Advanced Materials from Lab to Commercialization: Strategy, Sales, and Adoption. A chat with Steve van Zutphen, exited founder (Magpie Polymers)

Today, the scope of the conversation is to spotlight your journey as an exited founder.

So from the very early days in your lab to start.

I found it very interesting, your journey, because if I remember well from our previous conversation, you filled a patent as a researcher in university.

Then you start working in a company and then you come back taking your patent and turn it in a company.

So let's start from there.

Where, how and what?

Yes.

So, I mean, it probably started through a Friday afternoon experiment.

I was doing a EU-funded postdoc and having to make a certain kind of compounds and that kind of work, but not really very much.

And then we were cleaning up the storage space of the lab with all the chemicals and I found a bottle of a chemical that I thought was interesting and said, well, why don't I do some experiments with this starting material? And I tried to make small molecules, so a soluble thing with this, and it failed all the time.

kept sinking to the bottom, like white big pieces, like a polymer.

And I threw away that polymer a whole bunch of times.

And then at one point we said, hold on, maybe this is actually an interesting material.

And that's actually what gave rise to the patent.

So we found some polymers that have a very interesting chemistry so that they can bind metals very selectively.

We said, okay, that must have an industrial application.

It was a very simple experiment, maybe not the best material for a very in-depth scientific publication, but very interesting for a patent application.

So that's when we filed these patents.

Instantly, I thought as a researcher, well, you know, I found a new material.

It binds metals.

Industry must be waiting for this.

This is a success about to happen.

And I pitched it in one or two places.

But very quickly, I realized that I didn't have what it took to really start up a company with that.

At the same time, I had a growing family at home that had to be fed as well.