energy alchemy acres silicon valley company, tries to turn natural gas into gasoline. a san francisco startup tries to find the best places to represent using big data. we will find the next hot neighborhood. and a new face of the angel investor, with reporters hannah couple letter of the financial times and the san francisco chronicle's david baker, this week on "press:here."

i'm scott mcgrew. comes to american energy independen independence, we have tons of natural gas. bad news, natural gas is not the kind you need for your car, without significant modification to the car but what if you could modify the natural gas? a san francisco-based startup called sell lure ya is turning natural gas into gasoline, so inexpensive it can manufacture gasoline for $1 a gallon. investors love the idea. the company's raised $100 million in funding. ed dineen is ceo of sell lure ya. 35 years experience in the petrochemical business, joined by david baker of the san francisco chronicle and hannah kuchler of the financial times. considering i got a c in chemistry, talk to me about is this chemistry is this sort of alchemy, something nobody's ever done before or somebody who knows petrochemicals gonna say i know what he is doing? >> the chemistry is actually

old. it's 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 we have succeeded by new innovations, nanotechnology, high through-put screening, applying existing technologies to that same problem and as simple az it sounds, thoroughly defining the problem, so it's been around but sal lure ya's been successful in breaking through and developing the technology. >> oftentimes, technology, when it moves forward, doesn't move forward with a eureka moment at a chalkboard. so, this is a step-by-step, we are just applying more modern technology to something somebody tried 20, 30 years ago? >> i think that's right. we have been at this about five years. we have been adding innovations throughout those five years. the core invention is the catalyst that does the conversion of the gas to the

fuels or to chemicals. but there have been a host of incremental improvements that we have added to it over that time and we will continue to do that. >> so, how soon could it be in sort of gas stations across the country? >> i think, well, we are starting up a demonstration unit in texas at the end of this year, in terms of actual commercial production, i think you are looking at 2017, where we might start to see fuels or chemicals in the marketplace. >> you know, the same fracking boom that's giving us all this natural gas is also giving us a lot of oil that we didn't 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 solve is roughly 50% of the world's natural gas either goes unused, because you can't get it to market or it gets wasted and flaring and things like that. >> that's why the saudis perhaps, the saudis one of your big investors, right, which seems counterintuitive, this would be not using oil to make gasoline, they would hate that idea, but what you're saying is that there is a tremendous amount of natural gas that's either a biproduct 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 we are looking to diversify and expand their business into the chemical sector. we give them a way to turn natural gas into chemical -- >> aramco, the saudi state-owned oil company? >> that's correct. >> david? >> we have had a lot of efforts to develop fuels that would have lower greenhouse gas emissions

overall and some of those efforts have done okay. i mean, we all drive on fair amount of ethenol these days, blended into gasoline, but others have really kind of sputtered out and died. this, what is the greenhouse gas profile of this compared to regular gasoline in this process produce less carbon dioxide? >> definitely. whether talking about an oil-based fuel or an oil-based chemical, it's roughly half of what you would see from the oil based processes. >> half -- when you make the -- take the natural gas and make it into gasoline, then there's energy expended there, right? >> well, our process and one of the reasons it's lower in co 2 emotions is we actually generate energy, so our product is fuel plus energy plus water and any process that i'm aware of to make a chemical or fuel actually needs to put energy in. >> right. but what i'm asking is, and i think what david was also asking and maybe i just didn't understand it, is this idea that if you're going to take

something to make something that is a fuel, but expand energy in the same time and corn is one of these things, by the time we run it into gasoline, grow the corn, drove the tractors, drove everything, it was about a wash. but obviously, not a wash in this case. >> in this case, apples to apples, you're roughly half the emissions profile. >> reach the consumer as cheap as we were talking about earlier or is it gonna be sort of at the same price as regular gas? >> trying to predict the pump price is very difficult but the one thing i know we will be doing is creating new competition in the marketplace. any business i have been in, when you have more competition, you are going to see lower prices for that particular industry or that particular marketplace, so, i think it's good news for consumers. i can't tell you exactly what the pump price would be, but new competition should create better prices. >> we've 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 that's 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 it's zero. so, there's a very strong economic driver there, stronger environmental policies might encourage that but we believe the economics will win out on its own. >> i apologize if i'm 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 we are trying to get that natural gas fuel into a car to power an electric plant which then powers electric cars, is that more efficient, more green than what you're doing? and again, i realize you're not

