Now that drinking straws have become a poster child for the harms of single-use plastic, it’s easy to find eco-friendly alternatives, whether they’re reusable, compostable, or abandoned altogether. But Julianna Keeling says her company, Terravive, makes the most user-friendly version.
“When you open it, it looks just like a regular straw … unlike the godforsaken paper straw,” she says, pulling a pale beige straw out of a wrapper bearing Terravive’s green logo. In a nursed beverage, paper straws tend to ball up into a soggy mass.
Keeling, Terravive’s founder and CEO, says her straw performs just like its plastic predecessor. But it’s not plastic: It’s made from plants such as corn and sugarcane.
“We're actually taking the excess fibrous crop … and then we are actually molding that and turning that into the products that you see here,” Keeling says. She motions at a table holding way more than just straws: There are school lunch trays, restaurant takeout containers, disposable knives, spoons, and cups – all made from plants.
Terravive sells these items to large businesses across the U.S. and abroad, making it just one example of the environmentally-conscious manufacturing that Pittsburgh officials want to attract.
“The type of talent that they would be hiring are people who are trying to solve big challenges,” said Mark Thomas, president of the Pittsburgh Regional Alliance. “They can … be a supplier for companies all over the world. And so, that's really key to our growth as a region.”
Thomas’ organization tries to woo businesses, and staffers there have spoken with Terravive about possibly building out operations in southwestern Pennsylvania.
The seven-year-old company already makes its products at 16 factories scattered across the country. But now, it's determining where to expand its research and development and even open its own plant. Keeling and Swider question whether Terravive's home in Richmond, Virginia, is the best location.
So, they are taking a serious look at Pittsburgh. They regularly visit the world’s former steel capital. But they’re also considering Sun Belt superstar Austin.
Where Terravive ultimately expands will offer lessons on how two distinct communities can appeal to entrepreneurs whose ideas could modernize the products that people use every day.
How a high school project became a global company
Keeling didn’t start out with the intent of inventing the latest technology in straws. She first researched how to make plant-based gel capsules for a high school science project around 2010. After creating her own material, she soon discovered new applications for it. She was paid to continue her work as a student at Washington and Lee University in Virginia.
“And then the business piece of it really started to take hold,” she said. “One day, I decided to ask my advisor – I was like, ‘You know, I really want to see if I can turn this into a company. What do you say if I … use my stipend and then take a year off rather than coming back to school?’”
Keeling got internships at tech companies in San Francisco to learn how startups grow. When she returned to Virginia, she finished her undergraduate degree in environmental studies and chemistry before completing stints at two business incubators. She also started to get some press.
Seasoned business executive and advisor Joe Swider spotted Keeling in the Richmond Times-Dispatch in the summer of 2019. “There was a picture there of Julianna holding, I think, some straws and some cutlery and a tray. And she’s sitting there smiling,” he remembered. He said the paper described Terravive as making biodegradable and single-use products.
“And I said that's kind of interesting because I've paid attention to where a lot of the regulations are going. And a lot of cities, states, countries, and regions are banning plastic and Styrofoam."
Also a resident of Virginia, Swider is now vice president and chief operating officer at Terravive.
Between manufacturing, logistics, accounting, and other jobs, he and Keeling said, Terravive has contracted out work to more than 1,000 people nationally. It directly employs about 10 people, according to the two executives.
They said their customers include retailers, food service companies, schools, government offices and corporations that span the globe.
While they declined to disclose revenue figures, they said they haven’t taken any venture capital, instead generating profits based on sales alone.
So now, Swider said, “We're looking at what's going to be in the best interest for us for the next stage of growth.”
New start in a new town?
For months, he and Keeling have scouted out sites for a new research and development facility. They want to bring down the cost of their product without sacrificing quality, and they plan later to open a factory.
As the company has grown, their doubts about Virginia have mounted.
“All of our key, core anchor clients are not in Virginia. … And we've tried hard to try to win some key clients there,” Keeling said. “So that kind of tells us that maybe Virginia isn't the best spot for our business to be in.”
She first considered a move to Pittsburgh largely because Swider grew up in the area and has worked with locally-based companies over the course of his career. He has observed the evolution of the region’s startup economy. But he and Keeling agree they can’t ignore Austin’s status as a tech magnet.
Brent Wistrom edits Austin Inno, a publication of the Austin Business Journal that focuses on startups. He covered the same beat in Richmond earlier in his career.
He predicted that Terravive would have an easier time finding corporate customers in Texas’ capital city.
“Austin's a really big food town [and] has developed a pretty big name for that. So the number of restaurants and places where a company like Terravive might find customers is huge,” he said. “And on top of that, a lot of times people are really focused on working with people who have a footprint somehow within the city.”
Wistrom noted that a lively startup scene has developed in Richmond, too.
