Founder

Who We Are

ATUM is a Singapore deep-tech venture builder and investor. We build companies from breakthrough, IP-backed research, bringing capital, operational muscle, and partners from industry, VC, and government into every build. We’ve built and backed 15 ventures, and we invest in fast-scaling deep-tech with real fundamentals, not hype.

The Venture

Factories still cure glue, coatings and composites in ovens that heat the whole room when only the part needs it, wasting most of the energy. And the bonds they make are permanent, so mixed-material parts such as battery packs and bonded electronics get scrapped whole instead of repaired or recycled.

We’re fixing both. The core is a ceramic additive from NTU that stirs into any adhesive or resin with no reformulation. A standard magnetic coil heats it from the inside, curing the part with 5 to 10 times less energy than an oven, and each particle switches itself off at a set temperature so nothing scorches. Run the field again and the bond releases on command, ready to be taken apart later for repair or recycling.

Debonding and composites are the biggest prizes: debond-on-demand is what circularity rules now push for (the EU already requires 95 percent of a vehicle recovered and 85 percent recycled), opening EV battery disassembly, electronics rework and mixed-material recycling, while volumetric curing reaches joints ovens cannot. Curing adhesives and coatings is the near-term pilot. It is a platform play across advanced manufacturing, proven in the lab but still early and not yet incorporated, a founding seat at the very start with a build ATUM has committed to.

The Role

You’ll be the founding CEO. You own the commercial side of the business: who buys this, what they pay for it, how it gets sold, and how the company gets funded.

Your founding CTO is already in place. He brings close to two decades in advanced materials, taking new products from the lab to full-scale production. He has led the materials division of an advanced-manufacturing company, headed product development for a US materials start-up, and is now part of the research team behind the technology at NTU. The NTU inventors will support the venture as technical advisors, alongside a dedicated ATUM venture team.

What is missing, and what you bring, is the person who turns real science into a company customers pay for.

Together, we’ll:

• Turn the lab result into a first paid pilot on the near-term curing use, then build out the debonding and composites platform
• Prove the value case: the energy and cycle time saved on curing, and the repair, disassembly and recycling that debond-on-demand unlocks in validated numbers
• Raise pre-seed and seed capital alongside ATUM
• Open the channels: composite and adhesive formulators, electronics, battery and EV manufacturers, recyclers, and the OEMs who care about repair, disassembly and circularity

This is not a job. It’s a founding journey where you share the risk, the upside, and the impact.

Requirements

Requirements

• B2B industrial sales track record: You’ve sold technical products, materials, or equipment to manufacturers, chemicals, or process customers. Long sales cycles, technical buyers in the room, and you carried the number.
• You’ve sold something new: You’ve taken a product the customer wasn’t buying before and built the internal business case, on cost, ROI and qualification, that got it approved. This matters here more than anything, because we’re asking a plant to add something to a process it already trusts.
• Comfortable with materials and unit economics: You understand pilots, qualification, cost per kilogram and per part, and what it takes to scale from a lab batch to a production line. You can build a credible price-and-value model and hold your own with materials scientists and process engineers without being one.
• Commercial judgement in deep-tech: You can choose the right first market, read where the technology can win, and have the discipline to walk away from the applications where it doesn’t.
• Resilient and ready: You have the runway to commit full-time, and you know building deep-tech hardware and materials takes grit, iteration, and patience. You don’t need to be Singapore-based, though you’ll need to be here often.

Bonus

• Existing relationships in composites, adhesives, coatings, electronics, automotive or EV, or the recycling and circular-economy world, whether formulators, contract manufacturers, or OEMs.
• A background in specialty chemicals, materials, or industrial process engineering.

Benefits

Why Build With Us

• A real starting point: Working science from a world-class NTU team and a build ATUM has committed to. Not a blank page.
• Founder-led: You’re the CEO, with meaningful founding equity.
• Straight talk on money: There’s no salary at the start. ATUM funds the pre-seed and we have accelerated access to Singapore government grants, which together fund the early build. Salary comes when the seed round closes. You’ll need runway to bridge that, and we’d rather say so now than three conversations in.
• Funding-ready: ATUM backs the build with pre-seed capital and grant access, plus follow-on funding from our investor network.
• Hands-on partners: We’re in the trenches with you on product, GTM, licensing, and fundraising, not just on the cap table.
• Domain access: Labs, the inventors, technical experts, early adopters, and an ecosystem already engaged.