Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Philip Pienkos. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Philip, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

A big part of my job at NREL was to develop multiproduct biorefinery concepts for algae biomass. We were interested in algae for biofuels but the economics just don’t work. It was frustrating because the DOE didn’t show much interest in any of the potential bioproducts that we looked at. Then one day at a conference, a colleague from San Diego who was an avid surfer, showed up with two surfboards. They were made from polyurethane produced from algae oil. These captured great interest among the attendees and great envy from many of us who wanted to be cool too. We started looking at algae polyurethane and saw that, as a coproduct, it could provide enough revenue to make algae biofuels economically viable. I wasn’t that interested in simply doing a copycat project but wasn’t sure how to do something truly different. The next time I was in San Diego, I met up with the surfing scientist and he told me that getting the surfboards made was actually more difficult than he expected because production of polyurethane surfboards had moved away from the US due to the toxicity of one of the monomers, isocyanate. That lit the lightbulb for me and I told my team members I wanted to be able to make algae polyurethanes but without isocyanates. A brilliant chemical engineer on my team came up with the chemistry needed to accomplish that and we began to develop the idea. After a couple of years, we began to interest corporate partners such as Patagonia, Algix, and TempurSealy, and I realized that this was an idea the world needed. I began to plan my retirement from NREL and start a company to commercialize the technology, though my first decision was to drop the algae component and work with readily available commodity oils like linseed oil. This remains the most exciting thing I have worked on in nearly 40 years in the business.

Philip, 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?

I was born in 1952, 15 years after Otto Bayer and coworkers invented polyurethane and the same year that polyisocyanates became commercially available. Not long after that, the steady march of technical improvements in polyurethane technology began, leading up to today where polyurethanes represent about 6% of all plastics produced and are found in an incredibly diverse array of products. I grew up in a world in which it was becoming apparent that the world could not continue to support the combination of a growing human population and a increasingly technological industrial infrastructure built on the premise that pollution was a cost of doing business. I watched as acid rain became a thing, produced by widespread emissions of sulfur and nitrogen oxides, resulting in catastrophic damage to ecosystems, not to mention the finishes of cars parked outside. I read news stories about the Cuyahoga River catching fire and about Lake Erie being on the critical list (with other Great Lakes right behind it) because of unregulated industrial effluents. I experienced the continuous exposure to lead from leaded gasoline, a cheap solution to an expensive problem in automotive engineering. I grew up dogdging (not always successfully) what we called “land mines” left behind by dog walkers in back yards and parks. The use of plastics increased at a phenomenal rate and all of it ended up in landfills and worse. It’s ironic for me to be the CTO of what is in essence a plastic company. My first job at the age of 16 was hopper boy in a plastic factory. It was hot, dirty and dangerous and my summer job ended prematurely with a trip to the emergency room for stitches.

All of these things were considered normal parts of our everyday life, the price of progress, but little by little things started to change. Government regulations and public outcry began to force corporations to take responsibility for their polluting. Almost overnight, acid rain disappeared and Lake Erie and other waterways were brought back from the brink of death to be transformed from industrial cesspools to thriving sites of outdoor activities and tourist attractions. Unleaded gas replaced the leaded varieties which eventually paved the way for ethanol as a fuel (a mixed blessing at best). Personal responsibility began to grow, driven in part by regulations but also by an increased awareness of environmental stewardship, and we no longer had to watch our step so carefully when we went for walks. We began to litter less and recycle more.

There was a price to be paid, to be sure. Gas got more expensive as did cars because of catalytic converters. Products got more expensive as industries passed the cost of pollution control on to customers. Some industries that were once gleaming examples of American commercial vigor moved, offshore leaving decaying rust belt cities in their wake. Some of these costs have been mitigated by the rise of new, more sustainable industries, and some of the rust belt cities have reinvented themselves, joining lists of best cities in America (I’m looking at you, Pittsburgh!).

So, we managed to avoid ecological disaster on many different fronts in the 20th century, and that makes me confident that we have the collective wisdom, will, and capability to do it again with the problems we face in the 21st century. And I’m proud to play a small role in finding solutions. I spent 14 years working on various approaches for the production of biofuels and bioproducts at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. My colleagues and I developed lots of great technologies but saw little interest by industry in commercializing them. When I began working on technology to make renewable replacements for polyurethane, eliminating the toxic group of monomers called isocyanates, I decided that this was too important to wait for someone else to take to market, and so I decided to found a startup that is now called Matereal. This was the first startup spun out of NREL in over a decade and I’m happy to say that NREL is becoming much more entrepreneurial, and its huge portfolio of IP is no longer waiting for outside companies to license. The NREL employees are beginning to start or join startups to take the IP to market themselves.

I see all these developments as part of a virtuous cycle. When more and more companies are established to bring cleantech concepts to market, the likelihood of commercial success grows. Successes begin to encourage early stage scientists and engineers to join the search for additional solutions to our global problems, leading not only to a growing number of startups, but also to a growing number of students joining these research groups. Researchers may be driven by financial goals or by personal concern about the environment or a combination of both, but the end result is a growing number of problem solvers looking to turn around the issues that have been building since the dawn of the industrial age.

We’ve solved a lot of problems over my lifetime, created some new ones with our solutions, and didn’t notice some until recently. But there are a growing number of people around the world who are seeing the problems clearly and are looking for solutions. I’m proud to be one of them, and I’m hopeful, that, as my generation passes the torch (finally!), we’ll be passing not only a growing list of problems, but also a set of precedents and a growing groundswell of enthusiasm to find the solutions.

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

I started the company in April, 2020 with a personal investment. It was the beginning of the COVID pandemic and I moved to a small town in northern New York State, but in some ways, those worked to my advantage because no one was traveling for in person meetings and so I was able to make contacts and participate in the Amsterdam-based accelerator, Fashion for Good with little or no cost. My first strategy was to fund the company through industrial partnerships, but quickly learned that the fashion industry doesn’t work with that model. I began to apply for grants but learned that grant funding was slow, and without a lab and employees, my chances for success were slim. However, during this time, I shared my vision with a number of individuals who shared my enthusiasm and began to join in my efforts for future consideration, allowing us to make significant progress without incurring much cost. In 2021, I was accepted into Venture for ClimateTech, an accelerator program that provided non-dilutive funds for achieving certain program milestones. In 2022, we joined with another company to make a successful SBIR proposal. With a new CEO in place, these sources of funds, plus my initial investment allowed us to position the company for a seed round of investment which we expect to wrap soon.

Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?

The Venture for ClimateTech Accelerator was instrumental in shaping the Matereal narrative. Not only did it supply non-dilutive funding, and teach me the fundamentals of operating a startup, but it also introduced me to Jackie Amable who managed the program. One of important lessons from the program was that many startups fail because they have the wrong management, and I didn’t really have the skills or interest to remain CEO. I shared this with Jackie and when we crossed paths at an industry showcase a few months later, she asked if I would consider her to join me as CEO and cofounder when she was done with her role with V4C. I didn’t need to think about it for more than a few seconds when I welcomed her aboard.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://matereal.co
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philip-pienkos-35496b/

Image Credits
Dennis Schroeder