Chris Carangelo, ESTEEM '21 | Tessellated (Materials Technology)

Describe your company:  Tessellated has taped into the latent strength of graphene to create low weight and high strength films. These films can be used for a myriad of applications such as football helmets, bulletproof vests, cars, planes etc., greatly increasing safety while also reducing costs and environmental impact.

Target Industries: Body armor, Sports equipment, and aerospace

What is your role in the company, and please list team members' names and their current role in the company: I am co-founder of Tessellated along with Notre Dame professor Tengfei Luo. I currently work on material testing, product design, and fundraising. Other team members are: Matthew Roush (market research and legal), Evan Kelmar (market research and financials), Ben Sheyko (risk management, material testing, and manufacturing).

Why did you apply to Race To Revenue? What are you hoping to get out of this experience?  We are very happy with the material we have been able to produce; however, we need help taking it from the lab to market. Race To Revenue is a perfect opportunity to further develop our go-to-market strategy, as well as prototype our product.

Has there been someone who has helped you with your venture so far? There have been a lot of people who have helped me throughout the past year to validate my venture. Most notably are Professor Tengfei Luo, Grant Hellwarth, and Jeff Sloan. Tengfei was the one who picked me for this project at the beginning of my masters program and was the one who encouraged me to pursue this venture full-time. Grant has over thirty years of experience in technology implementation and accounting, Jeff is the Editor and Chief for the website CompositesWorld. Both of these individuals agreed to mentor our team from a very early stage and have since become invaluable component to our venture with their expansive knowledge base and network.

What do you want to learn more about, relating to business development in general or your own company/venture specifically? I want to learn about proper scaling without increases in costs or decreases in quality. Many companies in our industry struggle because they either can't scale fast enough, or scale too quickly. .

Fun fact? This will be my first ever full time job.