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0:00 Transform your startup journey with the energy tech nexus. Connect with fellow founders, access critical resources, and be part of a community shaping the future of energy and carbon tech. Your

0:10 path to building a Thunderlizard starts here. Learn more at energytechnexascom. Welcome back to the

0:16 show. Today, we have a very special guest with us today, Emily Evagliano. She is

0:22 the CEO of Resilent, and she has been a member of Energy Technics for almost a year now, I think And it's a big fan. Yeah, great. No, and it's really great to have you as part of the community

0:36 because you're someone who's always showing up cheerful and positive, and we learn a lot from you being part of our community. So, welcome. Thank you. So, tell us about, let's start by talking

0:48 a little bit about Resilent, and what do you guys do, and how did you come about working on the problem that you're working on? We do large-scale hydrogen and graphite, decarbonized. And the

1:03 thing that makes this unique and different is we do it cheaper than today's production. And that's without a government incentive, that's without a price for carbon. We're actually decarbonizing

1:14 two different industries. One is hydrogen, one is graphite. And so what we like to do at Restylant, 'cause I know a lot of people maybe in the community are struggling with the new policies coming

1:27 forward. We like to redefine decarbonization and call it no air permit. And yes, yes, and so we're coming at it from a different angle, which is the bottom line. How do we make our customers

1:42 more money and also decarbonize at the same time? But we replace decarbonization with instead of one to three years for an air permit, we can provide you equipment that gives you that extra hydrogen

1:55 that you need. in months, not years. So, oh, I'm still curious. So an air permit, like I guess it triggers or you need to pull a permit if you're producing new emissions, right? And if your

2:07 solution doesn't produce new emissions, then you don't need a permit. Is that the way to interpret it? Correct. But that also allows you to have a much better payback and economics on putting in a

2:19 wrestling reactor as a retrofit. So the reactor actually captures the CO2 also So it doesn't produce CO2, and that's the trick. It produces solid carbon. Solid carbon, instead of. Does it

2:32 produce diamonds? No. Graphite. Graphite. It's a version of diamonds, so it's okay. So what happens is you get methane or any hydrocarbon, you put it into the reactor without oxygen, and that

2:48 splits that into carbon and hydrogen. And depending on the conditions within the reactor, will determine what type of. carbon you produce, whether that's carbon black or something like graphite,

3:01 a larger particle size. So I'm very curious, so when I think of a reactor, you know, your building system, I kind of like, it's flowing fluids, chemicals through it. What does the solid stuff

3:12 end up? And I guess, how do you, it's like shuffling coal? Like the opposite of that, how do you pull it out? Right? And how does that allow you to maintain continuous operations? Yes. So

3:22 that is actually one of the key differentiators in turquoise hydrogen, like how do you handle the solids? 'Cause right now, the way people are exiting the solids is either like a cyclone or they

3:36 have a lot of small particle sizes that are like graphite, or sorry, graphene, or even worse, nano-sized particles that can affect your lungs and cause health and safety issues. So an effective

3:50 way of getting the carbon out without faling, especially if you, if they're using a catalyst or if they have to recirculate, it's a huge issue in the industry. And at Restylant, we have an

4:02 entrained flow reactor. And at the bottom of it, we have a really amazing system that I can't tell you.

4:11 That allows you to take that carbon out in a way that's been proven in the industry for over 70 years. So it's really one of our differentiators. And it also at Restylant, we really concentrate on

4:24 uptime and safety. So it allows our system to run smoothly for long periods of time and not requiring you to remove fouling. Okay, you said a keyword and I didn't know what it meant. It was like

4:35 an entrained flow reactor. Yes, there's different types of reactors without getting too technical. Mainly within turquoise hydrogen because your first past conversion isn't up to 100 you, have to

4:51 recycle. And that makes longer time in the reactors, which limits your throughput, okay? So most turquoise hydrogen companies focus on selling the carbon product versus the hydrogen, because they

5:04 simply cannot produce a large volume of hydrogen 'cause they have to recirculate. With Restland, we are going the opposite scale. We are producing as much as 250 tons per day of hydrogen out of one

5:18 reactor Just to give you a reference, monolith is 12 tons per day. So it's significant. You would need 20 monoliths equal just one Restland. And is monolith the incumbent in turquoise hydrogen or

