How a Biologist Built a Startup to Stop Billions of Bird Deaths with Dominique Waddoup

Enter Dominique Waddinp.

For her, the issue became impossible to ignore when she was studying animal behavior and biology as a student.

There, a beautiful glass corridor was killing bird after bird.

Existing solutions might help, but many were too visible or aesthetically unappealing for building owners to accept.

So instead of continuing down the career path that she trained for, Dominique took a very different leap.

She became an entrepreneur on a mission to prevent such collisions.

Her company, BirdShades, is trying to make glass visible to birds while remaining nearly invisible to humans, turning a preventable animal tragedy into a design and material science problem that we can actually solve.

All right.

As always, here are your three key takeaways for this episode.

First, bird window collisions are a huge but overlooked animal welfare problem.

Glass kills staggeringly large numbers of birds because they see sky and trees and open space where we see a window.

Second, Dominique saw the problem firsthand and she decided to act.

When she was a university student, she thought she was gonna become an animal behaviorist, and instead she decided to become an entrepreneur to solve this problem that was troubling her so much at her university.

Third and finally, BirdShades, her company, turns biology into a practical business solution.

By making glass visible to birds but invisible to humans, the company is trying to solve a major human wildlife conflict through entrepreneurship rather than advocacy alone.

I'll let Dominique tell you her story herself.

Enter Dominique Waddinp.

For her, the issue became impossible to ignore when she was studying animal behavior and biology as a student.

There, a beautiful glass corridor was killing bird after bird.

Existing solutions might help, but many were too visible or aesthetically unappealing for building owners to accept.

So instead of continuing down the career path that she trained for, Dominique took a very different leap.

She became an entrepreneur on a mission to prevent such collisions.

Her company, BirdShades, is trying to make glass visible to birds while remaining nearly invisible to humans, turning a preventable animal tragedy into a design and material science problem that we can actually solve.

All right.

As always, here are your three key takeaways for this episode.

First, bird window collisions are a huge but overlooked animal welfare problem.

Glass kills staggeringly large numbers of birds because they see sky and trees and open space where we see a window.

Second, Dominique saw the problem firsthand and she decided to act.

When she was a university student, she thought she was gonna become an animal behaviorist, and instead she decided to become an entrepreneur to solve this problem that was troubling her so much at her university.

Third and finally, BirdShades, her company, turns biology into a practical business solution.

By making glass visible to birds but invisible to humans, the company is trying to solve a major human wildlife conflict through entrepreneurship rather than advocacy alone.

I'll let Dominique tell you her story herself.