#StartupsEverywhere: Ashwin Datta, Co-Founder & CEO, Instinct
This profile is part of #StartupsEverywhere, an ongoing series highlighting startup leaders in ecosystems across the country. This interview has been edited for length, content, and clarity.
Surveying & Satellites Saving Endangered Species
Instinct is a wildlife-surveying tech company based in Oregon. Founded by Ashwin Datta, the company focuses on conservation natural resource management by providing data on species inhabiting the forests using an automated real-time, edge-computing, satellite-enabled bioacoustic monitoring device. We sat down with Ashwin to discuss his journey, the current challenges with trade, their experience with patents, and broadband accessibility.
What led you to found Instinct?
I grew up near Portland, Oregon, where timber harvesting is a major extractive industry, and that environment sparked my interest in forestry, habitat restoration, and conservation. While majoring in environmental engineering, I developed the idea for a new wildfire-detection technology involving ground-based sensors. At the time, newer vision-based solutions like satellite imagery and cameras were just emerging, and weren’t fast enough to catch fires early. Satellites had low resolution and slow latencies, and by the time smoke or heat signatures are visible from space or a far away camera, a fire may have already grown massive. In practice, that lag meant thousands of trees could be lost before anyone even knew a fire had started, putting nearby communities at risk, hurting local economies, and destroying local ecosystems.
Motivated to close that gap, my team and I started building ground-based sensors designed to detect fires earlier and more accurately. But by the time we were preparing to launch, satellite and camera technology had made a huge leap forward, reducing the need for our original product. Around that time, we were introduced to the wildlife-surveying field, which involved far more manual and underdeveloped processes than wildfire detection. After learning how much inefficiency and ecological harm the current system created, we decided to pivot and create a solution. It turned out to be the right call: not only was the need greater, but the impact of improving wildlife monitoring was even more meaningful than we expected.
Can you tell us what Instinct does?
Instinct is a wildlife monitoring technology company that gives land management industries, renewable energy projects, forest and park services, nature conservancies, researchers and other similar groups more real-time data on the species living in their forests without the slow, manual surveying process that’s standard today. Traditionally, wildlife surveys require manual visits to the site which are highly labor-intensive and error-prone. Audio is played out of a speaker to elicit reply vocalizations from target species, making manual surveys highly disruptive for the very species that need to be protected. Species prefer to remain hidden in case they encounter new predators, but by doing expeditions in these remote forests for weeks, humans either scare the species away or expose them to predators.
Over the past two decades, recording devices have presented the opportunity for passive surveying - putting out recorders for six weeks, collecting them, and then processing and interpreting the audio. For years, that meant college students sitting in a basement and manually listening to recordings for hours a day, a tedious process which introduces further error. The advent of AI algorithms which detect species vocalizations in the audio has improved the potential for passive surveying, but the processing workflow is still tedious, and species detections are only known after the processing work is finished. The lack of real-time data limits the feasibility and scalability of passive surveying, so manual active surveys are still used in the vast majority of wildlife surveys in the United States.
Our solution is the Automated Surveying Unit (ASU), a device designed to do the entire acoustic surveying process from start to finish. Like existing recorders, it captures audio of endangered species. But instead of waiting months to retrieve the data and analyze it, the ASU processes the audio directly on the device in the forest, immediately after it’s recorded. After processing the audio, the ASU transmits detection results via satellite so they can be viewed through Instinct’s web and mobile applications less than half an hour after recording is complete. We offer a faster, more scalable, and less disruptive way to survey endangered species like the Northern Spotted Owl. Our goal is simple: real-time wildlife data that helps protect endangered species while giving land managers, renewable energy industries and governments the information they need to plan projects responsibly.
How has AI streamlined and accelerated audio processing?
We use AI systems primarily for audio processing. Our work began with a U.S. Forest Service open-source algorithm called PNW-Cnet. PNW-Cnet is designed for species identification in the Pacific Northwest, and we run it on our system.
As we expand our reach beyond the Pacific Northwest, we have incorporated another model, BirdNET, which can identify approximately 6,500 sounds from species around the world. Using BirdNET enables us to deploy our product nearly anywhere in the world, and makes the ASU more powerful. Users can choose between algorithms and even schedule recordings to run different models at different times, and as new versions of algorithms become available, users can install them onto their ASU devices.
It has been very easy to work with PNW-Cnet as it’s open-source and doesn’t require some of the quarterly reporting, documentation, and revenue-share that some other developers require if you use their model in even a part of your product. As a hardware-focused startup, these kinds of requirements can be very difficult to accommodate.