5:30 in hydrogen generally? Turquoise. Okay, and define for us turquoise 'cause not everyone on the podcast remembers. Sure, of course, of course. So there's a rainbow of colors, okay? And each

5:40 color represents a different type of technology or process. Blue is just taking the traditional way of producing hydrogen, which is like steam methane reforming. or coal gasification and adding a

5:53 carbon capture element to that original process. The problem with that is it's 3x the cost and you do not capture 100. You're lucky if you get to 95 of the capture of the CO2. With green hydrogen,

6:08 you almost tripling would be nice. It's almost eight times the cost. And green hydrogen is electrolysis. And frankly, I don't think it's green And usually, it's electrolysis coupled with

6:23 renewable energy, like solar or wind, like explicitly. So almost all of the other hydrogen forms to get credits from the government,

6:34 you're either burning the natural gas as the heat source for driving the chemical reaction, or you're adding an electrical component within the reactor to drive the chemical reaction. So with

6:45 electrolysis, you're basically taking water and splitting that. However, water only has two hydrogens, H2O versus oxygen, and with methane, you have four hydrogens, but more importantly, those

7:01 hydrogens are take less energy to split. So not only are you getting double the outcome output, you're also getting less energy input to split the molecule. That's why electrolysis has such a

7:15 challenge is because they have one of the highest electrical usage per hydrogen output. And that means they're taking energy, which could have been used for solar and wind to drive like

7:27 cryptocurrency or a data center. They're pulling that energy off the grid, which could have been used in a better form. And they also use a lot of water. So those are the issues with green, is

7:38 you're going to use way more electricity, and then cost, and then water, and then also scale. They're still very small and modular size, so you need tons of them to equal any sort of significant

7:52 hydrogen output. Okay, interesting. So maybe another way to think about it is when you, when you, water doesn't burn, I guess I'll always say it's like, 'cause it has all the energy locked in,

8:01 whereas methane obviously reduces down to water. And so you're kind of taking less, that's why it takes less energy, is water's kind of the end state, everything wants to end up at Yes, if you

8:13 add additional,

8:17 yes. Yeah, I don't get into it. What do you want to say? You don't want to get too technical. So you spoke about blue and greens. Yes, there's turquoise, yeah. And turquoise is where a

8:27 resolent is, we're turquoise with a twist, but turquoise is basically methane pyrolysis. And that's where you get, since there's no oxygen, you're not gonna get CO carbon combining with the

8:40 oxygen and you're not using steam. to combine with the oxygen either to produce water. Water's not in that chemical reaction. So there's different ways of doing methane paralysis. You can have a

8:52 plasma torch, you can have a microwave, you can have a catalyst, you can even do slight combustion where you are producing some CO2, but the majority of it is gonna come out as carbon. So what

9:04 are you guys using, or is that the secret? Got you.

9:08 So we are using plasma, but at a different operating pressure and temperature than what traditional turquoise hydrogens are using. And we're also, our electrical

9:22 source is being added to the reactor in a novel new way. So plasma is like a membrane, or what do you mean by plasma? Well, anything, so you know, there's liquid, solid, plasma, so there's

9:35 different - Like the phases. The phases is, okay. And so you can make any, you can make nitrogen, you can make air, you can make methane, you can make anything into a plasma. Oh, okay,

9:46 that's what you do. I think technically in the plasma, all the electrons are stripped off. Yeah, and then they float around and basically when the plasma cools down, the electrons go, Oh, I

9:57 need to find a hole. And they kind of like grab onto stuff. Oh, okay. But what is happening is when it's in a plasma, the like atoms aren't actually like bound anymore 'cause they've lost their

10:06 electrons. So they're literally just like floating around in space and it's different from an air molecule or a gas where the gas might be still having the electrons still attached to the atom. And

10:17 so it's just like a much more chaotic, free-flowing form. And that's why it's distinct from gas. From gas. And literally the electrons are like flying off. Oh, okay. Yeah. And there's

10:28 different types of plasma too. But that's my electric description. So there's like light plasma, there's thermal plasma, there's different types as well. technically in a, I guess a neon gas,

10:38 neon lamp, like it's plasma in there. That's why it kind of like, the electrons are like stripping off and coming back and they glow. But it's, there's a lot of little, I assume that's a light

