Three years in the past, at ABLC 2022 Mars Supplies CEO Aaron Fitzgerald arrived on stage for his ABLC debut with the sort of conviction that may solely come from founders staring into the abyss and seeing a gap as an alternative of a wall.
Not many had heard of the compamy then. Lot extra now, with the information that Mars Supplies and SNF, the $11 billion international chief in polyacrylamides, introduced the primary industrial validation of “impurity-advantaged acrylonitrile” made not from petroleum however from captured CO₂. Examined throughout SNF’s sprawling portfolio, the product labored. A decades-long barrier crumbled.
Again in 2022, Fitzgerald’s slides confirmed acrylonitrile by nitrilation — cheaper, cleaner, carbon-fed as an alternative of petro-fed — and a roadmap from bench-scale to world-scale in document time. “Why not us?” was the implicit chorus.
On the time, it was imaginative and prescient, daring and borderline audacious. A future the place each ton of acrylonitrile — the chemical behind carbon fiber, water remedy polymers, and on a regular basis merchandise like diapers — might come from captured CO₂, not fossil crackers. Fitzgerald’s numbers promised 33% cheaper, 57% decrease capex, 31% decrease carbon depth, and even a pathway to gigaton-scale emissions reductions. If you happen to had been a climate-tech dreamer, you noticed a rocket launch. If you happen to had been a veteran of the chemical business, you muttered: present me a purchaser, present me validation.
Quick ahead to August 2025. The rocket hasn’t but reached Mars simply but — however the capsule has survived re-entry, storms, and near-crashes, and it’s testing effectively in Houston with proof in hand. That is the second the place imaginative and prescient meets validation. The place the starry-eyed “mission to Mars” provides solution to a more durable, slower, mammal-style persistence — not a dinosaur’s dominance, however a rodent’s resourcefulness.
The Laborious Yards of Validation
The fossil incumbents have had acrylonitrile locked up for half a century. Each purchaser trusted one petrochemical course of, and each try at another had damaged on the rocks of efficiency. That’s the dinosaur downside: as soon as entrenched, measurement and momentum crowd out challengers.
Mars Supplies discovered shortly that intelligent chemistry is barely the start. By 2023 they’d early gram- and kilo-scale validation runs, however operating a pilot in California got here with regulatory molasses and multimillion-dollar web site buildouts. For a startup, time is oxygen. With out it, you suffocate. Mars selected emigrate — uprooting operations from the Bay Space and relocating to Houston. There, co-locating at a Shell web site, they shaved an estimated three years off their improvement curve and saved hundreds of thousands.
It wasn’t glamorous. It wasn’t what the ABLC slides foresaw. But it surely was survival.
Survival additionally meant partnerships. Cédrick Favero, a revered acrylamide polymer professional, didn’t simply validate the chemistry — he joined Mars’ advisory board, placing fame and weight behind the fledgling firm. SNF, fairly than watching from the sidelines, opened its portfolio for full validation. That was not a favor: it was recognition that clients themselves now face Scope 3 strain, and drop-in replacements that don’t require capex or downtime are golden.
In the meantime, Mars widened its focus. Acrylonitrile wasn’t only a ticket to carbon fiber — it underpins water remedy, pulp and paper, mining, private care, agriculture, textiles, and development components. By aiming at a number of industrial arteries, Mars turned one wedge into many.
The mammal lesson is obvious: don’t develop by bulk, develop by adaptability. Dinosaurs had measurement, however mammals had niches, flexibility, the power to scurry, survive, and emerge.
GTESI Readout: Persistence in Motion
By the GTESI lens, Mars Supplies’ trajectory seems to be much less like a straight line and extra like a dynamic circulation by vectors of persistence.
- EED (Entropy Export Delta):
Mars inverted the fossil method. As an alternative of emitting CO₂ as entropy waste, their nitrilation locks it into acrylonitrile, exporting entropy into water streams that may be handled and recycled. In GTESI phrases, that’s a low EED sign: entropy is vented safely, not trapped contained in the system. The directionality is carbon-negative — a thermodynamic trick that reframes acrylonitrile itself as a vessel for persistence. - SCD (Symbolic Compression Divergence):
The 2022 deck leaned onerous on symbolic compression — a narrative of 33% cheaper, 57% decrease capex, and gigaton-scale ambition. However SCD tracks the hole between story and system, and such daring compression dangers divergence if proofs don’t arrive. By 2025, Mars re-aligned story and system by validation: impurity-advantaged acrylonitrile, confirmed at SNF. The stamp of credibility closed the divergence, pulling narrative and operations again collectively. - TRFI (Belief Ritual Friction Index):
That is the mammal transfer. GTESI teaches that persistence depends upon belief rituals — filings, validations, pilot runs, relocations that hold the system legible. Dealing with extinction-level delays in California, Mars tailored by relocating to Houston, co-locating with Shell, and incomes SNF’s validation. Every milestone diminished ritual friction, turned danger into resilience, and compounded belief. TRFI dropped not by guarantees however by performing the proper rituals on the proper time. - IPR (Inverse Persistence Ratio):
IPR measures the hole between symbolic persistence (the hype story) and structural reminiscence (actual execution, cashflow, plant). In 2022, Mars was weighted towards symbolic persistence: daring slides, early guarantees. By 2025, structural reminiscence has grown — a Shell pilot, an SNF validation, advisory board weight. The Houston pivot itself was an IPR correction: by shifting inputs (location, ecosystem), Mars closed the hole between story and substance, bettering systemic persistence.
What seemed in 2022 like a moonshot is, in 2025, a case research in persistence. Early-stage innovation isn’t about overpromising; it’s about sequencing proofs, compressing entropy into belief, and exporting alerts that traders and companions can financial institution on.
The Backside Line
Mars is elevating funds now to speed up scale-up and crack the $4B carbon fiber market, even because it rides momentum within the $11B acrylamide and water-soluble polymers sector. They’ve survived near-death delays, attracted heavyweight companions, and unlocked validation that petrochemical incumbents couldn’t brush apart.
However the deeper lesson isn’t nearly Mars and SNF. It’s about how early-stage innovators really persist within the wild.
In GTESI phrases, most corporations start in SCD — Symbolic Compression Divergence. They inform a narrative to compress complexity into one thing legible for traders and companions. At ABLC 2022, Mars led with price curves, capex parity, and gigaton-scale imaginative and prescient. That was symbolic compression at full tilt: the story simplified the system to create consideration and buy-in.
However SCD all the time diverges if the story outpaces the system. That’s why the true check is whether or not an organization can migrate into TRFI — the Belief Ritual Friction Index. Right here, persistence is measured not in slides however in rituals: third-party validations, regulatory navigation, buyer trials, fundraising cycles that shut as an alternative of stall. By 2025, Mars resides in TRFI: SNF’s stamp of approval, Shell’s co-location, advisory board credibility. The rituals are carried out, friction diminished, belief accrued.
That migration — from SCD (consideration) to TRFI (belief) — is the arc of survival. Corporations that keep trapped in SCD burn vivid and collapse. Corporations that grasp TRFI construct the scaffolding for scale.
GTESI teaches us that persistence isn’t about hype or imaginative and prescient alone. It’s about exporting entropy by validation, compressing narrative till it aligns with system, and performing the rituals that maintain belief. The mammals survived not as a result of they dreamed larger than dinosaurs — however as a result of they carried out the small, repeatable, friction-reducing behaviors that allow them endure, adapt, and finally dominate.
