Michael K Kaplan

The contact details on this record belong to Bioeconomy Capital, an early-stage venture firm founded around 2015 in Seattle to accelerate the commercialization of biological engineering. Its founding managing directors are Dr. Rob Carlson and Rik Wehbring. The firm's thesis draws on its managers' operational and product-development experience in synthetic biology — several decades combined — rather than a traditional finance pedigree.

Dr. Rob Carlson (whose email is the one listed) earned a PhD in Physics from Princeton (1997), was a research fellow at the Molecular Sciences Institute in Berkeley (1997–2002), then a senior scientist in Electrical Engineering at the University of Washington (2002–2007), and remains an Affiliate Professor in UW's Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering. He authored *Biology Is Technology: The Promise, Peril, and New Business of Engineering Life* (Harvard University Press, 2010), which won the PROSE award for best engineering/technology book and coined widely-cited "Carlson curves" on the falling cost of DNA synthesis/sequencing. He was named a 2024 Bloomberg Green Champion and has testified before the U.S. House Science Committee on the bioeconomy. Rik Wehbring serves as the firm's other Managing Director.

Bioeconomy Capital's first fund (2015/2017 vintage) deployed roughly $8.3M across six early-stage biotech companies. The firm and its principals have since increasingly oriented toward climate/sustainability, and Rob Carlson now operates under Planetary Technologies, described as identifying and building scalable technologies "to help the world mature beyond fossil fuels at the pace necessary to avoid unsustainable warming."

*No biographical record could be assembled for a "Michael K Kaplan" at this firm because none could be verified to exist there.*

• Invests at seed / early stage in companies commercializing biological engineering and synthetic biology, typically writing checks in the ~$100K–$5M range (≈$1.5M sweet spot).
• Value-add rooted in operational and product-development expertise in synthetic biology, not just capital — the partners position themselves as technical operators who have built products in the field.
• Sector emphasis on biomanufacturing, bio-based materials and chemicals, industrial biotech, and sustainability/climate; the successor vehicle (Planetary Technologies) foregrounds decarbonization and "maturing beyond fossil fuels."
• Stated firm mission is to "accelerate the biotechnology revolution" by backing founders turning biology into scalable technology.