10:46 plasma versus a heavy plasma. Okay, well, that's a great science lesson. Yeah. But so tell us about like, who is your ideal client then? Are they looking for hydrogen? Are they looking for

10:59 graphite, you know, carbon? What are they looking for when they want the resolent reactor? So I think one of the coolest things is that hydrogen is used in almost every industry in almost every

11:13 product and so is carbon. That's what we say when we're an oil and gas company or oil and gas economy is that everyone, everything is based off of almost all the products you see in this room have

11:24 been derived from oil and gas. And these raw components of hydrogen, syngas and graphite or carbon is what makes paint, It's what makes cars.

11:37 almost any component you can think of, whether it's an aerospace, oil and gas, petrochemical, just everything you touch. So what we have decided to focus on is our beachhead market is oil and gas.

11:52 And that is because we're going after our direct competitor is gray hydrogen, which is steam methane reforming without carbon capture. And we believe that we can get about 20 less than today's

12:03 production cost And so that combined with the fact you don't need an air permit, makes us a very interesting play for large oil and gas companies that are desperate for hydrogen. So they use

12:15 hydrogen to desulphurize. They use hydrogen to upgrade fuels. Hydrogen can be used to drive chemical reactions within a petrochemical plant. Hydrogen is used in electronics. Hydrogen is used in

12:29 aluminum and steel production. So there's lots of different ways and what's really cool. an investment standpoint about wrestling is because our prime feedstock is natural gas, and that's got a

12:41 very defined

12:44 characteristic to it in terms of its makeup. And then hydrogen is pretty much a commodity. Hydrogen molecule is a hydrogen molecule. Therefore, our reactor does not have to change that much to

12:55 service a200 billion to him. I think when people talk about the hydrogen market, I think a lot of attention goes into fuels and vehicles, but the reality is 95 of the market is actually just an

13:07 existing supply chain where we are

13:11 industrial processes. All that stuff is there just to create hydrogen, which is like protons, that they're just moving around to create new chemicals, right? And that's one of the hardest

13:21 industries to carbonize. And one of the reasons why, I'll give you an example. So just one of our wrestling reactors of most turquoise hydrogen companies today, they're a demonstration plant. So,

13:34 what that means, you're not gonna put a thousand units at a refinery site in a port city. You just don't have the space for it. So throughput versus footprint is the key metric besides electrical

13:49 usage to be a valid retrofit, to actually show up and be integrated into a plant site that's already, that has no space left, right? So that's one of the, also one of the reasons why we

14:03 concentrate so highly on getting a large amount of hydrogen out of one reactor that's less than 15 feet wide.

14:12 Talk to us about how you came across this technology, how it was developed and how you got involved. Sure, so everyone on my team is X General Electric. So we all met at GE and I ran a300 million

14:14 advanced technology investment in clean coal and IGCC.

14:33 This group, from a blank sheet of paper, developed a 5, 000 ton per day sin gas reactor feeding into a 650 megawatt power plant. That's a huge power plant. And it's actually the largest gasifier,

14:48 clean coal gasifier in North America. Still running today. We did that from blank sheet of paper to full scale in five years, which is really impressive for hard tech And you got to explain,

14:58 what's an IGCCC?

15:03 Integrated gasification combined cycle. Okay. And so there's a couple of things in there. So break it down. So we took the Texaco gasifier and we took the GE gas turbine and steam turbine. And we

15:16 made the gasifier create a sin gas that

15:23 the gas turbine combusted And then you recapture the steam and run the steam turbine for heat recapture to run the steam turbine. And part of the reason is you get like 70 efficiency. when you do it

15:33 that way, is that the number? You get a high amount of efficiency, yes, correct. But you also want to do it this way because it's the easiest way to capture CO2. It's like, 'cause you're

15:44 capturing it off a high pressure steam instead of a stack. And so that model had the opportunity to run fairly clean with a carbon capture off a coal feedstock. It's always a first of a kind. First

15:59 of a kind. Like a clean and full power plant Yeah, it was a clean coal power plant. And it was first of a kind, still running today, 10 years later, met all its business metrics, on time, on

16:10 schedule, on cost. Unfortunately, natural gas prices dropped.

