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Pitch

Why reinvent the wheel? Nature has engineered remarkable materials that support modern living. Enter Poly6, enter citrus-based materials.


Description

Summary

The materials of tomorrow will come from unlikely sources, and one of them has already been invented: Citrene™.  Citrene™ is a performance polymer made from citrus peels and is the first product of Poly6 Technologies, a Boston-based startup out of MIT that is commercializing Citrene™ for performance coatings and advanced manufacturing applications.  Our proposal is directed at large businesses that produce or manufacture products and is a simple one: adopt Citrene™, make better products and reduce manufacturing costs.  In doing you will take action against climate change.


What actions do you propose?

We are calling for a materials revolution, but not one of regulation—instead, one of invention.  We believe that the rapid adoption of new materials will only be achieved when industrially scalable, high performance materials are invented.  We have invented one such material, Citrene™, a performance polymer made from citrus peels, and we are building a business around Citrene’s performance and economic benefits.  Poly6 only proposes a single action in context of this application, and that is that businesses keep an open mind to using new materials when manufacturing products.


Who will take these actions?

Our message is simple: invent, scale, sell and combat climate change.  We believe that the burden of introducing new high performance, environmentally advantageous materials rests on inventors, and we challenge materials inventors that traditionally focus their efforts on high-value materials applications like biotech or pharma products to consider investing their time and resources in the creation of scalable, high performance sustainable materials.  While the nature of material production affords slow adoption of new materials for scaled manufacturing processes, the Poly6 team has observed that many large businesses are taking major strides to adopt new sustainable technologies.  Poly6 does not propose the reallocation of government funding or government regulations to incentivize the use of sustainable materials.  Incentivized by the potential for great economic return on the investment of our own time and energy, we are commercializing a high performance, scalable, sustainable materials technology that we have created, and we believe that other startup companies will be incentivized to create rapidly scalable, high performance materials technologies.


Where will these actions be taken?

We believe that the route to driving a global materials revolution begins with entrepreneurial inventors and will involve inventions from the best materials minds from across the globe.


What are other key benefits?

Better materials make society work better.  Poly6 is simply proposing that large businesses use better materials and be flexible in working with new companies that have created new materials.  Our products enable product manufacturers to make longer lasting, more durable, better looking and stronger products.


What are the proposal’s costs?

We believe that we can grow our business to a $100M/year revenue company with $30M in investments.


Time line

We believe that we can grow our business to a $100M/year revenue company within 5 years.


Related proposals


References

1. Keith Hearon, Landon D. Nash, et al and  D.J. Maitland. Advanced Materials 2014, 26 (10), 1552-1558.

2.https://www.bostonglobe.com/magazine/2015/08/08/when-comes-patents-massachusetts-big-player/3AmNfmSE8xWzzNbUnDzvPK/story.html