necessarily an expert on power plants? >> well, i think that's certainly a viable use for natural gas but often, the problem is how do you get it there? so we bring a technology that allows to you get at 50% of the gas that you can't 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 there's a benefit there to the environment and as we said, the cost and co 2 emissions are roughly half. >> ed dineen is the ceo of sul lure ya. we appreciate you being with us. as you continue to grow yourant floridas, we'd like to have you back to learn more. >> low of to come back again. >> thanks for being with us this morni morning. everybody agrees we need more women entrepreneurs, how exactly we get them, a bit more complicated. we will dive into that when "press:here" continues.

welcome back to "press:here." there's a growing effort in schools to encourage girls to learn science and engineering. you know that. what you may not know is it's working really well. science fairs report, in many cases, more than half of the entries are from female students. so, that maybe the solution from the bottom up. now an effort to work top down. an organization called the pipeline fellowship is working to teach women, wealthy women, how to become angels, private investors who give startup money in exchange for a pest 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 owe berta noguera is the head of pipeline fellowship, a list of more important people, i don't 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 i'm sorry i can't 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. >> good study. all right. yes. thank you for putting an asterisks 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. simply what that means, people just invest in people that look like themselves, people who are friendly, familiar and safe. so given that, my thought was let's turn it on its head, this whole pattern recognition, invest in people who look like ourselves, get more women, people call the investing side -- >> doesn't necessarily explain why women investors invest in men, right? >> well, it's because of the stereotypes -- >> this looks like a successful startup? >> exactly. yes. so, creating that space where we are framing the conversation as, we are getting more women to invest specifically in women entrepreneurs that start. what's great is that we launching 2011, we have graduated over 80 women and then what happens after they have launched is that they have continued to invest. 'cause that's what's success. sure, this he can go through our -- i like to call it like our "shark tank" boot camp and

there are tons of kevin o'learys out there, we need to get barbara cork rans and more women of color as well to become sharks. and what has happened is that they learn by investing in women entrepreneurs, several graduate, this is really what i'm passionate about i'm going to continue to invest in women entrepreneurs, not necessarily social ventures, they can be pure tech. others have said, you know what, my focus is pure tech. this is really just how we grab their attention and then they got activated. >> sure, that's great. more women involved in tech both as founders and as funders, but does this mean the male species are beyond hope? we have heard so many bad storiesing not just in terms of not funding but stories of sort of sexual harassment and making people feel really, really uncomfortable? i mean, surely we should be addressing that. >> i'm so glad you brought that up, because there's a report that came out called the diana report with babson and it actually mention that the stats of how many women vc partners

exist have declined. you know, it's 2014 and there are fewer women vcs and also mentioned the vc firms with women, vc partners actually invests in more women entrepreneurs, so we are having women vc partners decline and that is actually one of the indicators that women entrepreneurs will get funded, we're at a loss. i will bring up a very dated study, which is unfortunately still accurate by i will lumme nat ventures a vc firm and it was a white paper from 2000. what the white paper said was the assumption is that 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 one slsing their back. turned out that the women vc partners were simply a symbol of the culture, of the firm. >> and continue to invest in primarily male -- what we were talking about earlier? >> no. >> really? >> there was an increase in the deal flow and in the consideration of women

entrepreneurs because what the women vc partners showcased was the culture of the problem. >> >> they were able to point out -- >> had respect for women enough respect to invite them to be vc partners at, you know, at the firm and there are actually some guy partners at these firms who were shepherding women entrepreneur deals. >> so, who are these angels? who are the people, the women coming to your boot camp to learn this? what kind of backgrounds are they coming from? >> so, there are at least three reasons why they are very diverse, the first one, put it out there, lgbq latina, diversity is important, i get to set the agenda, i'm boss. the second reason super diverse, give you stats on who it is, is because the way that the program works is group learning. so i'm very interested in making sure people come from diverse perspectives, accountants are great, having a whole group of accountants is kind of boring and then the third reason is that i'm a huge believer, we