16:16 That is the challenge of energy. But that gasifier is the main gasifier that creates hydrogen in China today. There's over 300 units in China sold from the GE gasifier. First of minute. 'Cause

16:28 that's a product, essentially, that they sell. But they have it more as producing hydrogen versus going into sin gas into a combined cycle. Now, we're not using that gasifier. In fact, we're

16:40 using natural gas as a feedstock and we're also running on, there'll be other changes to the reactor, but we're not using oxygen to combust the fuel and we're not using a coal slurry, obviously,

16:55 but we are using a new heat source to drive the chemical reaction and it's basically electrifying a gasifier and that process is where you get a step change in costs compared to steam methane

17:12 reforming, which is the current, I know I'm talking very technical, but like an area right now, let's bring it back a little bit. So I assume a lot of the cost savings is because of the power

17:21 density you're getting out of the system because you're able

17:24 to do the same thing. that the existing units will, it takes 20 units to do what you do. Is that a big, I assume that's a big driver. Heat loss is one of the biggest things. So the amount of

17:36 electricity you put into the system is how much you're going to break the methane and create your output. But if you're losing heat, then that's not driving the chemical reaction. And so surface

17:47 area determines how much heat loss you will lose. So since we're just one vessel and there are a thousand vessels, there's that much area in which heat can escape. But not only that, it's

17:60 complexity of the project. You need a thousand operators. You need so many more spares. You need more cement. It's going to take you longer to get permitted. It's going to be much more painful to

18:10 validate that the carbon was captured versus just one unit. But most importantly, you cannot be a retrofit. You cannot go back and help the refineries because you don't produce enough hydrogen to

18:21 be interesting.

18:26 They know that too, they're focused on the carbon and they're focused into selling batteries, their carbon into batteries, and they focus on the morphology of the carbon. So then how did you get

18:36 involved and decided it was time to now take this product into the market? So I was working for Department of Energy and they hired me to meet up with the venture capital in Houston, and I was

18:49 looking around at what currently exists today in terms of technology and solutions, and I saw a fundamental flaw, and that is that they were selecting base technologies that required an extensive

19:03 amount of RD to scale up, okay? So you're not going to scale up a microwave. The plasma torch has its limitations, and so if you chose a technology

19:15 that already existed today in industry at scale and at harsher conditions, and use those pieces of technology off the shelf and combine them in a novel way, that would enable you to scale your

19:29 reactor so much faster 'cause you're not gonna waste money trying to make the technology work at a larger scale. It's now more a question of understanding your specific dimensions and scale up

19:42 practices in your operational profile instead of wishing for a breakthrough that microwaves can get bigger. So the

19:50 Resilent Reactor has the ability to scale 'cause you've skilled the same reactor in a different industry before. Is that? No, think of it this way. The parts we're combining, some is coming from

20:04 the steel industry, some is coming from aerospace and defense, they already exist at large scale. At large scale, okay. And they've been used for some 120 years and they're known profiles. So we

20:17 know that they work in harsher conditions, harsher profiles. We have line of sight to capex, opex, and reliability of these parts, 'cause we already know how they've been currently used today.

20:31 You cannot go out anywhere and point to a large-scale plasma torch. You can't point to a microwave that exists in another application. With all the parts we're combining within Resilent, they

20:44 already exist. There's already application. Yeah, and so to bring it back, part of how you landed on this is you were in a position to see a lot of the, I guess you were doing a study to see what

20:55 was out there and what was scalable and you discover that there was this path. Is that what we're hearing? What I would say is I was working for DOE, basically interacting with venture capitalists

21:07 and I knew I wanted to start a business and then not through that consulting but just thinking about all the companies that were out there and how they were approaching the problem, I discovered this

21:18 flaw and came up with this idea And I like to talk about it like a car and a camera. You know the cost of a car. You know how to drive your car. You know the cost of a camera. You know the

21:31 reliability of that camera. You put the camera on the back of a car and you're reversing in a whole new way. But it's not a huge leap that somehow the camera's not gonna work when it's put on the

21:40 back of the car. You already know how those things function and what they cost. So how is that journey been then going from it worked at GE, DOE, and then starting your own company and being an

21:52 entrepreneur and trying to actually sell this technology to industry. How has that journey been? It's actually been phenomenal. Yeah, yeah. It's actually a real amazing experience to talk to

