Icebreaker Community Stories — Origin by Ocean
Whether through finding co-founders, developing ideas, or bringing together business partners — we want to highlight some of the success stories which had our community acting as an intermediary for people to connect and found their companies. This week we have the company that recently raised a €2M seed round — Origin by Ocean.
Icebreaker sat down with Mari Granström, one of the two founders of Origin by Ocean, to discuss how presenting her idea at our Pre-founder project (PFP) in the fall of 2018 led her down the path of becoming a founder.
Icebreaker: Hello! Could you just introduce yourself? Who are you and what do you do?
Mari: My name is Mari Granström and I have a PhD in organic chemistry. I think I’ve got a typical chemist’s background in a way that after getting my PhD, I joined big corporations and worked around the globe for quite some time, and then I decided that I actually wanted to work on my own ideas. I then decided to leave the corporate world behind me and started to do my own thing, and that led me to where I am today.
Icebreaker: Could you explain Origin by Ocean and what you do? How would you explain it to somebody who does not really understand the terminology?
Mari: Origin by Ocean specialises in biorefinery technology using marine biomass as an asset. The word bio in biorefinery is indicative of the raw material you use as a base. We use bladderwrack and blue green algae/cyanobacteria from the Baltic Sea as feedstocks. These raw materials contain interesting molecules which we extract from them as our products. By harvesting these algae types we remove the nutrients, thus helping the oceans gain back the balance they used to have.
The problem with the Baltic Sea, for example, is that it has too many nutrients flowing in it’s internal circle. It suffers from severe eutrophication.
Our goal is to take this raw material, and with our biorefinery technology, develop a way to extract value from the biomass so that we can then create different types of components out of the algae based materials and also develop our products.
Icebreaker: How did you come up with this idea? Was it your previous experience that prompted you to look at becoming a founder?
Mari: I’ve been doing this sort of research in corporations for a long time and have focused on chemicals, biomaterials and biorefinery. This whole concept and idea was a hobby of mine for a very long time.
As you work with different types of biomass, you start to see what actually makes sense.
So then I came up with this idea.
Icebreaker: How has your co-founder Mikael Westerlund come in and influenced your idea?
Mari: When I decided that I wanted to make this thing real — establish or found a company, that is — I was looking for a co-founder who was not from the same field of expertise as me. Then I met Mikael (Westerlund) during the Pre-founder Weekend in Porvoo in 2018.
Firstly, Mikael is a person who comes from an IT background, which is very different from my own. But secondly, I think most importantly, he was bringing in the whole kind of business side of things — things like how to build a business case and how to do an analysis of the market, etc…
Icebreaker: How did you even come in contact with Icebreaker or our Pre-founder Project in the first place?
Mari: I was looking for different types of ideas, innovation spaces. Because I was away abroad for a long, long time, when I moved back to Finland, I was keen on finding different types of hubs for people to share and build ideas. And then I was just googling and came across Icebreaker. I had a browse through your website and what you do and I realised that you guys focus on software and all that jazz. Because my idea was completely different and not software related I was hesitant, but then I decided that you know, what the heck, and I gave it a go.
Icebreaker: What did you think was beneficial about the pre-founder project? What would you say to anybody else who was maybe thinking about joining?
Mari: I think it’s very beneficial. I think it’s one of the key things that you have to get out there and you have to mix with different types of people.
I think in Finland the problem is that we tend to underestimate the differences we have in terms of expertise. You might meet somebody who could really provide a lot of value to your team and still think, “this person will not be able to help me”, but how wrong can you be?
I think that’s really the specialty of the PFP when I participated. It was run from one weekend to the other, and at first, you basically got to know all the other participants. You got to listen to stories of people who had already set up their companies and then there were some people like me presenting ideas.
Icebreaker: It was during the presentation that you had in Porvoo that you first got into contact with your co-founder Mikael, right? How did it evolve from you having to present your idea, to you co-founding a company together?
Mari: What happened was that Mikael was actually sitting in the seat in front of me during the idea presentation portion of the PFP. So when I got back from presenting my idea, he just turned around and says, “Oh, that’s an amazing idea. We need to talk”. After that, we just had a very, very short chat about the idea and who he is.
We decided that there is definitely something there.
We met on Monday or Tuesday after the weekend. We just started to talk about and build upon this idea.
Icebreaker: It has already been almost two years ago since your journey began, right? How has it been so far? And I guess even touching on that — your two million seed round — it would be interesting to hear about the natural progression of a start up from the idea phase into what you are doing now. Has it been as difficult as you imagined or has there been something you didn’t expect?
Mari: Mikeal and I sat down many more times after the PFP. We went through the whole plan and what we were lacking. We soon realised that the technology we were developing was really niche. So there weren’t too many VCs investing in this kind of technology, nor were there people or startups doing this sort of thing.
So we did all the markets research you can imagine, and the whole cost structure; everything. The whole thing we went through on day one, when the company was being established, from the first day all the way to production plant which will be working one day — a big factory producing our products.
It takes a long time.
We realised that as this is a very complex thing, we needed to build an advisory board from the beginning to get individuals from different backgrounds onboard. So we built this Advisory Board of 10 people helping us out.
Icebreaker: Awesome! Let’s take it back to just the basic principles of a startup. What do you think makes a good co-founder? How did you and Mikael find out you were a good match?
Mari: I think maybe it’s a bit of a cliche but I think it’s all about honesty and openness. So with Mikael, we organised a throw-up style session, where we basically wanted to be very open and honest to each other; who we actually are and how we work. And that’s a thing I believe you have to do because you don’t have a lot of time to get to know each other, right? I mean, if you don’t know this person from your past, you have to choose fairly quickly if this person is the right one for you. You just can’t be polished and give a certain false impression, you really have to show them your dark side.
Icebreaker: What do you mean by showing your darkside?
Mari: This dark side is something you carry with you all the time. When there is a problem it comes out. Suddenly all the nice things disappear and the real you appears. So having the understanding of each others true selves is very important.
Akseli: Okay. And so what kind of things can you say have brought you the success that you have had so far? Was it a case of right place right time? Or what do you think was the main thing that brought you to the closing of your €2M seed round?
Mari: I think it’s everything combined. I think the timing for this type of technology is right. And then secondly, I think it was the determination that we had. That’s it. And that’s something very typical of me that if I decide that I do something, I do it. And I think we managed to get the right people on board from the very beginning.
Icebreaker: Okay, great. So to wrap things up, do you have any words of wisdom to our pre-founders or people looking to join the startup ecosystem?
Mari: If you have an idea and you feel strongly about the idea, do it. Don’t overthink it or over analyse it too much — you just have to take the risk. It’s a good thing that things are raw when you start to develop something because at the end of the day they will be polished.
Joining Icebreaker’s Pre-founder Community
Get connected, get educated, and join the community which brings innovative, techy people together to create something great.
Reach out to us today and apply to join the Icebreaker pre-founder community! We’re excited to hear from you and equally excited to see what the future holds.
