Hype’s Natural Predator: The Due Diligence Wolfpack howls on the ABLC Floor

Comedy, Chemistry, and the Art of Realism at ABLC

“There is a beautiful valley, where companies live on hype, all you need is a dream and a Series A. This…is not that place.”

Laughter ripples through the crowd and builds as the opening credits roll: animated wolves skiing while talking on the phone, flying from assault helicopters, and chasing lambs through a refinery, chuckling all the way. This is the bioeconomy’s fabled pack—predators of hype, cant, and pettifoggery; protectors of every corner where real value still hides. It must be ABLC, because here comes the Due Diligence Wolfpack.

Onstage, Wolf-wrangler Jim Lane explains with a wink that the ten Due Diligence Wolves will take mere human form for the session—then gestures toward them as they answer with an entirely unscripted, perfectly synchronized howl.

They’re engineers, chemists, financiers, and company founders, yet in this moment they look less like a review board and more like a cast of late-night television: half talk show, half tribunal. The crowd knows the rhythm by heart—there will be jokes, jabs, a little self-immolation. And then, somewhere between the laughter, the truth will come out.

Because that’s the magic of the Wolfpack. The humor isn’t a mask for the serious work; it’s the solvent that lets serious thinking flow. Within minutes they’ll be deconstructing the economics of carbon capture or the moral geometry of renewable natural gas, but for now the audience just laughs—unaware they’re about to get a master class in discernment disguised as stand-up.

Flashback: Green Room, ABLC

Before the howl, there’s always the hum. Minutes before the session starts, the wolves prowl the green room—each in their own small orbit of obsession.

Sam Nejame leans against a poster, speaking in low tones into his phone. At first it sounds like “Gekko, Gekko, Gekko,” until you realize it’s “Ginkgo.” He’s not whispering stock tips; he’s describing biology as a platform, the way Atlas might describe gravity.

Dave Collings appears to be on three phones at once, each connected to a different time zone. He conducts some invisible orchestra of throughput and logistics, nodding to himself as if fluid dynamics were negotiable.

Across the room, James Iademarco turns a paper napkin into a coin and back again—an improvised magic trick meant to calm nerves. Henna Poikolainen, impossibly quick, spots the sleight before the coin vanishes and laughs, a streak of Finnish sunlight cutting through the caffeine haze.

Steve Weiss is opening a laptop with one hand and a bottle with the other, arranging what looks suspiciously like a micro-wine tasting. He holds the glass to the light. “Fermentation,” he murmurs, “is just wine pretending to be chemistry.”

Meanwhile, Steve Slome performs a reverse Superman—buttoning a Clark Kent shirt over a hidden Superman tee, muttering last-minute numbers under his breath like prayers for market sanity.

The door opens. The murmur becomes a howl. The wolves are called to stage.

The Chemist’s Rule

The laughter peaks, then steadies. The lights rise just enough to catch the first speaker adjusting his mic. The subject is eFuels and turns to carbon capture. 

As the laughter subsides, Wolf Paul Bryan, voice steady, tone suddenly more intimate.

“You know,” he says, “the right number of miracles for an entrepreneur is one. And if you don’t have one miracle, you’re really not doing anything new. But if you have more than one miracle… that’s a combinatorial increase in the risk.”

It lands perfectly — the laughter softens, heads nod. He’s still funny, but now he’s teaching the hardest lesson of all: optimism isn’t courage without restraint, it’s courage disciplined by math.

David Dodds looks out at the room—the crowd still smiling, still expecting another gag—and begins quietly.

“I’m a chemist,” he says. “I count carbon atoms.”

At first, there’s laughter—nervous, indulgent—but then silence. Dodds isn’t joking. He’s reminding everyone of the rules. He sketches the thermodynamics of carbon capture like a crime scene: flue gas at ten percent CO₂, amine extraction at 0.4 MWh per ton, a parasitic load nearing forty percent.

“It’s not that we can’t do it,” he says. “It’s that it costs a quarter of the energy the plant makes to clean up after itself. I’m not against it. I’m just against bad accounting.” The laughter that follows is smaller, thoughtful. A scientist has just made thermodynamics feel like drama.

Accounting and Its Discontents

Michele Rubino leans forward, smiling the way a good debater does before stepping into traffic.

“David’s right about the math,” he says, “but sustainability is complicated. If there’s an avoided emission, it should be counted.”

Dodds adjusts his glasses. “There’s no such thing as a negative carbon atom.”

