Team: Sironix Renewables | Origin: Washington | Participation: NSF I-Corps Participant, 2018
Sironix Renewables makes eco-friendly, better-performing ingredients for cleaning products so formulators of detergents can make a safer and more effective consumer product. Co-founder Paul Dauenhauer, Lanny Schmidt Honorary Professor at University of Minnesota, won a 2020 MacArthur Fellowship.
"The NSF has been with us throughout the entire process. All the way from the NSF I-Corps program early on, where we conducted hundreds of customer interviews all the way across the board, not only in cleaning products, but also working with farmers and agriculture and all sorts of other different applications that we were looking at at the time. Then through the [SBIR] Phase I and Phase II process, we were really able to focus down on the technology, but also really hit the ground running, developing something that we knew would be impactful," said Christoph Krumm, CEO and co-founder of Sironix Renewables.
"I think what really inspires me is the opportunity to work on something in science, which I've worked in science all my life [...], but also to see the business impact and the potential societal impact that a technology can have. I think that really kind of completes the picture and checks all the boxes for me in terms of being able to develop a really cool technology, but also being able to see how that technology can improve human lives and improve our environment and make our world better," said Krumm.