It’s a Great Time to be a Startup!

I’ve just come from a session at ECC9 on Making Chemistry Greener: The Next 25 Years. Awesome panel session. Thank you to the conference organisers for putting this discussion together and for the American Chemical Society for hosting.

Thank you to Chao-Jun Li, Iseult Lynch, Peter Licence and Walter Leitner for offering expertise and hope in this session.

What I heard (and I freely admit my bias) is that it’s a great time to build a startup in green chemistry. Startups are agile and can play in the small spaces that are inaccessible for the BASFs or the Totals of the world. We have a growing population that needs more growth to support it. The new growth we’re seeing now, and will see more of in future, is largely derived from renewable energy and new products being brought to market are “greener” than they have been in the past. But we’re at a tipping point, and the drivers are all economic. Why would a large company decommission their established infrastructure, that they’re making good return on, to cannibalise their own products and bring new, greener product to market? Add to the mix that large players are grappling with risk transfer, so if they decommission plant and move towards a greener future, what do they do with their liability, and how do they account for identified exposures that aren’t covered by their captives?

If we frame the argument carefully and correctly, we have the ability to make the changes required, but it’s going to cost us, and we as global citizens are going to have to pay.

We can try to use a systems approach and employ multidisciplinary teams to identify and fill key gaps, but every individuals contribution is important.

Walter Leitner left us with a quote from Jane Goodall that I want to copy here:

“What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make”

For me, the answer is that I want to build simple tools that help companies, organisations and individuals reduce chemical harm. That is the core driver of the future I want to contribute to. And that’s why I agree that it’s a great time to be a startup!