The crowd howls. From the analyst’s perch, Steve Slome adds the footnote every investor dreads but secretly loves: “Everything’s financeable,” he says, “if you remove the risk.” The laughter snaps like static—smart, self-aware, slightly pained.

The View from Helsinki

Henna Poikolainen clears her throat.

“ESAF divides opinions,” she says. “Some think it’s crazy. I’m one of those who doesn’t.”

She lays out Europe’s math with Nordic calm:

“Miss your ESAF target, pay seventeen thousand euros per ton. By 2030, twenty-five thousand. That’s not a theory—that’s a business case.”

Someone mutters, “That’s a lot of jet fuel to cry over.” The laughter ripples. Then the counterpoint comes:

“It all works if you can get a government to pay for everything. And if you can turn your OPEX into CAPEX. And if you’re wondering who’d do that—China would.”

The room bursts. But beneath the laughter lies the lesson: dream big, calculate precisely. Henna smiles, unbothered. “Tomorrow always starts with someone getting laughed at today.”

Systems and Sleight of Hand

Between panels, James Iademarco offers a small conjuring act of his own. He folds a note card, unfolds it, and somehow it reads like strategy.

“Technology doesn’t fail because it’s wrong,” he says. “It fails because it’s lonely. You need policy, markets, and people moving in rhythm—or you’re just the right answer in the wrong decade.”

A coin disappears. The point remains.

The Polymer Paradox

A slide flashes—bright green, a dolphin mid-leap, a bottle bobbing beside it. Paul Bryan steps forward, the rare chemist who makes polyesters sound like stand-up.

“We can’t keep all plastics out of the environment,” he says. “So let’s make them want to leave politely.” He traces a line from tire dust to laundry lint to microfibers unseen until they aren’t.

“If we don’t want these fragments to last forever,” he says, “then we need polymers that know when to say goodbye. Someone calls out, “Break-up chemistry,” and the crowd chuckles.

“People worry biodegradable plastics will start decomposing too soon,” Bryan continues. “But think about your cereal box.

Cardboard is biodegradable. Does it biodegrade in your kitchen cabinet? If it does, you have a problem with your cabinet.” Laughter, full and grateful. The line works as both wit and warning—the laws of chemistry applied to hope.

Ground Truth

Steve Weiss follows, holding a stuffed wolf pup aloft.

“A wolf in training,” he says. “A reminder that hype grows up fast—and when it does, it eats capital.”

The crowd cracks up — a good laugh, the generous kind that comes after two hours of shared intelligence.
Then he flips to a slide stacked with production numbers and real factories: 300,000 tons of licensed BDO capacity, biobased, profitable, repeatable.

“That’s not theory,” Weiss says. “That’s steel, valves, and payroll.”

It’s an elegant feint — he’s still funny, but the data has claws.
He knows the room loves big visions, yet he reminds them that every miracle needs a balance sheet.

From his corner of the table, David Dodds returns serve with a grin:

“Fuels are the dog,” he says. “Chemicals are the tail. In this game, you chase the dog.” The line lands with a familiar ripple of laughter — part approval, part nervous truth. Even the wolves laugh at the paradox: everyone wants to save the world, but someone has to make the propylene glycol first.

From the wings, Dave Collings adds dryly, phone still in hand: “The pipes don’t care about optimism—they care about throughput.”

The audience laughs, then writes that one down.

The Soil Beneath the Humor

Finally, Joel Stone stands before a slide from The Lorax. The villain sings, “Let it die.” Stone looks up.

“That’s what happens when we forget where carbon belongs,” he says. “If we let the soil die, we lose everything we’re trying to save.”

No punchline. Just the truth, hanging there.

The Last Lesson

By the time moderator Jim Lane steps forward to close, the tone has settled into something rare: reflective, clear, almost tender. The wolves have howled, joked, sparred, and taught—and yet the line that lingers isn’t the gag about cardboard or carbon. Let’s revisit Bryan’s Law.

“The right number of miracles for an entrepreneur is one.” At the time, it drew laughter—because it’s funny, and because it’s true. But as the crowd drifts toward flights and deadlines, the line keeps echoing.

There are two ways to hear it. One, as a caution: one miracle is plenty; don’t bet the farm on two. But there’s another tone in it—a quieter one, almost a plea. The hope that somewhere, someone will bring forward the miracle that makes the math and the mission both work out.

Because the wolves, for all their howls and humor, are believers too. Their rigor isn’t cynicism; it’s faith disciplined by reason. They laugh because they care, and because hope without laughter can’t last.

So maybe that’s the bioeconomy’s creed in the end: One miracle. Real, earned, and enough.