Our group is home to the development of new organic reactions, that maximally rise the complexity of simple organic molecules in a single synthetic operation. This is typically achieved by guiding the starting material(s) through a sequence of transformative elementary steps. Evidently, the outcome of such a sequence heavily relies on the nature of the reactive intermediates encountered along the way. Most research in the area engages transition metal catalysts to generate these reactive intermediates. In a complementary approach, we try to identify and understand species that provide highly interesting reactivity and do not require a transition metal catalyst for their formation or follow up chemistry. Our current focus is on vinyl cations and boryl anions.