Sean Petterson sold his last hardware company after raising more than $60 million. Now he is in Phoenix extruding recycled polypropylene into a board that boatbuilders are bolting into 2026 hulls - and he wants a micro-factory in every city with a plastic problem.
Caroline Vanderlip is the founder and CEO of Re:Dish, a Brooklyn-based reusable foodware company that swaps single-use containers for durable, USA-made ones, then collects, sterilizes, and redistributes up to 75,000 items a day from an automated industrial warewashing plant. After three decades launching businesses inside NBC, CNBC, AT&T, and her own publishing-tech ventures, she traded media for dishwashing in her sixties, betting that the most radical thing a company can do is wash its own plates and use them again.