At Marble, we’re creating breakthrough solutions to address hard-to-abate emissions, as available technologies only get us halfway. As Founder-in-Residence, you’ll work on "hard climate problems" with us, and build ventures with massive impact potential.

Slashing Enteric Methane

Methane is a very special greenhouse gas. Although it remains only 10 years in the atmosphere, its warming impact is 85x as high as CO2 on a 20-year time scale. Overall, it accounts for a third of the global temperature increase since the industrial revolution.
Rapid methane abatement is the biggest opportunity to mitigate near-term warming and prevent the triggering of dangerous climate tipping points. Enteric fermentation alone accounts from 30% of anthropogenic methane and 10% of greenhouse gas emissions. This digestive process occurs in the rumen, the stomach of ruminant animals (cattle, sheep, goats).

Various mitigation strategies have been proposed. Feed additives like 3NOP, bromoform, and seaweed can partially tackle enteric methane in feedlots, about 10% of cattle population. Capture systems could be a useful yet marginal solution. Methanogen vaccines would be transformative, but commensal microbes are proving insanely hard to deactivate. Today no solution combines very high (>80%) abatement rate, cost effectiveness, scaleability across geographies and agricultural systems, and safety, let alone positive increases on animal productivity. We are exploring novel approaches which could tick all these boxes.

The Opportunity

We believe that microbiome interventions could stabilise the rumen in a state that does not emit methane in the first place. Hydrogen redistribution could provide the added benefit of increased animal productivity, but other levers could also be explored, such as methanotrophs, anaerobic fungi, antimicrobial peptides, and microbial cocktails.

Delivery mechanisms would have to be carefully considered to optimise costs, ease of delivery, regulatory approval and compatibility with farmer practices. We are looking for a Founder in Residence to join our next cohort starting March 2024, explore these approaches further and create the most scaleable company to slash enteric methane.

Skills & Profile

We are looking for an entrepreneurial scientist with PhD-level technical expertise related to the rumen microbiome (or microbial ecology more generally). Examples of relevant backgrounds:

• Animal nutrition / behaviour: ruminant metabolism, nutrient uptake, nutrient microbiome colonisation. Prior experience in manipulating rumen methane production is ideal.
• OR Microbiome engineering / microbial ecology: microbiome analysis, 16s rRNA amplicon sequencing, metabolomics, proteomics and related, ideally in animal or human microbiome.
• OR Biotech startup founder / operator with exposure to any of the above

Nice to have: exposure working with cattle farmers, R&D trials with cattle, navigating regulatory processes around animal farming and/or pharma. We encourage you to apply even if you don’t feel you meet all requirements. Above all, we value intelligence, creativity and Founder Potential. Especially if you recognise yourself below:

• You can’t wait to start your own company (or your next one)
• You are a pragmatic optimist on a mission to tackle climate change
• You are outcome focused and action oriented - you make things happen
• You are a great communicator - you can convince others to follow you
• You love to break down ambitious goals into actionable milestones
• You understand that innovation starts with people - not ideas

What We Offer

As a Founder-in-Residence, you will join stellar individuals who also believe in the need for deeptech solutions to solve hard climate problems. Together, we would be scoping high potential approaches before converging on the most promising one and finding your future co-founders. Among other things, we offer:

• A €2,500 monthly allowance during your participation in the programme
• A €250,000 pre-seed investment on startup creation if you’re successful. You and your team will own 80% of the company at pre-seed.
• Full-stack support in our venture creation program
• Seed Fundraising support after the program. Introductions to the best seed investors from our network and help with term sheet negotiation
• Founder Visa sponsorship if you wish to relocate to France. Remote participation is possible, preferably from Europe and with regular in-person meetings.

We will make sure you have access to:

• Mentorship and guidance at every step of the way.
• Hands on support across technology and market research, landing interviews with experts and customers, techno economics, roadmap and scale up strategy, IP strategy, team building, advisor sourcing, and more.
• Access to an unparalleled network across science, industry, talent, investors, mentors, climate tech founders, curated vendors and suppliers
• Access to our research insights, knowledge base and resources
• Weekly check-ins, work sessions in our Paris HQ (or remote) and continuous peer learning with other programme participants