22:05 executives of oil and gas companies. I really enjoyed that. I geek out,

22:12 I get really nerdy with them because they can hang And

22:17 so what's also fun is that there's a There's a piece of the research that was kind of overlooked, which we are taking advantage of. So being able to talk to oil and gas companies and seeing where

22:29 their research was and how they approach the problem from a technical perspective and having some really good dialogues about that without letting go of RFP, of course, but it's been really fun and

22:42 interesting. And then also oil and gas companies, they have large project experience And I cannot underestimate that in terms of making decarbonization of heavy industry practical and the ability to

22:58 go do it, right? So a lot of other startups start with university professors, which are great, and we have a university professor involved in a wrestling as well. But having a crew that have

23:11 developed large scale projects in the past gives us another layer of support from oil and gas companies that understand we have. the experience and the know-how and how, not just to scale up

23:25 technology, but deliver a product that's financable. So when you're going and talking to these corporates today, what are you looking for from them that would really help your product? So,

23:39 for better or for worse, I'm really honest and open with what our product can do. And then I ask them what they want. So understanding their specific requirements about, like most of the oil and

23:51 gas companies sell pet coke today and they sell other products. So the idea that they can go sell graphite isn't that much of a stretch. But they have extra knowledge in terms of what sells and what

24:02 they want that component to look like in terms of its morphology or its purity. And then having discussions with them about how the operations of the reactor itself, like are they topping off their

24:16 hydrogen needs or they replacing all of their hydrogen, right? And then the different scales of product that they require and

24:25 just different attributes of what would make the product successful as a retrofit to a refinery. And I guess the issue with heart tech usually is that because they have their big infrastructure

24:38 already set up, retrofitting is a big risk for them, they don't want to make any changes versus They don't want to pull a permit. They want to pull a permit versus something digital, right?

24:46 They're like, Yeah, let's quickly pilot it And I think that's the challenge that we've seen with a lot of our heart tech companies, which is why we're doing a pilot's thought to really help

24:54 streamline this process of getting companies to be open to piloting new technology. So talk to us about what have you learned in going to these companies trying to pitch it to them and telling them,

25:05 Hey, this is actually in the long run going to help you out. And the risk is quite minimum. What have you learned and the challenges that you've faced in that process? So I would not say the risk

25:15 is minimum. Sorry, I guess hydrogen is explosive and there are risks. And I think going in with an honest assessment of what's it gonna take to make sure that everyone is safe at your facility and

25:29 going through has ops and stuff like that, I think that's how you do win trust. So that's important. But what I would say with oil and gas companies, it's very interesting is a lot of them are

25:40 creating their own sandbox for new technology to come in and be experimented with and they will provide tie-ins or natural gas or water or they'll get rid of your waste product for you, which is

25:53 great support because if you're running at a larger scale, that can be quite difficult and they already have a system set up to do that. So that's really interesting. Another thing is the oil and

26:04 gas companies will give you free money. So they'll support your project. even before a venture capital company would come in or even their VC arm, they, if they're excited about your technology

26:18 and its potential, they can give you non-dilutive funding to get you over a hump. Do you have a program you've participated in? Do you want to give a shout out to us?

26:29 Well, how about, I haven't participated. I wouldn't want to give that nod, but I'm a big fan of Shell Game Changer. Okay. Big fan of ARPA-E Sparks I'm a big fan of Breakthrough Energy. I'm a

26:43 big fan of Chevron Catalyst. And then Chevron Studio is another one as well. So there's lots of opportunities for oil and gas companies to give you free money or provide education and support along

26:56 your journey as an entrepreneur. I'm curious. So it's funny. I think the last show that aired is actually the Mars Material Show that we did with Aaron before we visited. No, it was after. Was

27:07 it after? But I don't know if we actually talked about the Shelf facility that much. I don't know where we're out there. Yeah, it's phenomenal. Did you see it? Yes. Is that like a whole

27:18 hydrogen test facility they have in the back? Or did I misremember? So what they have, which is unique, is they've already air permitted that area for things that you can't get today. That's what

27:28 it was, like hazardous stuff. Hazardous stuff. So again, never minimize the

27:35 risk. Yeah, risk, yeah Be open and honest about it and plan with them. But that's also another reason why you wanna partner with them, is 'cause they have expertise in almost everything that you

27:45 wanna get rid of, or flare or whatever, you know. But yeah, that's a huge benefit, is they have both inside facilities for lab testing as well as outside facilities, and they're permitted to

27:58 house many

28:02 stuff by products. Yes, yes. They're the way to handle it and dispose of it. And that's, and that's important In an ethical way.

