Last week in San Jose, DexMat was crowned Trellis Climatetech Startup Of The Year—a true honor selected by my peers and fellow travelers in the climatetech community. It’s been quite a journey from nomination to this moment, and I’m thrilled to share the story.
From Nomination to Recognition
Earlier this year, one of our partners, Enduring Planet, nominated DexMat to be a startup of interest for Trellis (formerly known as GreenBiz, a leader in climatetech reporting). Trellis reviewed more than 100 climatetech startups from more than 10 countries and selected DexMat as one of their 25 Startups To Watch back in August.
Already this was a major honor. Trellis has been a trusted voice in our community for years—Heather Clancy wrote an article about us last year, and I even contributed to a GreenBiz article back in my Third Derivative (D3) days. But this was the first time Trellis said, “Hey, pay attention to DexMat; these guys are really up to something promising!”
Included with this recognition was attendance at Trellis Impact (formerly known as VERGE) and an opportunity to compete with the other Startups To Watch for the title of Startup Of The Year.
Why Conferences Matter More Now
I’ll be candid: I’m a bit skeptical of the utility of attending conferences. They cater to the big sponsors, not to startups, and I feel like we should have better ways of fostering connectivity by now. However, I think our climate communities matter more than ever right now with climate science under attack, and I was eager to represent DexMat well.
The last time I was in San Jose was when I was pitching Smart OES at the CleanTech Open. It turned out that the CleanTech Open was happening at the same time this year, co-located with VERGE as part of Trellis Impact, so it was great to see so many early-stage impact ventures there. Full circle moments abound!
Day One: Bryan Corner
The first day (Tuesday) of the conference was great. My colleague, Sofia (whom people may recognize from DexMat’s hype video), was with me, and we made a great team. The day started with a run through and around the San Jose State campus—a great way to get the blood pumping before a long day, and the cool air left my head literally steaming, as it used to when taking off my football helmet late in the season.
We set up in the startup pavilion, where we were right next to Third Derivative. I called that spot “Bryan Corner” since it was populated by organizations I had founded/led. There were several other startups I knew at the startup pavilion too, mostly because they were part of D3. It felt like coming home.
That afternoon, I pitched DexMat in the “semifinals”—a pitch competition of the five startups in Trellis’s Industry category. Each of us was given 2 minutes and 30 seconds to pitch, with a few minutes of Q&A from VC investors after. Then the audience in the room voted on the venture they thought could have the most scale of impact.
The other startups were really awesome, including Hamilton Perkins Collection, which I know through my board role at LabStart. The competition was fierce, but I was ready.
The Pitch That Won Hearts and Minds
Here’s what I told the audience:
I’m Bryan Guido Hassin, CEO of DexMat. We make Galvorn — the highest performance, most sustainable, most cost effective conductive material on the planet.
Why does that matter? Because copper, the metal powering renewable energy, electrification, and AI, is problematic. It’s heavy, weak, incredibly dirty to produce, and dominated by unstable supply chains.
Here’s a small sample of our conductive material; this is 157,000 meters – nearly 100 miles – of Galvorn wire. It’s as conductive as copper, 15x stronger than steel, ½ the weight of aluminum, and made entirely from carbon.
We start with greenhouse gasses like methane or carbon dioxide. Our patented process strips off the carbon atoms and processes them into solid materials like this wire, but we also produce films, fabrics, and composites with equally impressive properties.
This manufacturing technology is known as wet fiber spinning and is how other materials like Rayon and viscose are already produced cheaply and at massive scale. And Galvorn can be recycled back into this same process over and over again with no loss of properties, offering a truly circular, clean alternative to dirty metals.
Galvorn is a dual-use technology, originally funded by NASA and the Air Force. It was invented by Nobel-winning scientists at Rice University whom we have now surrounded with experienced operators who have a track record of scaling manufacturing and sales. The results have been exponential: DexMat now has hundreds of customers using this space-age material to replace copper in aerospace, automotive, defense, data centers, grid infrastructure, and the rest of the $300B conductive wire and cable industry.
This exponential growth has driven Galvorn’s exponentially declining costs. Two years ago, this spool would have taken six months to produce and would have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Today, it takes less than an hour and costs a few thousand dollars – already at cost parity with aerospace-grade copper. In a few years, we’ll be producing this much every second for less than a dollar – less expensive than commodity copper, steel, even aluminum.
With that cost structure, we’ll expand beyond conductive wire and cable and build vehicles, bridges, and even buildings out of Galvorn.
In my prior role as cofounder and CEO of Third Derivative, I learned the hard truth that there can be no energy transition without a materials transition, so DexMat isn’t making dirty metals less problematic; we’re making them obsolete.
When the votes were tallied, I was elated to learn that DexMat had won, so we would go on to the finals.
That evening, I attended some after parties, including an excellent soirée hosted by Orrick, where I met many other entrepreneurs, investors, and developers.
Day Two: The Finals
The second day was great—catching up in person with many people I usually only see by Zoom, including some of my fellow EFI fellows.
In the afternoon, I took the stage for the startup competition finals. This was a larger crowd, and one of the moderators was none other than my former D3 colleague, Elaine Hsieh.
Here again, the other startups were awesome, and I was inspired by their pitches. I had the fortune of going last, so I tried to bring it home with a bang.
When all the votes were in, DexMat was announced as the Trellis Climatetech Startup Of The Year—a real honor!
Competition vs. Collaboration
I think competitions are actually the wrong model for startups—we should be incentivizing startups to collaborate with each other, not compete against each other. That said, I’m a competitive SOB, so, if it’s a competition, I want to win!
This competition awakened some of the former high school/college football player in me. Prepping for it felt like August two-a-days, the moment before the pitches felt like pre-game jitters, the pitches themselves felt like locker room pep talks, and the victory felt like hoisting the championship trophy high after a hard-fought game.
It was great to have some familiar faces in the audience, too, including some of our investors like Aramco Ventures and Better Way. I felt really supported and confident up on stage!
Everyone’s A Winner
I’m glad for the recognition this brings DexMat—it’s a true honor to have been selected by so many of my peers and fellow travelers in climatetech—but everyone who participated in this competition is a winner. They are offering truly inspiring climate solutions, and we need all of them × 1,000!
Wednesday night, Sofia and I attended several after parties, including a great one hosted by SVB. I was glowing all evening as people kept congratulating me on the win. When I got back to the hotel, I crashed hard after an intense two days. It felt like the late-night crash after dueling it out under the Friday night lights many, many years ago.
This recognition is more than just an award—it’s validation that the work we’re doing at DexMat really matters. As we continue to scale Galvorn and work toward our vision of a materials revolution, I’m grateful for the community that surrounds us, challenges us, and cheers us on.
Together—and only together—will we build the sustainable, prosperous, equitable future.
Bryan Guido Hassin is CEO of DexMat, where they produce Galvorn, an advanced nanomaterial made of pure carbon that is stronger than steel, lighter than aluminum, and as conductive as copper. Previously, Bryan was co-founder and CEO of Third Derivative, the world’s largest climatetech accelerator.