Founder - Bioproduction
Job Description
About Marble
Marble is a climate tech venture studio. Our north star is to erase billions of tons from annual greenhouse gas emissions and create a thriving future.
We partner with scientists, engineers and operators to create new deeptech companies that solve hard climate problems — slash industrial emissions, remove carbon from the atmosphere, and cool the planet — while reshaping multi-billion $ industries.
We're proud to be backed by leading climate investors across Europe and the US.
Hard Climate Problem: Bioproduction
The chemicals and fuels sector account for a major share of greenhouse gas emissions, among other externalities. Aviation and chemicals alone account for 4% of global emissions (about 2 gigatons) with expected demand growth that far outpaces other hard to abate industries. These two sectors are also lagging behind in net zero goals.
Essential products like fertilisers, plastics, fabrics, rubber, paints, also rely on petrochemical feedstocks and energy intensive processes at every step.
Bioproduction offers promising routes to clean chemicals. However, the field has historically been slowed down by inefficient pathways, slow R&D cycles and key scaleup bottlenecks that available technologies cannot overcome. With a few exceptions, commercialisation has been limited to low-volume, high-value products.
We are interested in new pathways and tools that could overcome these barriers and unlock the true power of biology to clean the most polluting industrial sectors.
Potential opportunities:
- Biocatalysis platforms (microbial or cell-free) for commodity chemicals and fuels, using either model or non-model organisms. Which approaches could break the barriers in the bioproduction of high-volume, low-value molecules?
- Sustainable aviation fuels: scaleable pathways for high energy biofuels or intermediates, new biorefinery approaches, feedstock innovations
- Novel bioreactors and biohybrid systems for improved scaleup performance
- Computational biology for improving metabolic flux balance, pathway engineering, retrosynthesis, and other applications in bioproduction
- Synthetic biology, metabolic engineering, molecular biology, with experience in strain selection, pathway engineering, design of genetic circuits, or relayed
- OR Computational biology, systems biology, with applied experience in retrosynthesis, flux balance analysis, fluid dynamics, and other predictive modelling
- OR Enzyme engineering, with experience in enzyme optimization, enzyme immobilisation and other methods to enhance stability and activity
- OR Bioelectrochemistry, environmental sciences or related, with exp. in microbial or cell free systems, electron transfer, enzyme redox wiring, in real-world conditions
- OR Bioprocess engineering, bioreactor design, ideally with industry experience in optimising scale-up performance and techno economic modelling
Nice to have: fundamentals of chemical and process engineering, separation technology, techno economic modelling, life cycle assessment
What We Offer
As a Founder-in-Residence, you will join stellar individuals who also believe in the need for deeptech solutions to solve hard climate problems.
Together, we would be scoping high potential approaches before converging on the most promising one and finding your future co-founders
We offer (among other things)
- A €2,500 monthly allowance during your participation in the programme
- A €250,000 pre-seed investment on startup creation if you’re successful. You and your team will own 80% of the company at pre-seed.
- Full-stack support in our venture creation programme
- Mentorship and guidance at every step of the way
- Hands on support across technology and market research, landing interviews with experts and customers, techno economics, roadmap and scale up strategy, IP strategy, team building, advisor sourcing, and more
- Access to an unparalleled network across science, industry, talent, investors, mentors, climate tech founders, curated vendors and suppliers
- Access to our research insights, knowledge base and resources
- Weekly check-ins, work sessions in our Paris HQ (or remote) and continuous peer learning with other programme participants
- Seed Fundraising support after the programme. Introductions to the best seed investors from our network and help with term sheet negotiation.
- Founder Visa sponsorship if you wish to relocate to France. Remote participation is possible, preferably from Europe and with regular in-person meetings.
How to Apply
We are currently taking applications for the November 2023 cohort and we are interviewing on a rolling basis so we encourage you to apply as soon as possible!
We believe that a diverse group of minds is key to solving the climate crisis. We encourage women and people of colour to apply.
Studies have shown that under-represented candidates are less likely to apply unless they feel they meet every single qualification. If you are excited about the opportunity but your experience does not align perfectly - we encourage you to apply anyways.
We are committed to a diverse, inclusive and mission-driven Founder community.
FAQs
For a full list of FAQs, please visit our website.