Stop wasting our best talent: Why so few chemistry PhDs become founders

Every year, Germany produces around 2,100 chemistry PhDs – but only about 30 chemistry startups are founded. That is not a talent problem. It is a sign of an innovation funnel that stops the moment a researcher moves from a lab bench to a pilot plant. The result is wasted expertise and lost industrial potential.

The chemistry sector is often described as difficult terrain for founders. Products and processes must work outside the lab, scale-up takes time, regulation is demanding and access to suitable infrastructure is limited. In the current market environment, even finding the right industrial partner has become harder. But the low number of startups cannot be explained by sector difficulty alone. Germany does not lack scientific talent. It lacks a smoother route from research into entrepreneurship.

Chemistry is not software

Chemistry is not software. It does not scale with a few server clicks. It scales with industrial validation, anchor customers and capex-heavy support.

Industrial validation means proving that a novel synthesis or purification process actually works at scale, under real-world conditions. Anchor customers are utilities, pharma companies or public waste management operators who are willing to place the first order and give a new process a serious chance. And capex-heavy support means funding that recognises the cost of hardware, infrastructure and certification – not just the burn rate of a SaaS platform.

If any of these three elements is missing, promising chemistry innovations remain stuck in the lab. For industrial green chemistry in particular, this is a lost opportunity: cleaner synthesis routes, more efficient processes and circular solutions depend on founders who can take on this heavier lift.

The missing bridges

There are already ecosystems trying to close this gap. In Berlin, initiatives such as greenCHEM bring together universities, industry and partners from the wider region to create a transfer space for green chemistry, from early experiments through to industrial implementation. Similar efforts are emerging in other locations, each trying to make it easier for researchers to become founders.

But isolated support is not the same as a functioning pipeline. For more chemistry PhDs to become founders, several bridges need to be stronger.

• Tech transfer processes must move faster and become more predictable.

• Shared pilot and scale-up infrastructure needs to be easier to access across regions.

• Early customers need clearer incentives to test new technologies.

• Funding instruments must match the timeline and capital intensity of industrial process innovation.

None of this is exotic. It simply reflects how chemistry innovation actually works.

Why this matters now

All this comes at a moment when Europe’s chemical industry is under pressure. High energy prices, plant closures and strategic uncertainty are already forcing the sector to rethink old assumptions. That should make this a moment of opportunity for new companies with better technologies and more efficient production routes.

Instead, many founders still face a system that was not built for them. The result is a continent that generates strong ideas and publishes strong research, but struggles to translate either into new industrial players. If Europe wants a more resilient and climate-aligned chemical base, it will need more than support for incumbents. It will also need more founders who can take promising chemistry out of the lab and into production.

What should change

The chemistry startup gap is not just a founder problem. It is an industrial policy problem.

A more serious approach would include:

• faster spin-out and licensing processes at universities,

• better access to pilot-scale infrastructure,

• procurement pathways that allow industrial newcomers to prove themselves, and

• funding tools designed for capex-heavy process innovation.

These are practical conditions for company building. They are also practical conditions for industrial transformation. Europe already has the researchers, technologies and industrial challenges that should be driving new company creation. The next step is to build a system that makes founding a realistic path for more of them.

Link to the Süddeutsche Article "1.200 Doktorarbeiten, aber nur 30 Start-ups" (Note: The original article is in German and may be behind a paywall.)