We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Dillon Baxter. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Dillon below.

Dillon, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What do you think Corporate America gets wrong in your industry? Any stories or anecdotes that illustrate why this matters?

Most people are aware of the issue with plastic pollution, but few are aware of real ways to solve it. Recycling has been touted as a solution, but less than 9% of all plastic has been recycled and it is not a material that can be recycled effectively at scale. A lot of people think plastic is like glass or aluminum where it can be recycled over and over, but this isn’t true, plastic can only be recycled once or twice before it becomes too weak to use. So the best case scenario for recycling is using a lot of energy to recycle a plastic product once or twice, and it just ends up in a landfill after that, so very little is accomplished environmentally. There needs to be more focus on companies like PlantSwitch that are using plants instead of petroleum to make plastic, as this is the only true solution to the plastic crisis.

Dillon, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

At PlantSwitch we make plastic from plants instead of petroleum. Our first two products, biodegradable straws and cutlery, function like plastic but are made from agave waste and degrade in landfills. We realized that there was a huge demand for plastic alternatives, but the existing alternatives like paper straws were objectively terrible. We will be launching many more products in the near future with the same quality that has made our first two product lines so popular.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

We started with a small loan from my co-founder’s family to fund our initial inventory and website. About 6 months later, we got a 100k line of credit from Keystone Bank that funded our operations for another year. We finally raised our first equity round about a year and a half in. We were able to raise $3.25M which would not have been possible if we didn’t give ourselves time to get all the traction that we did.

Any advice for managing a team?

Working for a start-up is hard, and it isn’t for everyone. It can be pretty high-stress at times, and it requires people to wear a lot of different hats. I try to treat everyone the way I would want to be treated and reward good performance with good compensation. Also, everyone has different working styles, so as long as the work gets done well and on-time, I am pretty open to letting employees travel, WFH when needed, wear casual clothes, etc.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.plantswitch.com
• Instagram: plant_switch
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/68184388/admin/