How has the recent unpredictability around trade affected your production goals?
Trade has honestly become one of the biggest headaches I deal with. With the way tariffs fluctuate now, it feels like every time I place an order I’m spinning a wheel and just waiting to see what number it lands on. Sometimes a part that should cost $90 suddenly becomes $180 overnight because a new tariff kicked in. I never really know what I’ll be charged until the shipment lands, and for a small startup operating on tight margins, that makes planning incredibly difficult.
Because rules shift so quickly, I’ve had components or devices get held up, delayed, or even sent back simply because I wasn’t able to authorize customs and tariff payments when they were entering the U.S. I’ve tried to adapt by placing orders during temporary tariff dips, stockpiling when I can, and not raising prices even when production costs jump, but the truth is that small companies like mine feel the volatility of trade policy in a much more direct and painful way.
What challenges have you faced navigating patent laws?
The bioacoustics technology sector is relatively small, and most companies in the space are familiar with one another. Right now, we don’t have any patents on the device, and that’s been a very intentional choice. For a small startup like ours, patents are incredibly expensive, and our product is still evolving so quickly that it honestly wouldn’t make sense to lock anything in. We’re on our third version in just a couple of years. If we had patented the first one, it would already be outdated, and we would’ve spent time and money into protecting some aspects and technologies we no longer use.
We’re also mindful of how intellectual property can be used within a small niche industry like bioacoustics hardware. There was recently a large competitor that issued a cease-and-desist letter to a much smaller company based on overly broad patent claims. In the end, the smaller company was able to appeal against these patent claims and prevail, so the case never advanced to court. This demonstrated how the threat of legal action alone can create significant pressure for startups that lack the resources to defend themselves. Startups often don’t have the team, bandwidth and time to be dealing with patent trolls and long, costly legal disputes.
How do you approach broadband given the connectivity needs and remote locations of your devices?
Connectivity is one of the biggest technical constraints in this space. Right now, our ASU devices rely entirely on satellite connectivity, which is realistically the only viable option in much of the Western U.S. where vast swaths of land often lack any cellular service or infrastructure.
But low-bandwidth satellite systems come with limitations. We can only send metadata and not the full audio. Customers in places with robust cellular networks, like on the East Coast and in Europe, keep asking the same question: “Why can’t you just send me the raw audio? I have 5G LTE here.” A lot of people don’t fully trust the algorithms yet. They want to hear a short clip themselves to verify detections. So we’re looking at building a cellular version of the ASU for regions with strong mobile networks to address the gaps in Internet connectivity. Cellular will let us push audio clips, not just detections, and give people the ability to double-check what the AI flags. Furthermore, cellular connectivity is more cost-effective and enables two-way communication. This unlocks more capabilities for our product that we simply cannot access with the economical satellite connectivity we currently use. Furthermore, cellular connectivity is more cost-effective and enables two-way communication. This unlocks more capabilities for our product that we simply cannot access with the economical satellite connectivity we currently use.
Are there local or sector-specific challenges for startups that policymakers should know about?
Oregon is underserved when it comes to venture capital. Even though my own funding process went relatively smoothly, it’s clear that being based here comes with challenges. Oregon has unequal access to broader funding networks and resources that founders in larger hubs like the Bay Area, New York or Boston take for granted. On top of that, climatetech funding is especially difficult to come by in this country. Even though the U.S. has a lot of startup capital overall, very little of it goes to climate-focused startups, with the majority flowing to sectors like defense, pharma, and fintech. That makes it tough for hardware-heavy environmental companies like ours to compete, despite the urgency and impact of our work.
What are your future goals for Instinct?
My main goal with Instinct has always been to protect our forests and local ecosystems. Surveying endangered species has historically been tedious and difficult, which has created tensions between conservation and business interests, especially renewable energy projects. I want to change that dynamic and show that it’s possible to preserve endangered species without compromising renewable energy transition and economic activity. The more we know about where animals are and how they use their habitats, the better we can protect them.
As we continue to grow, it would also be beneficial for environmental startups for the U.S. to adopt more consistent environmental regulations like in Europe. Frequent changes in environmental policy create uncertainty for long-term planning, since regulatory shifts can significantly affect the demand for the industry.
Overall, I hope to expand Instinct’s work internationally by securing projects and delivering ASU devices to new users around the world. This would allow us to broaden our impact while also operating in regions where environmental regulations tend to be more consistent.
All of the information in this profile was accurate at the date and time of publication.
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