We analyzed 60 markets to look for great startup opportunities. We gathered size and amount invested to build opportunity scores, then considered falling input costs to pick a few top opportunities to highlight. One of the top opportunities we found was paper product manufacturing.

The paper product manufacturing industry is a $77B market in the U.S., but there are only a handful of U.S. teams working on making paper products in new ways. This industry includes paper for writing and printing, toilet paper, and cardboard packaging. The primary cost inputs of paper are pulp, labor, and energy. Synthetic biology approaches could drop the cost of pulp, robotics could reduce labor costs, and renewable energy could reduce the cost of energy required.

The companies in the space are older, with 9/10 of the top revenue leaders founded more than 20 years ago.

The top four U.S. Wood Pulp Mill companies generate 58% of this market’s revenue.

Dropping Input Costs

The cost of solar panels has dropped 400x in the last 40 years.

Costs for robotic automation have declined 6x over the last 20 years.

Costs to culture plant tissues in a bioreactor have declined 50x over the last 10 years.