It is unlikely that many of these functionalities would survive under strongly oxidizing conditions of conventional Kolbe electrolysis. As mentioned above, the direct nature of this new C-C bond forming method allows for a dramatic reduction in step-count to access chemical space. 25 of the 26 compounds shown in Table have been prepared before. In every single case, the retrosynthesis of these known compounds was wedded to a polar bond analysis. As such, they all exhibit low ideality and are plagued with multiple functional group manipulations, protecting groups, and redox fluctuations. 36 It is instructive to discuss some of these examples in greater repurposing existing structures with mostly functional group manipulations, where no C-C bond was formed . For instance, cyclobutane 1 was previously prepared using 2e -logic commencing from cyclobutane carboxylic acid requiring lengthy one-carbon homologation, followed by a Friedel-Crafts acylation/Wolff-Kishner sequence (9 steps total, 11% overall yield).