Founders Everywhere: Dylan Lew, Kyle Wyche, and Elliott Bennett
Founders Everywhere: Dylan Lew, Kyle Wyche, and Elliott Bennett
Dylan Lew, Kyle Wyche, and Elliott Bennett are the co-founders of Ecotone Renewables, a startup focused on creating sustainable solutions for food waste management.
Welcome to Founders Everywhere, where we highlight the incredible people behind the companies we’ve backed at Everywhere Ventures, a global pre-seed fund supported by a community of 500 founders and operators.
Globally, 30-40% of all produced food is wasted. That’s $2.6 trillion dollars of wasted annually! It also significantly contributes to the climate crisis, accounting for 8% of the total global greenhouse gas emissions worldwide — that’s twice the emissions generated by the entire aviation industry each year. Ecotone Renewables is digesting the problem by chewing up and spitting out food waste, both literally and figuratively. They take recycled shipping containers and turn them into ZEUS (Zero Emission Upcycling System), a patented anaerobic food waste processing system that saves time and money and reduces the carbon footprint. These containers, also known as digesters, turn the leftovers into Soil Sauce, a nutrient-rich liquid fertilizer that is more sustainable than synthetic fertilizers. And if you see Zeus on the street, you'll be struck by the stunning artwork, as they collaborate with local artists to transform them into beautiful pieces of art.
The co-founders of Ecotone renewables are Dylan Lew, CEO, Kyle Wyche, COO, and Elliott Bennett, CFO. Dylan has a bachelor's and master's degree in materials engineering from Carnegie Mellon and worked for GE Renewables on fleet management and failure analysis. Dylan met Kyle through the startup ecosystem at CMU and UPitt and brought Kyle onto the team for his operational superpowers. Dylan and Elliott met on the playground when they were 4 and have been friends ever since. Elliott brings experience in marketing, finance, and sales. Together, they’re paving the way to community sustainability through innovation, education and climate-smart actions. They’re building a world without waste.
What inspired the creation of Ecotone Renewables?
The idea for Ecotone was born out of a student group that included Carnegie Mellon, the University of Pittsburgh, and the University of Michigan. We originally developed an aquaponics system called the Aquaponics Project, which became Pittsburgh's first portable farm, set up right downtown. We realized that aquaponics didn't work effectively on a small scale; it really only functioned well at an industrial level. This led us to pivot and explore what a food waste solution could look like and whether it could fit into a shipping container. We were trying to figure out how to manage the biogas produced from the waste and this evolved into the creation of Ecotone Renewables. While there are three of us as co-founders who are currently running the company, there were actually a whole hodgepodge of students helping to build our first prototype of the digestor. We benefited from the contribution of Sasha Cohen Ioannides, Vinh Luong, Catie Schrading and a few others who don’t get enough credit, and were pivotal to our success.
What's Ecotone Renewables’ North Star?
Our North Star is a world without waste. What if that actually existed? It feels like such a foreign idea because we’re so used to seeing waste everywhere, but for me that’s the “Utopian North Star.” Why not aim for that? At a minimum, we can eliminate food waste from landfills and it’s a challenge we’re working to solve and scale.
How does Ecotone Renewables inspire “customer love”?
Our products are creating a deep sense of community and sustainability, as everybody loves having a solution to food waste in their own neighborhood. Customers appreciate our reliability, accessibility and ease of use. There's a trash chute on the digester to dump the waste, so it’s a habit we’re all used to, but instead of the black garbage bag, it’s the green compostable bag. What's inside the digester is a bunch of sensors, tanks, grinders, and camera sensors with a machine learning algorithm that basically detects, aggregates, analyzes, and reports exactly what’s being wasted (15 lbs of lettuce, 20 lbs of spinach, etc.). Customers have found that to be super helpful and valuable to reduce costs. And as an added bonus, they get the tangible benefits of the Soil Sauce.
Tell us about some milestones that Ecotone Renewables has crushed.
We’ve raised about $1.4 million in pre-seed funding.
By year-end, we’re on track for a $600k run rate, and we’re targeting a $3 million run rate by mid-2025. The goal is to keep expanding our customer base, growing the team, and adding more units.
We’ve partnered with some amazing organizations including Bryant University, The University of Pittsburgh, Meta, Plant City X, Allegheny Health Network, the City of Pittsburgh and Pittsburgh International Airport. We’re seeing a strong fit with schools, hospitals, corporate offices, restaurants, hotels, and cities.
Fun fact:
Dylan: I was a pole vaulter in high school and college until an injury forced me into retirement. It’s a fun sport, but it can also be slightly terrifying. There’s probably a thread to tie between people who do dangerous sports and entrepreneurship.
Kyle: I hiked through and lived in the Amazon Rainforest for a month in 2017.
Elliott: I ran the Pittsburgh Marathon for Ecotone.
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