Solugen, a startup that has set itself up with no less lofty a goal than the decarbonization of a massive chunk of the petrochemical industry, may be the first legitimate multi-million dollar company to start out in a meth lab. When company co-founders Gaurab Chakrabarti and Sean Hunt began hunting for a lab to test their process for enzymatically manufacturing hydrogen peroxide they only had a small $10,000 grant from MIT — which was supposed to pay their salaries and cover rent and lab equipment.  Chakrabarti, who now jokingly calls himself “the Heisenberg of hydrogen peroxide” says that the lab spaces they looked at initially were all too pricey, so through a friend of a friend of a friend, he and Hunt wound up leasing lab space in a facility by the Houston airport for $150 per month. It was there among the burners and round-bottomed flasks that Hunt and Chakrabarti refined their manufacturing process — using fermentation based on Solugen’s proprietary enzyme made from genetically modified yeast cells to produce hydrogen peroxide.  “In 2016 I went to visit Solugen’s headquarters in Houston, They were subleasing a small part of a bigger lab and it was one of the sketchiest labs I’d seen, but the Solugen founders liked it because the rent was low” recalls Solugen seed investor, Seth Bannon, a founding partner with the investment firm Fifty Years.

Topics:  sean hunt   mit    the heisenberg   seth bannon   gaurab   creating   ramez naam   techcrunch   our hardest climate   agriculture   industry   greenhouse   intercontinental terminals   company    they re   francisco sanchez   the houston   chronicle   man   caution   courtesy getty images   founders fund   peter thiel    combinator   crispr      once solugen   oil    it s   chakrabarti   hunt   i    the   solugen s    in   solugen   houston   fifty   years   global efficiency   intelligence   image   companies   startup   lab   enzyme   process   enzymes   tons   hydrogen   world   gas   products   account   plant   plants   emergency   cars   money   processes   carbon   cells   rent   goal   small   dollar   yeast   dangerous   produce   based   petroleum   energy   change   create   sales   work   cheaply   kg   
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