Im scott mcgrew. When it comes to american independence good news. Lots of natural gas. Bad news, natural gas is not the kind of gas you need for your car, not without significant modification to the car, but what if you could modify the natural gas . A San Franciscobased startup sald siluria is turning natural gas into gasoline because natural gas is so inexpensive the company says it can manufacture gasoline for 1 a gallon. Investors love the idea. The company has raised 100 million in funding. Ed deneen is ceo of siluria. Has 35 years of experience in the petro business joined by david baker of the San Francisco chronicle and hanna kuchlor of the financial times. Considering i got a c in chemistry, is this chemistry or alchemy, something nobody else has done before or somebody that really knows Petro Chemicals knows what hes doing . Well, the chemistry is actually old. Its been around 40 years or so and the industry worked on it 10, 20 years, you know, so 20 years ago and was not successful in developing the technology, so weve succeeded by new innovations. Nanotechnology, screening, applying existing technologies to that same problem, and as simple as it sounds, thoroughly defining the problem, so its been around, but siluria has been successful in actually breaking through and developing the technology. Oftentimes technology when it moves forward doesnt move forward with a eureka moment at a chalkboard so this is a stepbystep, were just applying more modern technology to something somebody tried 20, 30 years ago. I think thats right. Weve been at this for about five years. Weve been adding innovations throughout this five years. The core invention is the catalyst that does the conversion of the gas to the fueling or to chemicals, but there have been a host of incremental improvements that weve added to it over that time, and well continue to do that. Now how soon could it be seen in gas stations across the country . Were starting up a demonstration unit in texas at the end of this year in terms of actual commercial production. I think youre looking at 2017 where we might start to see fuels or chemicals in the marketplace. You know, the same fracking boom thats giving us all this natural gas is also giving us a lot of oil that we didnt have before in the united states, a lot more domestic production. Do the Oil Companies actually have an incentive to go ahead and make gasoline out of natural gas, or is the oil cheap enough that they would want this for something totally different . The Oil Companies i think have an incentive because they generally produce gas when they produce oil so having a technology that would allow you to upgrade the value of that gas is very attractive to them. Often they are finding gas when they are looking for oil, and one of the one of the problems we saw was roughly 50 of the worlds natural gas either goes unused because you cant get it to market or it gets wasted in flaring and things of that nature. Thats why the saudis the saudis are one of your biggest investors which seems counterintuitive, not making oil to make gasoline, they would hate that idea, but what youre saying is there is a tremendous amount of natural gas thats either a byproduct or found at the same time where they could be monetizing that. Exactly, and the saudis are also saudi aramco is also interested in the chemical side of what we do, so they are looking to diversify and expand their business into the chemical sector. We give them a way to turn natural gas into chemical products. Let me just in, ahramco, the saudi stateowned oil company. Thats correct. David . Weve had a lot of efforts to develop fuels that would have lower Greenhouse Gas emissions overall, and some of those efforts have done okay. We all drive on a fair amount of ethanol these days, blended gasoline, but others have really kind of sputtered out and died. This, what is the Greenhouse Gaspereau file of this compared to regular gasoline . Does this process actually produce less Carbon Dioxide . Exactly. Whether youre talking about an oilbased fuel or oilbased chemical its roughly half of what you would see from the oilbased processes. Half, when you take the natural gas and make it into gasoline, then theres energy expended there, right . Well, our process, and one of the reason its lower in co2 emissions is we actually Generation Energy so our product is fuel, plus energy, plus water, and any process that im aware of to make a chemical or fuel actually need to put energy in. Right, but what im asking is, and what i think david was also asking and maybe i just didnt understand it, this idea that if youre going to take something to make something that is a fuel but expend energy at the same time, and corn is one of these things, by the time you turned it into gasoline you grew the corn and fertilized and drove the tractors and drove everything, yeah, its about a wash, but obviously not a wash in this case. In our case youre apples to apples youre roughly half of the emotions profile. And would it reach the consumer as cheap as we were talking about earlier, or is it going to be sort of at the same prices as regular gas . Well, trying to predict the pump price is very difficult, but the one thing that i know we will be doing is creating new competition in the marketplace, and any business that ive ever been in when you have more competition youre going to see lower prices for that particular industry or that particular marketplace, so i think its good news for consumers. I cant