“It's a little bit of a smaller pond,” he said. “So you might be able to attract more attention and sort of be the bigger fish as compared to Austin, kind of the way Austin looks at San Francisco.”
Keeling and Swider said, in Virginia, they also enjoy proximity to lawmakers in Washington who influence federal contracts.
“But,” Wistrom said, “I totally understand maybe looking at a Pittsburgh or an Austin just because of some of those corporate relationships [Terravive wants to land]. And there's something to be said for having a new start in a new town, too.”
The tortoise or the hare?
Keeling said both cities meet almost all of her priorities.
“When I look at Pittsburgh,” she said. “I see a huge opportunity for growth, and I see a hunger for growth.”
Pittsburgh universities are known for cutting-edge materials science research, and Keeling said she values the region’s deep history of manufacturing, in addition to its low housing costs. However, it wasn’t initially an obvious prospect to her friends and family.
“They think of the Steelers. They think of 'Steel Town.' But they don’t necessarily know about the growing innovation economy,” she said.
In Austin, by contrast, Swider said, “you walk down the street … and there's just people overflowing, getting dinner, talking, talking business, networking. And [there’s] excitement.”
“You just meet tons of really interesting people in Austin,” agreed Jon Hockenyos, president of Austin-based economic and policy consulting firm TXP. He said the city’s vibe hooked him in 1985. He’s lived there ever since.
“It's always been the place where a disproportionately large number of smart people kind of want to live and work and raise their families and build their lives,” he said.
Businesses and workers have flocked to the Lone Star State.
There’s the warm weather, plus a rich music scene and trendy events like South by Southwest. So, it’s no surprise that Austin has added 100,000 jobs just since the COVID-19 pandemic began.
Hockenyos said manufacturing jobs at Terravive could help to diversify the boom.
“We are paying more attention, particularly in the city of Austin, [to] creating … good jobs for people who don't have college educations, or who might have two-year training, because we've [already] got a lot of software engineer jobs,” he said.
There are some downsides to the growth: Hockenyos said traffic’s a major headache and that housing, childcare and other amenities are expensive.
But Texas has a big advantage: no corporate income tax.
Pennsylvania, meanwhile, imposes a levy of 9.99%, although state lawmakers voted this summer to slash the rate to 4.99% by 2031.
“It's not something you want to lead with,” the Pittsburgh Regional Alliance’s Mark Thomas said of today’s rate. “We know we have a competitive environment that we operate in, but we'll do everything we can to make sure that [businesses] choose the state.”
Namely, policymakers in Harrisburg can award tax incentives while local and state officials can help companies to find the right location.
Regarding Terravive's demand for corporate customers, Thomas acknowledged that it’s not the instinct of most corporations based in Pittsburgh to prioritize local suppliers. He predicted that any shift on that front would require a yearslong cultural change that would outlast his tenure at the Pittsburgh Regional Alliance. (This week marks his last at the agency before he becomes CEO of the Greater Baltimore Committee, another economic development group.)
Ultimately, though, Thomas said quality of life usually looms largest for employers considering a move to Pittsburgh.
“And so when you show them our neighborhoods, and they see construction cranes, and they see new restaurants, and they see momentum, that somewhat mutes the story of us having a stagnant population because it does not reflect … what people see if they're looking at the city from the outside in,” he said.
Things to be discovered
He thinks Terravive is a natural fit for Pittsburgh, with all of the research activity happening locally. Sean Luther, executive director of InnovatePGH, said Terravive could help the region to break out of its pattern of not using that research to create jobs.
“It also really gets back to this DNA of Pittsburgh, of people who make things, and that being the foundation of our traditional economic basis,” Luther said. “And so that's what I think makes this a really interesting potential match for both the company and for the region.”
Terravive’s Keeling and Swider estimate they will hire 30 people at their future research and development site. Depending on the results of that work, the executives said they could add anywhere between 50 and 1,000 factory jobs.
Luther noted that, compared to Pennsylvania, Sun Belt states generally award more generous incentives to new and growing employers.
“And so it's really critical that the Commonwealth stay competitive, but do it in a way that's not race-to-the-bottom economic development: This isn't just a cash-for-jobs play,” he said. “It's investing in the ecosystems that make the Commonwealth more attractive based on the assets that we have … that cannot be replicated anywhere else in the country.”
Formed in 2017 at the behest of local leaders in government, higher education, and philanthropy, Luther’s organization aims to coordinate economic development efforts at Pittsburgh’s universities and in the surrounding community.
So while Austin already has a startup-friendly culture, Pittsburgh hopes to recreate that environment to boost its economy and draw people back to the region.
Keeling said she likes the idea of opting for the underdog.
“I personally view it as kind of like an undiscovered thing because if you go where everybody else is going, then you're kind of just following the herd. But sometimes there's things to be discovered in uncharted paths,” she said.
She is still weighing her options, however, and said she won't make a decision for months.
