How a room full of entrepreneurs helped FiberX find its voice — and sharpen its strategy
By Dave Skibinski, CEO, FiberX
I’ve pitched FiberX hundreds of times. To investors, to customers, to farmers leaning against their trucks in the middle of a cornfield. After a while, you think you’ve got your story nailed.
Then you walk into a room full of other founders and realize you’ve been making it harder than it needs to be.
That’s the honest takeaway from our time in the Purdue Innovates Accelerator — a three-month program run by Purdue Research Foundation that puts Indiana startups through a structured, intensive process of refinement, mentorship, and peer accountability. We came in thinking we needed capital and connections. We got those. But the most valuable thing we walked out with was three words.
Residue to Revenue.
It didn’t come from our team. It came from another entrepreneur in the room — someone with no particular background in biomaterials or agricultural chemistry — who listened to us explain what FiberX does and offered that phrase almost offhandedly. We took it and ran.
Here’s why it matters: we’ve spent years explaining that FiberX takes corn stover — the stalks, leaves, and husks left in the field after harvest — and turns it into high-performance industrial feedstocks. We talked about mechanical refining, lignin-first processing, bio-based resins, performance additives. All of it true. All of it important. But “Residue to Revenue” captures the whole thing in a way anyone can understand. It says what we do for farmers. It says what we do for manufacturers. It tells you we’re serious about economics, not just science.
That’s the kind of clarity that only comes when you get outside your own head.
What the Program Actually Delivered
The Purdue Innovates Accelerator isn’t a lecture series. It’s structured pitch refinement combined with what they call “mentor swarms” — rapid-fire sessions with experienced entrepreneurs and investors who’ve built and sold companies. They ask hard questions and they don’t slow down for jargon. You either have a clear answer or you don’t.
For FiberX, that process forced some good discipline. We sharpened how we sequence our story. We got clearer about which of our two platforms — our commercial mechanical refinery and our biorefinery in development — to lead with and when. And we got honest about what we’re asking for, and from whom.
That last piece matters more than people realize. A company at our stage is always making multiple asks simultaneously: capital, customers, partnerships. The accelerator helped us articulate all three clearly and without apology.
Where We Go From Here
As we look at the next three to six months, our focus is direct:
We’re seeking accredited investors for our bridge round. The mechanical refinery is producing and selling product. The biorefinery platform is advancing. We’re building on real commercial traction, and we’re looking for capital partners who understand that materials innovation takes a little longer than an app — and pays off in a fundamentally different way.
We’re looking for introductions to manufacturers who could use materials from our Merrillville plant. If your production lines use plastics, rubber, resins, coatings, or composites — and you’re interested in materials that perform without the price premium or the petrochemical dependencies — we want to talk.
And we’re seeking development partners for the biorefinery platform. The science is deep, the IP is protected, and the market opportunity is significant. The right partner brings either downstream application expertise, complementary technical capability, or both.
A Note on Indiana
One thing the accelerator reinforced: we’re building the right company in the right place. Indiana grows more corn per acre than almost anywhere on earth. The post-harvest residue left in those fields is an enormous, underutilized resource. The chemical and engineering talent base here — anchored by institutions like Purdue — is world-class. The state’s economic development infrastructure is genuinely supportive of manufacturing innovation.
FiberX is an Indiana company solving a problem with Indiana inputs, for customers across the country and eventually the world. Residue to Revenue isn’t just a tagline. It’s a commitment to the farmers, the manufacturers, and the investors who are building this with us.
We’re grateful to Purdue Innovates for the program, the mentors, and the candid feedback. And we’re just getting started.
READ THE PURDUE RESEARCH FOUNDATION POST ABOUT THIS STORY
FiberX is a biomass refinery based in Merrillville, Indiana. We convert post-harvest agricultural residue into high-performance industrial materials.