28:10 I have so many questions about testing, but you're not there yet. So I'll ask them the other time when we bring you on.

28:16 I'd love to come back. Oh man. And you've also joined the Rice Clean Tech Accelerator. Yes. Recently talked to us about some of the programs that you've joined and how helpful they've been. Oh

28:27 yes. So I highly recommend to any entrepreneur, go and join an accelerator. A couple of things that you get at me, when I first started my entrepreneur journey, I would go talk to VCs, I had no

28:41 clue what I was doing, and suddenly you get ghosted. And you're like, okay, no feedback, I don't even know what I'm doing wrong, right? My first accelerator was Rose Rock Bridge, and EIC is

28:54 part of that accelerator, that's the venture firm that helps support that. And what you get with that is, my major lesson was I was pitching a product, 'cause I was used to general electric, like

29:07 I'm gonna go get funding to go do this product.

29:12 a company, an investment. So this thing is like when you're pitching for a funding for a product, you're pitching for like internal resources within GE. 'Cause that's all I need. That was

29:19 different. Yes. They already got money they have to spend almost, right? And it's like what's the right product? Right. And I tend to be pretty geeky. So VCs are like, I don't understand what

29:29 your product is or how that's useful, right? Are you ready to lead the decarbonization charge? Energy Technexes is your platform for growth, offering unique resources and expertise for energy and

29:41 carbon tech founders. Join us at energytechnexescom and

29:45 start building your Thunderlisset. So corporate VCs like me a lot, but regular VCs probably not so much if you're not pitching it as a way for them to make money as a business. Corporate VCs are

29:58 much more flexible because they're like, yeah, I could use your product, I'll buy all of it and make your revenue. So, you know, it's much easier to sell to them.

30:10 So the first thing I learned from Rose Rock Ridge was sell the business, not the product. And then I went and joined Energy Technexes, liftoff. Oh, nice. Phenomenal programs. How do you do that?

30:21 What I really liked about the program is they brought in different speakers who had different perspectives. And that's another thing I think as an entrepreneur. You don't realize how different

30:31 entities can be in terms of evaluating your company. So an angel is gonna look at the prospect of investing in you very differently than a corporate VC very differently than an industrial or a

30:44 regular venture capitalist would. So all three of these have different value points or different ways of evaluating whether they wanna invest money in you. And hearing from those different

30:55 individuals and then also just experts in the community of how to wrap up your product and pitch it professionally, to understand your techno economics, you have to understand how to explain your

31:09 business model, you have to understand your unit economics. So having classes like that, like Energy Technics is liftoff. When I say it, I'll keep going. I know that you guys are probably like,

31:19 I don't know, I wonder if she invited our - We want to get back to Rice at some point Okay., we will get back to Rice, but one cool thing about Energy Technics is they invited 20 investors, and

31:31 then we had 20 VCs I think this was the most, had the most fundamental impact on how I approach a VC today. And that is because we were asked in several rounds to identify which VC is gonna be your

31:46 lead, negotiate with the lead, and then get secondary VCs to join in the round and negotiate the terms. And I'm happy to announce I got the highest chance. I would, yes, yes, yes But anyways,

31:60 sorry, just

32:02 what I didn't realize. is how much the VCs back channel talk orchestrate the deal. If you think you're in control, think again. There is a lot in terms of network that as an entrepreneur, you

32:18 think you're talking to just one individual. There's so much power with getting mentored by the right VC and having that VC warmly introduce you to other people and then lead the round and close it

32:33 And that's something that I just, I didn't have that appreciation for until after that class. Yeah, I wanna talk about that a little bit, a sidebar just a little bit. So we did this as a capstone

32:44 to the lift off program. And it's something I've been thinking about for a long time is how do we give people the experience of fundraising where it's like a little safe, a little controlled,

32:52 there's still some risk because you can lose. And so we developed this simulation that kind of reminded me of like model UN if anyone had done that or like a role playing game.

