Mike Woelk

Mike serves as CEO and co-founder of Corigin Solutions, a carbon removal startup that converts low value farm wastes into Carbon Dioxide Removal Credits and high value regenerative crop inputs that help farmers increase profits by increasing marketable yields while reducing fertilizer & chemical use and rebuilding soil fertility.

Before founding Corigin, Mike was the CEO of Picarro, Inc., a venture backed startup that revolutionized the way scientists study carbon, water, and nitrogen cycles through scientific measurements. In this capacity, he bootstrapped the company with no revenue but millions in burn through the global financial collapse into the world’s #1 producer of high precision instruments for greenhouse gas measurements and becoming profitable in less than 4-years. He then refocused the company into to a cloud-based, managed services model that transformed environmental compliance and asset integrity management processes for natural gas utilities and raised capital on a $100M premoney valuation. 

During his leadership years at Picarro Mike realized that while technology can inform us of a problem like climate change, it rarely solves the problem. “An MRI or blood work no more cures cancer than analytics cures climate change.” To solve for climate, carbon atoms must be removed from the atmosphere and permanently relocated somewhere else. The only somewhere else where that creates co-linear value is in topsoils. Hence, he left the tech world and founded Corigin to solve for climate, food and water security.

Before being recruited to lead Picarro, Mike served as a senior executive and Vice President Global Marketing and Business Development at Varian, Inc., a $1B public diversified scientific instrument company. Mike founded his first startup, Metachem Technologies, in 1991 which was acquired by Varian in 2000. Metachem was a manufacturer of consumables and instruments for pharmaceutical and chemical research.

Mike is a TEDx speaker and has been recognized as a Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum in Davos, IHS-Cera Energy Innovation Pioneer and a CNBC Disruptor, and has a degree in microbiology from Cal Poly Pomona.