Charlie Walch, Pluton co-founder
“As the ‘non-science’ founder of Pluton I always knew our science team had the ‘right stuff,’” then CFO Charlie Walch said in a February 2022 LinkedIn post, his last while in a leadership position at a company he co-founded.
Since then his role at the company he and scientist Barry Goldman founded has become unclear…
Here’s what can be verified:
- The company hired a new CFO earlier this month. (see 4thEst8 article, below)
- Walch’s LinkedIn profile cites his position at Pluton ending in March
- He currently claims self-employment at Current Motor Works
- Walch has been scrubbed from the Pluton website ‘who we are’ page
Repeated requests for comment going back a couple weeks have gone unanswered. Their public relations firm of record says they no longer represent Pluton.
Walch’s work history on LinkedIn
Musical chairs:
Pluton has had three different CEO’s in the past 18 months, starting with Walch who took the helm at the company’s founding in 2017. In the spring of 2021 the 4thEst8 reported how co-founder Goldman replaced Walch as CEO, with Walch assuming the CFO position – but that lasted about six months when the company hired a third (and as far as we know, current) CEO, Steven Slater.
At that time the company explained that as it grew Slater had the background and connections that was needed in the CEO slot, and that Goldman would return to CTO and Walch would remain at CFO.
Two CFO’s (briefly):
That changed less than a month ago when the company brought on Elizabeth Gallegos as CFO – a position simultaneously (for a while) held by Walch.
Pluton is a microbial testing and discovery company, focused on finding unique microbes to replace synthetic chemical applications in agriculture, using a technique they call bio-mining. The company was founded in 2017, has 16 employees (at last official count) and is headquartered in the Center for Emerging Technologies in the Cortex district of St. Louis. The company recently won the Radical Carbon and Soil Challenge, which came with a $1M investment, bringing their total to a little over $9M.
Pluton has been in several incubators and accelerators including the Plug and Play Tech Center’s agtech accelerator, the Illumina Accelerator, and the IN2 Wells Fargo Innovation Incubator. In 2020 it acquired Inotech Laboratories in Maryland Heights, Mo. after Walch brought in 38 investors to raise nearly $850,000 in what PitchBook called equity crowdfunding.
Investors include Better Ventures, First Ventures, The Yield Lab Institute, Wing Venture Capital, The Grantham Foundation, Neglected Climate Opportunities, Radicle, and Fall Line Capital.
Links:
On the 4thEst8:
Pluton wins competition and $1M
Pluton raises $6.6M; hires another CEO
Meet Pluton’s new CEO (note: this is not their current CEO)