tell you exactly what the pump price would be, but new competition should create better prices. Weve heard a lot out of president obama in the last couple of weeks about wanting to trap fugitive methane emissions, methane emissions coming from oil and gas operations and getting into the atmosphere. Is that kind of government effort down the road something that could help your company . I think it could. I think most of it will be driven by pure economics, so if we go out and take a gas thats being flared and converted into a fuel, essentially our raw material cost is zero. Same thing if we go to a landfill and take the methane coming off a landfill and convert it at zero so theres a very strong economic driver there, stronger Environmental Policies might encourage that, but we believe the economics will win out on its own. Apologize if im coming out of your expertise level, but in the sense of trying to find green energy, we have natural gas. Would it make more sense if were trying to get that natural gas fuel into a car to power and electric plants which then powers electric cars. Is that more efficient and more green than what youre doing . And i realize youre not necessarily an expert on power plants. I think thats a viable use for natural gas, but often the problem is how do you get it there, so we bring a technology that allows you to get at that 50 of the gas that you cant bring to a power plant because of logistics, et cetera, so i think both will have a role in the marketplace. The fuels we make are cleaner than what you get out of conventional so theres a benefit there to the environment, and as we said the cost from co2 emissions are roughly head. Ed deneen is the ceo of siluria. Thanks for being with us and as you continue to grow your plants wed like to have you be back with us. Like to be back. Okay. Everybody agrees we need more Women Entrepreneurs but how exactly we get them, well, thats a bit more complicated. Well dive into that when press here continues. A lot of startups believe that most banks prefer to lend to most businesses leaving early stage investments for Angel Investors and venture capitalists. Citi National Bank is working with firms like life speed to provide Financing Solutions that give startups the cash they need to grow at each stage of the business. There are relatively few people who really understand from a banking perspective in those cities how to partner with a startup. 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A growing effort in schools to encourage girls to learn science and engineering. You know that. What you may not know is its working, really well. Science fairs report in many cases more than half of the entries are from female students, so that may be the solution from the bottom up. Now an effort to work top down. An Organization Called the pipeline fellowship is work fog teach women, wealthy women, how to become angels. Private investors who give startup money in exchange for a piece of the action. Here you see one of those boot camps. According to one study, only 19 of angels are women, 4 are minorities. Natalia nogaro is the head of pipeline fellowship where theres a list of more important people, i dont know where it is. You seem to be on the list of every sort of top 20 most powerful this or that, so thank you for joining us this morning. Let me ask you about this gender thing. I saw a study, and im sorry i cant quote exactly where. The gist of it was a panel of men are more likely to give and invest money in a male presenter. A panel of women are more likely to invest money also in a male investor. So does creating a team of women investors solve anything . That study actually had tons of people involved, harvard, m. I. T. So a good study. Thank you for putting an asterix on it. And it was really striking because we talk a lot about it in terms of pattern recognition, that really sterile term that we hear a lot, and simply what that means is that people just invest in people who look like themselves and people who are friendly familiar, and so given that my thought was lets turn it on its head. This whole pattern recognition. If we invest in people who look like ourselves, lets get more women and people of color on the investing side. Doesnt really necessarily explain why women investors invest in women and men in men. Its the stereotypes. This looks like a startup. Creating the space where were framing the conversation where were getting more women to invest specifically in Women Entrepreneurs is that start. What is great we launched in april 2011 and have graduated over 80 women and then what happens after they have launched is they have continued to invest because thats what success. Sure, they can go to our shark tank boot camp, and there are tons of Kevin Olearys in there. Need more Barbara Corcoran and more women of color to become sharks, and what happens is they by investing in Women Entrepreneurs. Some of them graduate. They are like this is what im really passionate about, going to continue to invest in Women Entrepreneurs, not just social ventures. Some can be pure tech. Others say my focus is pure tech. This is how we grab their attention and then they get activated. Thats great and im all for having more women involved and does it mean that the male species is a little bit beyond hope . Heard so many bad stories, not in terms of bad funding but stories of Sexual Harassment and making people feel really, really uncomfortable. Surely we should be addressing that. So