Forests VC is combining regenerative land development, long-term thinking, and investment discipline to rethink what ownership in the natural world could mean.
Most investments are experienced as numbers on a screen.
A forest is different.
It grows. It changes with seasons. It provides habitat, protects soil, interacts with water and, when thoughtfully designed and managed, can become increasingly valuable over decades.
That combination of living systems and investment economics sits behind Forests VC, the natural capital development company co-founded by regenerative finance executive Ronny Castillo and business strategist Kimberly Lacayo.
Its proposition begins with land.
Forests VC aims to acquire or partner around undervalued properties and transform them into productive natural assets through its FINCA Framework: Acquire, Design, Grow, Measure, Optimize and Connect.
High-value regenerative forestry can provide biological growth with long-duration asset value. Agriculture can create nearer-term income. Strategic water management, biodiversity, processing, and circular systems can strengthen the property’s productivity and resilience.
The objective is not simply to plant trees.
It is to create living assets with real economics.
For Castillo, that distinction matters.
His career began in conventional finance before evolving toward regenerative finance and natural capital. Along the way, he has taught circular economics in Spain and built relationships across finance, business and social development.
“Capital is extraordinarily good at finding opportunity,” Castillo says. “The challenge is designing natural assets that deserve that capital.”
Some members of the broader group have been thinking in decades for much longer.
Attorney Tatiana “Tati” Salgado made a personal commitment decades ago to plant trees on degraded Costa Rican land. She followed through, creating the forest that years later helped bring several members of the Forests VC circle together.
“When I made that commitment, I wasn’t thinking about natural capital or investment,” Salgado says. “I wanted to restore degraded land and create something that could continue growing long after the work began. Decades later, I can walk through that forest and see what a long-term commitment can become.”
Forester Javier Esquivel has similarly spent decades working with tropical forests and silviculture.
Their experience brings an important counterweight to financial enthusiasm.
“A forest has yet to grow according to your financial model,” Esquivel says. “The biology has to work first.”
That philosophy extends beyond forestry.
A productive natural asset depends on soil, water, climate, biodiversity, infrastructure and people. Agronomist Adrian Vargas contributes agricultural systems expertise, while Costa Rican businessman and business partner Marco Zúñiga brings the commercial question that has become central to the venture:
“The question extends beyond what the land is worth today. It’s what the land could become.”
Technology may eventually make that transformation increasingly visible. Forests VC plans to incorporate remote sensing, ground-level monitoring and digital-twin capabilities to better understand how its natural assets evolve.
The company’s flagship Costa Rican development, Raíz de Oro, is intended to bring those ideas together through high-value regenerative forestry, agriculture and complementary productive systems.
But Forests VC’s longer-term ambition reaches beyond one property.
The company envisions a pipeline of natural assets and creative financial structures that could broaden participation in real-world assets that have historically been difficult for many investors to access directly.
That possibility changes the conversation.
An investment in productive land does not have to represent a choice between financial value and something tangible, regenerative, and enduring.
For Lacayo, that is part of its appeal.
“There is something extraordinary about creating value in an asset you can walk through, watch grow, and potentially leave better than you found it.”
Forests VC is betting that the next generation of real-world assets may include more of those opportunities.
Because sometimes long-term value isn’t simply held. It is grown.
