Every year, roughly a billion birds die from flying into glass windows and buildings. The problem is massive, well-documented, and largely invisible to the public.
In this episode of Business For Good, Paul Shapiro talks with Dominique Waddoup, CEO and Founder of BirdShades, about how she went from studying giant honeybee behavior in Nepal to building a company that makes glass visible to birds without changing the way it looks to humans.
Dominique explains how Bird Shades developed a retrofit window film that uses UV-reflective patterns birds can see but people cannot. The product applies to existing glass on homes and commercial buildings, eliminating the need to replace windows entirely. The conversation covers why birds collide with glass in the first place, how bird vision differs from human vision, and why the company is now pursuing licensing models to embed its technology in other window-film products.
Paul and Dominique also explore why bird-window collisions remain an underrecognized conservation issue despite killing far more birds than hunting, how emerging building ordinances in the US, Canada, and Europe are beginning to create regulatory demand, and what it took for a scientist with no business background to build a hardware startup from scratch.
Things You Will Learn:
Why bird-window collisions kill roughly a billion birds per year, far exceeding losses from hunting.
How Bird Shades created a window film that is transparent to humans but highly visible to birds using UV-reflective patterns.
Why retrofit solutions for existing buildings could have a greater near-term impact than bird-safe glass in new construction.
How building ordinances in cities like New York and Washington, DC, are creating regulatory demand for bird-safe products.
What it took for a trained animal biologist with no business experience to build and scale a hardware startup.
Tools & Frameworks Covered:
UV-Reflective Window Film: A retrofit product that applies patterns visible to birds but transparent to humans, leveraging the broader color spectrum that most bird species can perceive.
Licensing as a Scaling Model: Rather than manufacturing and distributing the end product alone, embedding patented bird-safe technology into existing window film product lines through licensing partnerships.
Scientist-to-Entrepreneur Pipeline: Using accelerator programs like Rebel Bio (IndieBio/SOSV) to help scientists shift from data-heavy academic communication to investor-ready business presentations and commercial thinking.
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