By Elliott Brack
Editor and Publisher, GwinnettForum
JUNE 4, 2021 | A 1988 Norcross High graduate rang the bell on Earth Day, April 22, at the NASDAQ stock exchange in New York, signaling the public listing of his company’s stock, Zymergen. He is Josh Hoffman, 50, of San Francisco. He is the son of Eve Hoffman of Peachtree Corners and the late Howard Hoffman. He is the CEO of Zymergen, which was offered for sale on NASDAQ at a price of $31 per share that opening day. As of Wednesday, the stock was trading at $35. Its trading symbol is ZY.
The company, based in Emeryville, Calif., just north of Oakland and the Bay Bridge, creates new materials by programming microbes into novel chemicals. Hoffman says: “We take single cell microbes and create a new chemical plant, making new material useful to man.”
Hoffman continues: “For 100 years, most of the stuff we touch and deal with came from petrochemicals. Barrels of oil are cracked into component parts, and recombine with the many materials we routinely touch. Now our company makes new products in a sustainable way that helps mankind.”
The company’s website puts it in a more scientific light: “We do biofacturing as an ideal for making naturally-derived, bioactive ingredients for sustainable consumer care products. What better way to fight off pesky bugs than nature itself? Where we once had only hypotheses, today our company has proof points and a pipeline of products.”
Hoffman
Among those new products are those where microbes eat plastic, and turn them into useful products, such as indigo for blue jeans, or making improved screens for cell phones, tablets and computers.
The company started eight years ago to make better products through biology. It now has a work force of 800 employees, with additional offices in Boston, Seattle and New York, and sales teams in Taiwan and Japan.
“We’ve built a great team,” Hoffman says, “And have been lucky in finding great people in the Bay Area from three local universities, Stanford, UCal at Berkeley and the University of San Francisco. That gives us a head start.”
After high school, Hoffman graduated from Berkeley as a social science major. His first job after college was as an economist for the Ugandan Ministry of Finance in Uganda. After that, he returned to graduate school at Yale, obtaining a master’s in international relations and another master’s in public and private management.
For six years, he was with the consulting firm of McKenzie, working with clients in chemical technology and other areas, developing “a mix of strategies for clients all over the world, including Australia and England.” Then came a six year stint with a firm in England.
Today Hoffman lives in the city of San Francisco with his wife, writer and editor Katie Morris, and their two children, Issac, 14 and Alice, 11. Among the family pastimes: camping and mountain climbing.
Hoffman is one of three founders of Zymergen, along with Zach Serber, a metabolic engineer, the chief science officer; and Jed Dean, a microbial engineer and vice president of operations for the firm.
Its web site states: “Back in those early days, we raised the prospect of becoming a public benefit corporation. At the time, we frankly felt it might spook investors into thinking we weren’t committed to increasing shareholder value. But investors and other companies are catching on. More and more companies will follow our lead in saying we stand for a lot more than just profits.”
Overall, their goal is to “create a vibrant, sustainable future through biology.” That’s Zymergen, headed by a Gwinnettian.
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
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