33:03 know, I didn't know what I was doing. We came up with some game rules and we gave VCs some money. We said here's a thesis, go off and invest. We put less money in the game than all the SERPs are

33:14 asking for. So there's going to be a little supply and demand mismatch. And we set up these rounds to try and get to kind of simulate the stages of fundraising. Like there's one stage where you're

33:24 kind of speed dating, there's another stage where you actually have to like get a term sheet signed. And then there's that last stage to kind of round out the investment. And most people don't know

33:34 when they're first fundraising an average like million dollar seed rounds still has like a dozen investors in it. So you got to get every last dollar in the deal. And so that was part of the three

33:43 stages was practicing the aspects of closing. What I didn't anticipate is as we were doing this, we kind of gave the VCs notes and we had them go out in between the first round and the second round,

33:55 all the VCs started sharing notes with each other and saying, okay, I want this one. I need some other people to come in on this one because they need this much guys, this is not the rules of the

34:02 game, this is not how we're doing this. But honestly, you had to lean in because the point of the simulation is to reflect real life and the lesson there is we gotta change the game to better

34:14 reflect kind of those stages where I was thinking about it from the entrepreneur perspective and not the reality of how the investors really, they wanna know their deal is gonna get funded. Oh yeah.

34:24 And how much influence they have over another VC and how they come in and stack the deal and trade terms on your term sheet. Just listening to them talk was phenomenal. I mean, it was like inside I

34:37 never seen before. Me too, it was really funny to see it in real time. And the reality is we're doing this in three hours. So each stage is like an hour. So it was like hyper speed, a different

34:50 dynamic to the negotiation that usually would take weeks and you don't get to see it 'cause it's usually on the phone and we got to do everything kind of in real time in front of the entrepreneur

34:59 We're gonna do it again next year. It's gonna be better and more. on and that's kind of context run up program. But anyways, I don't know who these energy techniques people are,

35:12 but they sound amazing. They do a thing or two. Yeah, they're fantastic. So the rice went on and on rice. I did do another one with Aspire Venture Well, and that was very similar to yours and it

35:21 was helping you raise money. I think what made their program a little bit more unique is they concentrated on surprise getchas when you're raising money. So for example, someone sends you a letter

35:35 saying stop, your IP conflicts with ours, and how do you respond? Or a VC sends you a letter saying that your partner has worked for the competition, you know, how did you address your employee

35:51 contracts, right? So different, it was really good because it made you think about when you put your data room together, what are the VCs actually looking at and what do they care about and what

36:01 are the risks involved in what you've created in terms of your company. And then at the end of it, you had to give a boardroom presentation and get feedback on running your own board meeting. And

36:13 then you had to justify staying as CEO at Series A, which almost every CEO has to do, right? Your board's going to try to fire you at least once, right? So how do you justify staying in the role?

36:27 So the whole thing was phenomenal, too. I really like that program. It was very, it was different than the content you addressed, but it was, um, it was, um, very, very good to go through

36:36 that process as well. And then finally, there's the, uh, rice, uh, clean energy, uh, rice alliance, uh, clean energy accelerator. And this is a marquee program. Um, it ends in September

36:48 with Houston Energy and Climate Week, and you are showcased as one of the top, uh, startups presenting, uh, to the Energy Venture forum which has like over 400 VCs, and these are all top names

37:01 and top corporate VCs that come and see you pitch. And what's phenomenal about this is you really get a sense of community from Rice, the mentors that they bring into that program, we just went to

37:15 Scissor G Plasmonics for a field trip, and we got to hear from Trevor Best, and he was talking about the reality of raising money and how hard it is, and so you really feel like you get the inside

37:26 scoop and support that you need. They also helped me with negotiating a contract, so anything you're going through at that point, they'll find a resource to help you be successful. If you had a

37:41 mentor in that program who has been exceptional that you'd want to give a shout out to.