talk about angel investing and the definition being smart money, you know, so, not just financial capital that an angel could potentially bring to the table, the human capital and the social capital, the skillsets that they could bring, the relationships and contact and so the more diverse the group, the more of the skillsets, the 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, we have had tech startup employees, people working at pandora, semantic, ebay. we have had women who serve on their family foundation board. we have had women who have left the workforce and -- to start a family and they are still interested in being active, they just need something with a flexible schedule. guess what being an angel investor is pretty flexible and we have also 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 angels' investments, keeping in mind the 5% success rate would be phenomenal in silicon valley? >> yeah, that's really great question. so generally an exit in the angel world, it's five to seven to ten years down the line. >> just too early? >> we are early. i do have to say that when someone asks me, well, are any of the companies that have been funded are they still running and i was like, actually, yes, because we forget -- >> still running is not a bad metric. that's right. >> he forget in the first six months, four out of five companies fail. >> okay. what's your statistic on that? >> so we have -- the statistic that i just quoted? >> i missed it, tell me again. >> four out of five -- >> 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 say that's 100%. >> it is 100%. >> are they in any particular sort of subsector of tech? i know that, for example, not to

be too cliche, i know there's a lot more female entrepreneurs in the e-commerce, for example? >> we will have to make that the last question. go right ahead, please. >> i launched this because i built a network of women entrepreneurs in 2008 and grew it from 600 to 1200 within two years and what happened was i realized how hard it was for them to secure funding a as for-profit social venture and vanessa hurst, co-founder of code montage, she once asked, should doing good be the only way to do 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 women for profit social ventures, a couple of examples of companies that have been invested includes day one response, they are based in the bay area and they created a water bag that purifies water and so they work with disaster relief organizations, such as the red cross, to get this product out to places that have had disaster situations.

>> natalia, i got to break in, my producer is telling me that's all the time i have. i will time and say your angels would invest in something maybe something that was not socially beneficial, not socially negative but made money? >> it has to be both, doing well and doing good and who said that it has to be mutually exclusive? >> you are the boss. say what you want. natalia, thank you. we crunch a bump of numbers to find out the best place to live in san francisco based on price and cool factor. the neighborhood you will wish you moved into when "press:here" continues. live in san francisco based on price and cool factor. price and cool factor.

a recent examination of rental prices nationwide shows san francisco is now the most expensive place to represent an apartment. san francisco even more expensive than manhattan when taken as a whole. new york still has a couple more expensive neighborhoods. the apartment-finding services,

zumper, says a one-bedroom apartment in san francisco is $3,100. ceo at zumper, we asked him to crunch more data for us and tell us the neighborhood in san francisco that's somewhat affordable, that's going to be the next cool one? >> somewhat affordable may shock our viewers i don't you the side the bay area. if you look toward the west of the 7 by 7, you look to the richmond district or the outer sunset, clearly as you go west, rents tend to drop. comparing this to now it is even $100 higher than when we ran the numbers last month, $3200 median rent for a one-bedroom apartment across san francisco. look at richmond and sunsets, lower 2,000s or upper teens but it's still against the national average significantly more expensive. >> right. so, what is the one that's going to pop? what's the one where i say, ha ha, i've already signed a lease, too late, i get this old -- and everybody else who moves in has to pay more?

