One year ago, I became CEO of DexMat and raised our Seed Round of funding. Today, at the end of the year, seems an appropriate day to reflect on DexMat’s progress – and what a rocket ride of exponential progress it has been!
The past year has been one of exponential growth–production capacity increase, sales growth, and cost reduction–for DexMat. Our Seed Round investors challenged us to hit five key milestones to de-risk our venture and demonstrate our capacity to reach financial and climate impact at massive scale. We have exceeded all milestones, which are reviewed below, so are now gearing up to raise our Series A early next year.
As a reminder, DexMat is a climate tech moonshot startup driving the next industrial revolution by displacing steel, aluminum, and copper with advanced, carbon-negative materials.
Earlier this year we set out to accomplish big goals. Here’s what happened…
- Build an awesome team and set that team up for success
Team members:
6 → 15
We now have in place a talented, balanced team with diverse backgrounds, skillsets, and networks. Our culture and suite of tools/systems/processes for hybrid-enabled work have this team performing at an elite level, with 100% retention and 100% engagement score.
- Scale up production capacity and reduce cost
Production capacity:
Increased 20x
Production cost:
Decreased by 90%
We scaled annualized production capacity this year by 20x, while reducing cost by 90%.
- Secure CNT supply
Feedstock cost:
Reduced by 70%
Through supplier negotiations, we secured agreements for 10x the volume of CNTs we purchased in 2023, and at 70% lower prices. This brings our total cost of producing Galvorn down an order of magnitude from the beginning of the year, and keeps us on track to achieving cost parity with steel in four years.
- Expand IP moat
→ 2 existing patents licensed from Rice
→ Executed new license for faster, less expensive, more sustainable production
We secured two additional patent licenses and one license for proprietary know-how from Rice, and took steps to address potential infringement.
- Pivot from opportunistic sales to proactive market development
→ NEW GTM Strategy
→ NEW Website
→ NEW CRM
→ NEW Marketing/Sales Processes
→ NEW Pricing Strategy
→ NEW $1.3M Grant Funding
We developed a cogent Go-To-Market strategy, laid our marketing foundation with a new website, CRM, pricing strategy, and sales process, and we are already seeing the impact with increasing sales that we can attribute to specific sales and marketing investments. Additionally, we won $1.3M of grant funding to develop new Galvorn products, and completed applications for more than $25M of new grant funding in 2024.
On behalf of the entire DexMat team, thank you all for your continued support; DexMat’s exponential progress would not be possible without it! I hope you enjoy a bit of a break this holiday season, because 2024 is going to be really big!
An excellent first year indeed!