Issue #25 — Charm Industrial

Are we secretly — or not so secretly — building a super farm? Maybe. Sounds like something I’d like to be a part of. Let's go through the Left Field gambit of farm companies so far:

So yes, we're building a super farm in Left Field. But the food system is big, and it's filled with big problems. This week's company doesn't touch your food directly — it touches the residual stuff, things like corn stover and forest debris. Combine those two, and you've got our next company's recipe for removing tons — literally, tons — of CO2 from the atmosphere.

Introducing Charm Industrial. They turn leftover corn stalks and forest debris into bio-oil, a thick, sticky, carbon-rich liquid (aka barbeque sauce), and pump it straight down into old oil wells. Like filling in a pothole the state's been ignoring for years — except at the scale of an entire depleted oil field.

Back to middle school science class. Plants are really good at two things — filling every inch of open space in my sister's home, and pulling CO2 out of the air and locking it into their stems and leaves. Through photosynthesis, plants (a) pull in CO2, (b) use sunlight and water to create sugars, and (c) release oxygen.

But take a fallen tree in a forest (that no one heard) — it's no longer performing photosynthesis. That leftover tree just rots or burns, and all the carbon it was using to feed itself goes right back into the atmosphere.

That's exactly where Charm comes in.

Step 1: Grab the biomass before it rots or burns.

Step 2: Run it through fast pyrolysis. Fast what? Pyrolysis... duh. Ever heard of it? Me neither. So now let the non-expert explain. Fast pyrolysis is the process of heating leftover material such as timber debris or corn stover to 500+°C in seconds — without burning. What comes out is a dense, carbon-loaded bio-oil, plus ash.

Step 3: Storage. Not your average Storage Wars facility — we're talking EPA-regulated injection wells.

Most of the time that's an old depleted oil and gas well. Charm pumps bio-oil down to refill the same wells that once held crude oil. The company also uses old salt caverns, which are genuinely hollow and need to be filled with solid material to prevent sinkholes.

Either way, the bio-oil doesn't just sit there as a liquid. It's thick… real thick. Thick enough to solidify, turning that space into permanent storage for centuries, same as the oil and gas that formation already held onto for hundreds of millions of years.

Is that good storage?

So we know the why and how. But who’s paying for this? Well, turns out it’s some pretty big players you may not expect.

Boeing, JPMorganChase, Frontier, Shopify, and more. Charm literally has an online ledger of who is paying and how many tons of carbon they've removed.

But why are they paying at all? Because they've all made a public promise: net-zero. That doesn't mean their business will operate at zero emissions; it means they'll cut back on what they can and pay someone else to remove the rest. That's the "net."

So, now we've got real companies paying real money (millions) to a startup using a technology most of you had never heard of until today to remove thousands of tons of carbon from the atmosphere.

Find a problem, find a solution, and customers will come.

Peter Reinhardt. Short version: High school → advanced math & physics → MIT Aerospace Engineering → dropped out junior year → Y Combinator with his friends → started Segment → sold to Twilio for $3.2B → Charm Industrial.

So no, Peter isn’t the type of guy to have a big exit and disappear to a beach somewhere. But then again, neither are most of the founders in Left Field. Peter, like many other great founders, is driven by meaningful projects and solving big problems.

Following his Segment exit, Peter co-founded Charm in 2018 alongside three others. All three have since left the company. Peter’s the only founder still standing, and he’s still the one running it.

And running Charm isn’t enough to keep him busy. He’s also building a second company solving a completely different problem. A future Left Field feature? I think so.

Here’s the thing: nothing is forcing Boeing, JPMorgan, or Frontier to buy a single ton from Charm. There are no laws — yet — that say a company must hit net-zero.

What is becoming law is California’s SB 253 disclosure law, which requires in-scope companies — those operating within California and generate more than $1B in annual revenue — to publicly report their actual emission numbers. But again, reporting an ugly number isn't illegal. A company could disclose exactly how much carbon it's emitting and do nothing about it.

So why spend money on offsetting your footprint at all? Reputation, mostly. Saying "we're net zero" matters to a lot of investors and customers. Some of it is likely a bet that today's disclosure laws become tomorrow's mandatory reduction laws — so getting ahead of it rather than scrambling later. And to give credit where credit is due, some of it is just people and companies who believe this is a real problem worth spending money on.

So the whole model runs on voluntary spending staying that way. If budgets tighten or the value of "net-zero" fades away, demand for Charm could shrink fast.

But here's the upside — Charm isn't selling a future promise to these companies. They're actually doing it. As of today (8/15), their public ledger shows 14,548 tons removed. That's a real delivery of their promise. And nothing to scoff at.

Picture the scaled version of this. Farmers get a market for waste that used to rot. The US Forestry Service has use for the millions of tons of fallen timber that needs to be removed from our parks. And a lot of old, depleted wells get plugged and put to use instead of serving no purpose.

Then there's the actual math. Charm's currently charging ~$470 a ton, with a stated target of $50. That's a long way away, but it's the same curve we've described with other companies — like Exowatt. If Charm can get anywhere close to that number, carbon removal stops being a flashy PR line item only the JPMorgans and Boeings can afford, and becomes something almost any company can buy into.

Removing the carbon impact of the companies and operations we rely on for everyday life. Not a bad circle of life.

Charm is hiring. 10 open roles on their job board, primarily in Fort Lupton, CO, with a couple of remote roles. Biz Ops, R&D, and Finance. Does Injection Engineering Manager tickle your fancy? How does $160,000 - $195,000 a year with equity stock options and other benefits sound? Oh, and you’ll be practically saving the world.

Open roles → https://jobs.lever.co/charmindustrial

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