I recently joined Mark Grey Mendes on the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJHSST) Alumni Blast from the Past podcast to discuss my journey from student-athlete to climatetech entrepreneur leading DexMat‘s nanomaterials revolution.
You can watch the full TJ alumni interview on YouTube, but I want to share some conversation highlightst about entrepreneurship lessons and leadership insights that shaped my path from TJHSST to revolutionizing materials science.
Building the Courage to Reimagine: Lessons from TJ’s STEM Environment
One thread woven through our entire conversation: developing the courage to reimagine solutions unconstrained by the status quo. This wasn’t something I consciously developed—it was a mindset I built at TJ, where academic curiosity was celebrated rather than stigmatized.
The TJ environment created something special. When 400 academically motivated students from across Northern Virginia came together, it created a resonance where innovation thrived. I remember spending hours on the phone with a classmatee discussing quantum physics and virtual particles—not as a classroom assignment, but because we genuinely found it fascinating.
When we encountered something that wasn’t the way it should be – whether a computer program, a math problem, or even a team sport – we were encouraged to go back to first principles and rebuild it, better than before.
That culture taught me that the world doesn’t have to work the way it currently does. We don’t have to accept the constraints of the status quo. We should always have the courage to question those constraints, and the willingness to rebuild from first principles.
TJ Football: Where Entrepreneurial Leadership Skills Are Forged
Playing football at Thomas Jefferson taught me more about startup leadership and entrepreneurship than any business school could. We always underdogs, never never expected to win. We deliberately moved up a district, facing stiffer competition, including the eventual state champions every year, yet we frequently found ways to win.
Startups face the same, challenging circumstances, so I learned many entrepreneurial lessons on that football field:
- Resilience in the face of long odds – Our 160-pound offensive linemen faced 250-300 pound defensive opponents; we had to out-technique them and wear them down.
- Strategic thinking over brute force – We won through discipline, innovation, and and matching our strengths against opposing weaknesses.
- The value of diverse teams – it would be hard to win with a team of just quarterbacks or just receivers. Through diverse skillsets – and the orchestration of those skillsets collaborating seamlessly – our whole was greater than the sum of our parts.
- Doing more with less – We had less practice time every day than our opponents (because we had eight academic periods to their seven), so we had to make the most of every moment. As our coach will drill into us: “Practice doesn’t make perfect; perfect practice makes perfect.”
- Embracing pressure as privilege – We achieved peak performance when the stakes were highest: e.g., I scored the game-winning touchdown at Homecoming on a broken ankle while the band was playing the Rocky Theme Song.
The skills that make successful entrepreneurs—drive, resilience to failure, rapid adaptation, building/leading/inspiring high-performing teams—these aren’t developed in the classroom. They’re forged in the crucible of constantly facing challenges where conventional wisdom says you can’t succeed.
From Computer Science to Climatetech: An Entrepreneur’s Non-Linear Path
My career path from TJ alumnus to climatetech CEO wasn’t linear. Starting with computer science and electrical engineering at Rice University, I moved through software startups into increasingly complex hard tech ventures.
Eventually, I built Third Derivative, which became the world’s largest climatetech accelerator, mobilizing over $2 billion into more than 200 climate technology startups.
But we faced a critical gap in investment dealflow: sustainable materials innovation. The best solutions for, e.g., steel production emissions were incremental improvements to materials humanity had used for millennia. That approach seemed to accept constraints that shouldn’t exist.
When DexMat achieved a manufacturing breakthrough making it possible to displace legacy materials like copper, aluminum, and steel at commercial scale, I knew this was the materials revolution climate solutions needed.
DexMat’s Nanomaterials Innovation: From TJ Alumni Vision to Market Reality
Today at DexMat, we’re proving that sustainable advanced materials can compete with—and surpass—traditional options:
- 3000x production scale increase while reducing costs 99.6%
- Negotiating multi-year, multi-million dollar supply agreements with major automotive and industrial partners
- Market traction across 90% of our $580B+ target segments—from power transmission infrastructure to Formula 1 racing to aerospace applications
- Galvorn performance specs: Many times stronger than steel, lighter than aluminum, as conductive as copper, and produced by capturing carbon rather than combusting it
Our recent Science magazine cover feature validated what we’re building—advanced nanomaterials that can truly displace dirty legacy materials at scale.
Essential Soft Skills for STEM Entrepreneurs and Alumni
When discussing advice for current TJ students and recent alumni, I focused not on technical skills but on the soft skills that determine entrepreneurial success:
Empathy in Technical Leadership
Understanding stakeholders’ perspectives, needs, and motivations transforms your effectiveness as a technical leader. As a startup CEO, you’re constantly communicating with diverse audiences—employees about mission, investors about returns, customers about value propositions, policymakers about constituent benefits. Each requires genuine empathy and tailored communication.
Humility as a Competitive Advantage
Recognizing you don’t have all the solutions keeps you open to innovation and to partnering with brilliant minds. This humility has been essential throughout my career in climatetech entrepreneurship and is what opened to the door to my commercializing at technology that was invented by Nobel-winning scientists. TJ prepared me very well this; getting comfortable being surrounded by people smarter than you may be the most relatable TJ experience ever!
Building Cross-Functional Relationships
My comparative advantage has never been being the smartest engineer in the room. It’s been serving as the interface between technical experts and those who need to understand their work—translating vision, technology, and requirements bidirectionally. This skill, developed at TJ across different groups, has proven invaluable in startup leadership.
TJ Alumni Leadership: Mike Mukai’s Return as Principal
Learning that Mike Mukai—my former TJ football coach and a 1989 TJ alumnus—was returning as principal gave me chills. Coach Mukai understood what it meant to be a TJ student-athlete because he’d lived it. He mentored players far beyond football, working with teammates on career aspirations and personal challenges.
Having a TJ alumnus who “gets it” leading the school into its next chapter feels significant. I’m energized about TJ’s future and looking forward to the 40th anniversary celebration this October.
TJ Alumni to Climatetech CEO: Entrepreneurship Journey
Attending the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology was an enormous privilege that marked a clear inflection point in my life. TJ continues bringing together academically motivated, ambitious students and creating conditions for innovation and breakthrough thinking – inside the classroom and beyond.
If you’d like to support TJ’s next generation of entrepreneurs, scientists, and leaders, consider contributing to the TJ Partnership Fund.
Bryan Guido Hassin is the CEO of DexMat and a 1997 graduate of Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. Previously, he founded Third Derivative, the world’s largest climatetech accelerator. Connect with him at greenknig.ht.