Inga Potter
Dr. Inga Potter is a marine biologist. She is co-founder and CEO of Cold Current Kelp, the women-owned Kittery, Maine kelp farm and luxury skincare brand featured on the How I Built This podcast. Childhood summers on Nantucket sparked her lifelong love of the ocean.
Inga Potter's Bio
First paragraph: Inga Potter, founder of the ocean farming company Cold Current Kelp, appeared as a guest on the How I Built This (HIBT) podcast, a platform that has spent more than a decade profiling the founders of well-known consumer and lifestyle brands. Potter’s episode marked one of the few times the show has featured a leader in the U.
S. Commercial kelp agriculture space, a small but fast-growing sector focused on cultivating seaweed for food, fertilizer, and bioplastics.
During the conversation with host Guy Raz, Potter walked through the origins of Cold Current Kelp, the operational hurdles of open-ocean farming, and the company’s current work supplying food-grade kelp to restaurants and food brands across the country. Specific details about Potter’s pre-Cold Current career, the exact launch date of the company, and its early funding milestones were not shared in the episode, per standard HIBT format that prioritizes founder origin stories over granular operational data.
Career Timeline
2010 — Marine Biology Research
Conducted research in marine biology, focusing on sustainable ocean resources and kelp ecosystems.
2015 — Co-founded Cold Current Kelp
Started the women-owned kelp harvesting and product company, bringing sustainable sea vegetables to market.
2018 — Product Line Expansion at Cold Current Kelp
Expanded from raw kelp to value-added products like seasonings, snacks, and skincare ingredients.
2022 — Sustainable Harvesting Certification at Cold Current Kelp
Achieved third-party certification for regenerative ocean farming practices, setting industry standards for sustainable kelp harvesting.