>> yeah, getting ahead of the game. i think the most action we have seen recently is the lower haight. i think the haight has been super trendy, a great place for millennials, the lower haight is still probably underrepresented on its rent. it's significantly cheaper than hayes valley, russian hill in san francisco trends the highest. >> a lot of new neighborhoods around the mission bay area, where you have got housing just come in the last five years. what are you seeing there? a lot of interest? >> absolutely. and i think that's actually some of the reason for the supply constraint, new developments of condos in mission bay haven't come to market as people hoped, why the supply side is so constrained here, they are going for north of $3,000 for a standard one-bedroom apartment. i have friends who bought in mission bay two years ago who are getting 40% premiums on their condo in the for sale market. the demands continues. the tech boom combined with the constricted supply and rent control regulations for many buildings in san francisco have

led to this unique world where for the first time, san francisco trends above manhattan and new york city. >> extraordinary. >> what about oakland and the east bay? everyone i know seems to be moving over there. >> and i think that's why people have started, terrified people in oakland and the berkeley, but people are starting to refer to it as the brooklyn of san francisco. and people in brooklyn will know, if you look at their rent opportunities, they are now trending up against the west village which, five years, ten years ago was unthinkable. that is now happening to the east bay. it is not there if -- if you can face the commute, which a lot of my own team do. it is a wonderful place to live with a lot more space for cheaper. >> now, that's interesting. you're based in san francisco, your team is mostly living in -- >> well, mostly living in san francisco. my team live in the mission. we are based in soma. but some of my team commute in even either on the caltrain, they come into fourth and brannon, caltrain or come in from the east bay and i think that there just has to be a greater supply and until that happens, it is a natural cause

that people will move to the east bay. >> ask you about zumper for a second, finding apartments online, fellow named craig, i don't know if you've met him, came up with a list, this idea all over the internet. what are you bringing to the table that a lovely or a craigslist, for that matter is not bringing? >> sure. yeah. apartment renters have been a pain, ask renters what one of the most fearful things you do, it is shifting apartments, spend a third of their annual income sometimes on rent. a very, like, prim eval need to have shelter. first of all, a big part of a consumer's life. the data quality is just questionable, before you even talk about the user experience, how well it renders on mobile, huge data problems, so we always b 2 b first, built the leading b 2 b tours for medium and small-sized landlords, the data before everyone else. very clean. we go there, we don't scrape. all the data is either plotted directly through our end tools or through listing fees we get direct from landlords.

>> you're saying there's less spam, a lot of, like, fake apartments and stuff on cracks list. but what about just the slight sort of weirdos? do you screen for those? >> the slight weirdos? define the slight weirdos. >> not major weirdos. yaerkts okay, we have with a two-step authentication process for people to post directly to our sites, they get a manual on boarding and then they actually is to prove their entity, especially if they use our credit products, run credit, they have to run through an ex-peerian verification process. wither different because we are not interested in just surge. the web 2.0 world is classified search, search these neighborhoods and find your next place, we are interested in search and close and airbnb one-year lease, how can you walk into an apartment with a check park, hey, if you put out your iphone and make a binding application on the app for this apartment, this is powering through zumper, you can walk in, make a binding offer and close the lease. the next generation of technology companies like ourselves gonna take you from

search through to close and i think that's where the incumbent will face a lot of competition. >> there is an extraordinary move to mobile, that it is so obvious now, almost a wonder that yelp has a website anymore, although that was where they started with, right, this idea that everything will be done our your hand-held, this care the iphone plus, the -- >> the huge one. absolutely, 70% of our users come from mobile, aer mobile, web or native apps, several million people a year use us now on mobile. of course, a mobile, a touchy feely thing, not something you do watching sunday night football alone on your desktop, you do it in the field, put out your phone in the field and see what's near, how an open house is running, make an application. >> have to ask you one last question, you went to both oxford and cambridge, which school's better? >> wow. yeah. firstly, a lot of debt, the major point from those two. >> which school's better? >> oxford. biased. >> she went to oxford.

>> spent four years there. so, yes. expect the calls now. >> heard that oxford is the best. thanks for being with us this morning. back here in just a minute. jumper. jumper.

that's our show for this week. my thanks to my guests. i'm scott mcgrew and thank you for making us part of your sunday morning.

hello and welcome to kn khn. today, back by popular demand, plus college day. this is your "comunidad del valle." we begin today with college today here on "comunidad del valle." sonia ramos is with us, and also fernando carp is the director of community and campus relations for san jose state university. welcome to the show. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> tell us about college day. you know, it's one of those days that i wish i had when i was going to high school. and some of the elementary school, middle school. tell us about college day, what's that about? >> college day is an event that