Dr. Biddle is the Managing Director of Evok Innovations, an entrepreneur-led CleanTech venture fund that aims to increase the scale, diversity and quality of early-stage innovations focused on clean energy, reducing the time it takes to commercialize technologies. Mike serves on the Boards of six Evok portfolio companies – all in the CleanTech space (Syzygy Plasmonics, Quidnet Energy, Kelvin, Koloma, Ebb Carbon, Karbonetiq) as well as one from Tin Shed Ventures/Patagonia: Bureo. He was on the Board of Mosaic Materials before Baker Hughes bought the company early in 2022 and on the board of Twelve before Evok exited it’s position.
Mike is a co-founder of and investor in CO280, a carbon capture and sequestration project development company, launched in stealth in 2021 and publicly in 2022.
Before Evok, Dr. Biddle founded MBA Polymers - literally from his garage. He grew MBA to the world’s leading multi-national company recovering plastics from end-of-life durable goods, such as computers, electronics, appliances, automobiles and now household waste. When the company was sold, it had a processing capacity of over 300 million lbs/yr in Europe and China. Some of the largest manufacturers in the world have used MBA’s plastics to replace virgin plastics in their new products. It is one of the few CleanTech/HardTech companies still operating and expanding more than 30 years after he started it.
Mike worked for several large companies, namely General Electric, Cummins Engine Company and Dow Chemical, before striking out on his own in 1992. Mike received a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Louisville with high honors and a Ph.D. in Polymer Science and Engineering from Case Western Reserve University, with highest honors. He was a Dow-sponsored Sloan Fellow at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, graduating with an MS in Management Science.
Mike, who is often called the “Garbage Man” for his groundbreaking work in extracting valuable resources from highly complex waste streams around the world, has won numerous international awards. Examples include:
CNN created a short documentary on Mike as part of its Make, Create & Innovate series: http://ht.cdn.turner.com/cnn/big/business/2014/08/14/spc-make-create-innovate-plastic-man.cnn_512x288_550k.mp4 A Big SHFT 3-minute documentary features Mike as one of “10 Innovators Changing the World”: https://vimeo.com/44697825
Mike’s TED talk has received praise from around the world with over 1 million unique views: http://www.ted.com/talks/mike_biddle
Popular Science wrote a feature length (8-page) profile on Mike’s entrepreneurial journey: The Garbage Man: http://www.popsci.com/article/science/garbage-man
