics with large companies like Pfizer, Merck, Amgen and Genentech. His work and investments at the interface of science and business have been covered globally.
Some of the more notable and impactful companies Ryan has funded and helped build include, Future of Food (Ava Labs, New Wave Foods, Memphis Meats, Clara Foods, Geltor, Miraculex, Finless Foods, The NotCo, SugarLogix), Medicine (Orphidia,SyntheX, QIDNI labs, Neuroqore, Ravata, Venomyx Therapeutics, Scaled Biolabs, GEA enzymes, Mendel.ai, Bioaesthetics, DNAlite,Prellis Biologics, QuantumCyte), Biological Computation (Koniku, Catalog Technologies), Consumer Biotech (NERD Skincare, Amino labs, Mycoworks, Animal Biome), Environmental (Pembient, Bioinspira, UBA Biologics)
Ryan has a BSc degree in Biological Sciences (Molecular Genetics) from Warwick University, a joint Masters in Bioscience Enterprise (MBE) from Cambridge University and MIT. He’s also been a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Candidate at the Center for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Edinburgh before pivoting to build startups.