Solvus Global’s making it in Worcester

In my 2018 book, “Startup Cities,” I wrote that in order to host a lively startup scene a city needs pioneering entrepreneurs to initiate a snowball effect.

Sean Kelly, managing partner of Worcester-based Solvus Global, a developer of “technology solutions for the materials and manufacturing sector,” could be such a pioneer.

Before explaining why, let’s examine this snowball effect and why it’s important to the growth of a city’s startup scene. While many in my grandparent’s and parent’s generation started and operated businesses in Worcester, virtually everyone in my generation left Worcester to seek opportunities elsewhere.

The entrepreneurial successes of my generation of Worcester natives brought jobs and tax revenue to cities outside of Worcester. A case in point is Andy Ory, who co-founded Bedford-based Acme Packet in August 2000 and served as its CEO and president. Acme Packet went public in October 2006 and was acquired by Oracle in 2013 for about $2.1 billion.

Had Mr. Ory stayed in Worcester to start and operate Acme Packet, the city might have enjoyed many benefits. Acme Packet’s IPO might have signaled to venture capitalists that Worcester was a source of entrepreneurial talent.

VCs seeking to replicate the success of Acme’s early backers might have come here and invested in other talented entrepreneurs. Some of those might have been successful enough to go public. And that success would have created more entrepreneurs from the founding teams of these successful startups.

Worcester would have enjoyed the benefits, including higher tax revenues, more high-paying jobs, and rising real estate values.

This brings us to why Mr. Kelly could be such a pioneer.

He’s a local native who stayed here for his education and started Solvus Global here in August 2017. As he said in a Feb. 5 interview, “[I went] to Worcester Polytechnic Institute [because] science and math have always been my strongest subjects and being close to family and friends is paramount to me. The combination of a highly ranked school in my neighborhood and with the anchors I have here in Worcester, the choice was an obvious one. [In addition, going to WPI enabled me to] continue playing baseball. For graduate school, I was lucky enough to land in Professor Diran Apelian’s office and received full funding to get my Ph.D. in materials science and engineering working for the Center for Resource Recovery and Recycling.”

After graduating from WPI, Mr. Kelly co-founded Solvus Global “alongside my co-founders Aaron Birt and Diran Apelian. I realized I enjoy leading a team of diverse and motivated individuals who love to solve problems,” he said.

Solvus Global’s founding team members take on different jobs.

“Each of the three managing partners takes on a different role to help guide the company," Mr. Kelly said. "My core responsibility is to keep the organization firing on all cylinders and to create a working atmosphere that people want to be a part of. I do a good job getting maximum effort out of my team. They trust me, and I trust them. One of the biggest challenges in any startup, but especially one as diverse as Solvus Global, is having to juggle multiple tasks from being the janitor to running the day-to-day operations. I’m constantly working to improve my personal switching efficiency and effectiveness at guiding all aspects of our business.”

Solvus Global’s mission is to “provide our employees a platform to innovate.” The focus of their innovation is “developing technology solutions for the materials and manufacturing sector that solve difficult problems – those that are frequently thought to be in the ‘Valley of Death’ [a stage in a startup’s growth between winning initial early-adopter customers and tapping the mass market].

Mr. Kelly thinks of Solvus Global as more than a technology incubator or research lab.

“We enable our employees to think and behave like entrepreneurs and encourage the entire team to take ownership of commercializing a technology – even providing them a platform to spin-off a company from core technology developed at Solvus Global," he said.

Solvus Global, which has grown to 15 people since it was founded and has financed itself through its profits, targets very large market opportunities. “One of our core business areas today is the development of quality control and supply chain solutions for the additive manufacturing industry, which is projected to reach between $200 billion and $600 billion globally by 2025. Our secondary market, the industrial internet of things is projected to reach $15 trillion by 2030 globally,” he said.

Solvus Global believes that Worcester’s strengths outweigh its improvement opportunities. “We believe in Worcester’s strong industrial roots and that the city is on the cusp of blossoming once again, and we want to drive this renewal. There is a great talent pool from the local vocation schools to local colleges and universities that we can recruit. And there is great support from WBDC to the Worcester Business Economic Development office to local authorities,” he said.

Worcester’s challenges are a mixture of myth and transportation. “The myth is that Worcester is an undesirable city to live in, and you know what they say about myths. One challenge is access. The Worcester ecosystem would greatly be enhanced if we had access to high speed train service (every 15 mins) to Boston, or an airport that had many more flights,” concluded Mr. Kelly.

Peter Cohan of Marlboro heads a management consulting and venture capital firm, and teaches business strategy and entrepreneurship at Babson College. His email address is peter@petercohan.com.