Meet the Resurgence Cohort 1 Startups: C+UP
Team Members
- Hamed Heidari, PhD – Founder and CEO.
- Prof. Mohammad Asadi – Cofounder and CTO
What does your company do?
C+UP’s breakthrough carbon capture utilization technology converts renewable electricity and CO2 from industrial processes and storage into sustainable carbon-negative propane as an alternative green fuel/chemical feedstock. It provides an economically feasible solution for reducing global emissions and dependency on fossils, mitigating climate risks, and de-risking assets and saving jobs and communities.
How did you get the idea?
Over the past few years, I (Hamed) have been helping companies in mining and metals sector with their ESG and sustainability challenges. Although these immense industries supplying the materials are essential for our modern way of living, they are emitting billions of tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Because of the size and complexity of these operations, we can’t simply decarbonize them by electrifying or changing the process. I was talking to my friend of 25 years, Prof. Asadi, about his breakthrough technology that captures the carbon dioxide at point source and converts it to sustainable propane through renewable energy. We both believed this technology could retrofit several operations around the globe and decarbonize them.
What are you most excited for as part of Resurgence?
Building a startup, especially in hard-tech is difficult. Founders need to figure out lots of unknowns at the beginning and create their roadmap and strategy to take the business off the ground and put it on a right path for success. Being a part of the Resurgence cohort and having all the support and guidance of the Resurgence and Polsky teams has been great. Having access to the resources of University of Chicago – all the trainings, workshops and mentorships – has been very helpful to accelerate our progress. It has also provided us with credibility and visibility.
What do you hope to get out of Resurgence?
We hope that we build all the required foundations of our business during the program to be able to fully spin off our technology from the university and secure seed funding. We would like to build a long-lasting relationship and partnership with the Resurgence team, mentors, affiliates, etc. as we are growing and scaling up the business.
Where do you hope your company is a year from now?
A year from now we want to have our seed funding secured, our first 3 to 5 hires, our own lab and equipment, an agreement with our first beach-head customer, and two LOIs from larger companies.
Housed within the Polsky Center’s Deep Tech Ventures initiative, Resurgence provides full-spectrum support for its cleantech startups that are dedicated to bringing life-saving, world-changing products and services to market. To learn about the other teams, click the links below.
Alpha Nur | Blaze Power | Natural Sciences | ExPost Technology | Stranergy