Gaurab Chakrabarti and Sean Hunt are the Co-founders of Solugen, which replaces petroleum based products with plant-derived substitutes without sacrificing affordability or performance. They met playing poker in college, kickstarted the company with $10k from an MIT pitch competition, and have since scaled the business to over nine-figures in revenue.

Solugen has raised over $642 million from investors like Fifty Years, Lowercarbon Capital, Founders Fund, Refactor Capital, and Cantos Ventures.

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Topics discussed:

How the chemicals industry touches 25% of US GDP
Why the industry is like real estate: fragmented and focused on asset utilization
The reason chemicals companies have terrible NPS scores
How Solugen’s manufacturing process converts plants and C02 into chemicals
Meeting over a game of poker while getting their PhD’s
Winning $10k from an MIT pitch competition to capture 10% of the float spa market in Dallas, Texas
Why the first wave of Cleantech startup fail
Why logistics and supply chain are the biggest problems in Chemicals
Their framework for thinking big, but taking little steps to get there
Running their homemade metal catalyst reactor at YC Demo Day
Launching, scaling, and selling a CPG wipes company to prove their chemicals worked
Building their first factory (the BioForge) on the site of an exploded wax distillery
Their strategy for getting large, multinational companies to try their products

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Referenced:

YC Application video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tItLPnLIH4o
Solugen - The First Carbon Negative Molecule Factory: https://jeffburke.substack.com/p/solugen-the-first-carbon-negative
Solugen - The Century of Biology: https://centuryofbio.com/p/solugen

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Where to find Gaurab:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/gaurabc
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gaurabchakrabarti

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Where to find Sean:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/TungstenSeanide
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/huntsean

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Where to find Turner:

Newsletter: https://www.thespl.it
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak

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Ian Stewart, “Calculating the Cosmos: How Mathematics Unveils the Universe” (Basic Books, 2016)