Stefan PastineFounder

United States - San Francisco, California

STEFAN PASTINE
Chemistry & Materials Entrepreneur/Inventor

Structure dictates function. It's a fundamental tenet of biology, and it's the core belief that drives my involvement in start-ups built around meaningful discoveries in the deep-tech realms of chemistry and materials.

Given the central role of materials in both creating and enabling new technologies, the relative lack of innovation in this industry represents a significant unmet need. Venture capital deal flow for Seed or Series A investment is typically less than 3 per year. Not surprisingly, there have been relatively few examples of transformative technologies recently since seminal breakthroughs (e.g., chemically amplified photo-resists, carbon fiber, kevlar) with incremental advances remaining the status quo.

But the reality remains that the public or industry will continue to place demands on plastics and materials. Each one of these demands is an opportunity to ask an important question: Is the best solution to incrementally advance what exists today or would the creation of something fundamentally new be better suited to solve the problem tomorrow?

I'm always on the lookout for opportunities where Option B is in play. Re-thinking the design of the molecular blocks that dictate the function of any plastic or material is the best way to impart new functions into an existing class of materials or gain giant leaps in performance with new ones. There will always be a problem that will just not be best solved by what exists today.

This bottom-up approach to solving design challenges is nothing new, but Big Chemical's shift from its innovative roots over the past half-century often makes it feel that way. Today it's start-ups, not Big Chemical, that are the innovation engines driving new materials to do things today that were impossible yesterday.

My first start-up, Connora Technologies (acquired by Aditya Birla Chemicals in 2019), did just that by pioneering recyclable thermosets. Recyclamine® technology enables one of the most important classes of non-recyclable plastic to be recyclable.

My next start-up, Thintronics, brings the same bottom-up approach to re-invent circuitry platforms that data travels on in networks and devices. Our core technology is positioned to be pivotial aspect to enabling the digital economy after 5G by delivering drastic improvements in on-board data transfer rates.