glad you brought that up. A report that recently came out that actually mentions that the stats of how many women bc partners that exist have declined, you know. Its 2014 and theres fewer women vcs and it also mention that the vc firms with women vc partners actually invested in more Women Entrepreneurs, so were having women vc partners decline, and that is actually one of the indicators that Women Entrepreneurs will get funded, were at a loss. I will bring up a very dated study which is, unfortunately, still accurate, by illuminate ventures, a vc firm and a white paper from 2000, and what the white paper said is the assumption was it when there were women vc partners, those were the ones who would be shepherding, you know, the Women Entrepreneurs through the process, you know, like they were the ones having their back. Turned out that the women vc partners were simply a symbol of the culture. And continued to invest in primarily male what we were talking about earlier. Actually, no. There was an increase in the deal flow ant consideration of Women Entrepreneurs because what the women vc partners showcased is that the culture of the firm had respect for women and enough respect to invite them to be vc partners, you know, at the firm and theres actually some guide partners at firms who were shepherding Women Entrepreneur deals. So who are the angels, the women who are coming to your boot camp to learn this . What kind of backgrounds are they coming from . So, there are at least two reasons why they are very diverse. The first one is to put out is an lgbt latina the diverse city really important and im the boss and get to set the agenda and the second reason its super diverse and ill give you all the stats on who it is is because the way that that Program Works is group learning. So im very interested in making sure people are coming from diverse perspectives. Accountants are great but having a whole group of accountants is boring and im a huge believer when we talk about angel investing and the definition being smart money, you know, so its not just Financial Capital that an agnleling could eve eventually bring to the table, the Human Capital and the social capital, the skill sets that they can bring, relationships and contacts so the more diverse the group is the more of the skill sets, broader the skill sets and also the broader Deeper Networks that they can bring. So in terms of these over 80 women who have graduated from the program weve had tech startup employees, people working at pandora, sumant ex, ebay, women on the Family Foundation board. Weve had women who have left the workforce to start a family, and they are still interested in being active, need something with a flexible schedule and being an Angel Investor is pretty flexible and weve had successful entrepreneurs who are now interested in getting on the other side of the table and learning how to be an angel themselves. Natalia, have you tracked at all the success rate of your investments or your Angel Investments keeping in mind that a 5 success rate would be phenomenal in Silicon Valley . Thats a really great question. Generally an exit in the angel world is five to seven to sen years down the launch. Youre just too early. We are early. Do i have to say when someone asks me, are any of the companies that have been funded, are they still running, im like actually yes. Still running is not a bad metric, right. We forget that in the First Six Months four out of five companies fail. They forget that. Whats the statistic on that . So we have the specific that i just quoted. Im sorry, i missed it. That four out of five companies how Many Companies out of pipeline fellowship are still running . So we have reached a milestone recently. We have over Ten Companies that have been invested and they are all still running so i would say thats 100 . That is 100 . Is there any other subsector of tech . Not to be too cliche but i do know theres a lot more female entrepreneurs in ecommerce, for example. Have to make that the last question but go right ahead, please. I launched the partner fellowship and i grew it from 6 women to 1,200 women in two years and what happened is i realized how hard it was to secure funding for a forprofit venture and Vanessa Hertz asked shouldnt doing good be the only way to make a profit and instead these women social entrepreneurs, who are finding such a tough time securing the capital so what we look for specifically are womenled forprofit ventures. A couple of investors include day one response, based in the bay area, and they created a water bag that purifies water, and so they work with Disaster Relief organizations such as red cross to get this product out to places that have had disaster situations. Natalia, ive got to break in because my producer is telling me thats all the time we have but ill still take some time. You would invest and your angels would invest in something that maybe was not necessarily socially beneficial, not socially negative, but that made money . It has to be both, doing well and doing good and it has to be mutually exclusionive. Youre the boss. You can say what you want. Nality yeah, thanks so much. Thanks so much. Up next we crunch a bunch of numbers and find out the best place to win to live in neighborhood. They saw a lot of solutions that were way too complex and built for large enterprises, and they saw an opportunity to build a solution specifically for the small and midmarket customer that solved the problem in a very simple a