Inside The Startup Reinventing America’s Trillion Dollar Chemical Industry
In a Nutshell
Solugen revolutionized chemical manufacturing by fusing biology (enzymes from pancreatic cancer research, fed corn syrup) with metal catalysts for 96% yield reactions, producing hydrogen peroxide and chemicals for industries like water treatment, defense, and agriculture—far cleaner and more efficient than fossil fuel-based plants. From a $10K PVC prototype generating $12K/month revenue, they scaled via Y Combinator, creative customer hacks (e.g., spa owners, targeted billboards), and modular Bioforge plants, becoming a billion-dollar company shipping tanker trucks from Houston. Future plans expand this "chematic processing" to multiple U.S. assets, solving unsolved customer problems through relentless customer obsession and gradual scaling.
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This reactor in Houston, Texas, represents a whole new approach to chemical manufacturing. Solugen makes chemicals in a completely new way. They started by making hydrogen peroxide. Now they sell products for water treatment, national defense, infrastructure, agriculture, and more.
Solugen's story started with a prototype built out of PVC pipes the founders bought from Home Depot. In its heyday, this prototype did $12,000 a month in revenue. Now Solugen is a billion-dollar company shipping out tanker trucks of products that power critical US industries.
Visited Solugen HQ in Houston, Texas, to learn how they scaled from a single beaker of hydrogen peroxide to a full-scale manufacturing plant.
We use biology to create chemicals that allow us to create smaller chemical plants and have a cleaner, safer, more environmentally friendly footprint.
Solugen invented chematic processing, pairing an enzyme with a metal catalyst (traditionally used in industry). This creates more efficient reactions: instead of 60% yield, they achieve 96% yield at scale.
Solugen is the first company to fuse biology and chemistry this way, pulling enzymes from living cells (in this case, corn syrup) and pairing them with novel metal catalysts. Outputs are chemicals for agriculture to skincare.
Traditional chemical plants use fossil fuel feedstock, leading to unintended consequences. Solugen's approach is cleaner, safer, more efficient.
Receive rail cars of corn syrup, run utility system, adjust parameters for enzymes and metal catalysts to oxidize corn syrup. Evaporate water, store final products in finished good tanks or send to blend farm.
Solugen started with a Eureka moment. Shawn worked in chemicals on direct hydrogen peroxide synthesis (reacting hydrogen and oxygen gas over a metal catalyst). Gorb was in medical school studying pancreatic cancer.
I found this really crazy mechanism in pancreatic cancer where it's locally 50% hydrogen peroxide concentration.
Pancreatic cancer cells produce peroxide, creating an invisibility cloak against immune cells due to a mutated enzyme found only in pancreatic cancer.
What if enzymes and metal catalysts could coexist?
Feed corn syrup to enzymes (from pancreatic cancer cells), which transform it into new compounds. Use metal catalysts to process into final chemicals for everyday products.
Most chemical plants use oil and gas feedstock, producing toxic byproducts. Solugen starts with sugar.
We have to suspend belief... biology is too sensitive... But if we can make the enzyme last this long on stream and the product is this concentration we can make a lot of money.
Solugen operates biology and metals labs to produce enzymes and metal catalysts in-house.
These are enzymatic reactors: grow bugs, break them open, extract enzymes, put in reactors, stress test at scale with top analytics.
Across is the metals lab: pair enzyme with the right metal, mix and match.
Key insight: organic enzymes can operate at industrial scale and efficiency.
Commercial insight: Previous startups raised huge funding for large plants. Solugen built first reactor for $10,000 and sold immediately, scaling gradually.
May 2016: Unofficial second place in MIT $100K competition, won $10,000.
Capital constraint forces very creative thinking... with 10 grand... ours ended up being PVC like a Walmart shelf.
First Solugen reactor: schedule 80 PVC from Home Depot, bubble column with membrane. Sparge air at bottom, liquid with corn syrup and enzyme spins in loop, reacts to make peroxide. Membrane keeps enzyme in, permeate is peroxide product.
First product September 2016. Manual operation, no controls. Mornings: steady state reactor. Shawn went to work, Gorb to hospital (surgery rotation, 36-hour shifts). Evenings: retune.
First three customers: float spa hot tub owners in Dallas. Discovered supply chain dislocations—bypassed distributors, downpackers, retail markup by manufacturing directly.
On weekends, poured chemicals into hot tubs. Wedged into markets.
Accepted into Y Combinator with zero revenue, deferred, spent 6 months getting first customers. By YC start, gaining traction.
This fundamentally goes back to the customer experience... grad school for customers... the second you have a PhD in your customer... you know exactly what you can and can't build.
YC application: blue beaker demo with color change. Idea fully worked out, technoeconomics done, core idea unchanged—just a million times larger.
During YC: drove around with buckets of peroxide selling to spas.
Finished YC, raised $4 million seed. Moved to Houston (where customers were), built first big pilot: proper 1500-gallon reactor.
First oil and gas field trial: January 2018.
Billboards targeting one guy at saltwater disposal company who controlled chemical spend. Placed along his commute highway (billboards cheap). Spent $10-15K to prime. He saw billboards, got call: "I see your billboards everywhere." Felt special.
This goes back to the customer experience. Do you think the CEO of Dow would do that? No.
Soon signed enough customers to raise more, build Bioforge 1.
Bioforge built in five locations simultaneously, shipped, stacked like Legos with crane for 4 months.
Tan tanks hold four rail cars of corn syrup: 800,000 pounds raw material. Plant runs 24/7.
Full-scale PVC reactor: 60 ft tall bubble column, 10,000 gallons (vs. 7 gallons original). Sparge air bottom, corn syrup and enzyme top, react.
This is the magical piece... We feed in one Coke bottle of enzyme and you get two to four tanker trucks of product.
End of line: customers pull up with trucks or Solugen supplies. Fill at 300 gallons per minute.
Build factories near customers to undercut competitors on shipping.
Building physical stuff in America is challenging but possible in manufacturing-friendly areas.
In 10 more years... multiple different assets... applied enzymes and metal catalysts to other manufacturing assets... solving fascinating customer problems... some problems don't exist yet... creating a culture willing to be wrong and solve them.
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