37:46 There's been, so it's Morris. Well, I would actually say Carrie, who runs it, has been an exceptional mentor to me. She helped me with my advice on negotiating IP with the university, but also

38:00 just with executive presence and some other issues that I was having at the time. But being able to just have someone to bounce your ideas off of, it gets so lonely as a CEO. You hear that all the

38:13 time, and having mentors, you trust that you can kind of let your guard down with, and then they give you really good, both practical, but also emotional support is phenomenal And then she's a

38:24 woman, and so that's nice too, is to see a strong leader as a female. Yeah, Keri's a fixture of the ecosystem. She mentored me like a decade ago. Yeah, she's really cool. She's great, so it's,

38:36 yeah, that's good, that's good.

38:40 I think you're like a great example of someone who's like technically you know a lot about your technology, you're like a science nerd, a technology nerd, but at the same time you had to kind of

38:51 embrace the CEO role, a lot more than that, right? It's like negotiating, it's networking. You've gone to all these conferences and really, you know, stayed curious about what is it gonna take

39:03 not just the technology to succeed but for my company to succeed. So talk about the lessons that you've learned on how to be a good CEO. What does it require when you're an entrepreneur to not only

39:15 manage, you know, you manage yourself, manage others and then manage, you know, all your other stakeholders? So I have an interesting background I started off designing robots for the Marslander

39:26 and for Johnson Space Center. But then I switched into software sales and then I was at Berkeley for my MBA and was part of Sequoia Capital Mentorship. And I worked for a couple of their startups,

39:39 but in sales and business development. So I closed90, 000

39:45 which I was so proud of. Oh, that's where you get your sales experience from, right? I learned sales from software, which is the best place to learn. And then because of that experience with

39:56 Sequoia Capital is when I worked for General Electric for 10 years and I had that300 million investment for MA and advanced technology, then I ran a100 million product line for the LMS 100 and

40:07 then250 or2 billion product line for the 2, 500 TM

40:14 product line. So those are both basically taking a GE aircraft engine and converting it and packaging it to produce power. So a lot of the strategies that I learned from GE, like the TM 2, 500,

40:28 if your power goes down, they can ship you one of those and get your city back up in two weeks. It usually takes about two years to permit and create a natural gas power plant, combined cycle,

40:41 okay? So that's kind of similar to Resilent. with the decarbonization strategy being more toward the air permit, right? So I'm producing a plug-and-play product that can ship to your site and be

40:53 up in three months. So very similar to the TM-2500 strategy. What's the difference between a TM-2500 and LM-2500? They're just different amounts of power that they're producing. Same engine. No,

41:05 different aircraft. But what I learned from that is supply chain is key So cost out reliability, you're always trading those two off, right? This year's cost out project is next year's reliability

41:18 project.

41:20 Because if it's cheaper, it doesn't work. But

41:23 I also learned how to manage multiple disciplines to produce a product. It's very similar to being a CEO of a company, right? You have to work with engineering, marketing, sales, press releases,

41:37 lawyers, all sorts of stuff But so I come from a very strong background in. contract negotiations, as well as product line. Even though I can talk the talk nerdy, I'm not actually an engineer

41:51 anymore, except for that experience with NASA. So what I would suggest for entrepreneurs, especially if you tend to like to be geeky, 'cause I do like to be geeky, learn sales. Learn sales as

42:04 fast as you can. Get a mentor that has done sales or business development, understand that people make decisions on emotion, and then gather data to support that emotional decision they already

42:16 made, right? So understanding how organizations function and their process for approving you. So I'll just give you an example. There's one corporate VC that I know very well, and I've been

42:30 working with them for over two years. I didn't just walk up to them and say, hey, can I pitch you? I basically walked up to them and just said hello, this is what I'm doing And then at the next

42:40 conference, I said, they said hello. And I said, I'm working on this, what do you think? And they gave me advice. And at the next conference, oh wow, you lasted six months, good for you.

42:50 That's how they know you're real. That's how they know you're real. Then they start investing a little bit more energy into mentoring you and getting you on the right spot. But I know it's a cliche,

42:59 but ask for advice and you get money, ask for money, and you get advice. So, but if you intend to sell to a large corporation, you need to sell a year in advance,

43:11 if not longer And you may think your products not work, work, or I don't have a product to sell them. Great, don't talk about your product. Talk about their needs. I don't want to spend a dollar

43:23 unless I know someone's going to buy it. And the only way to do that is to be emotionally vulnerable enough to go out there and say, what do you need? What do you like? Let's have a conversation

43:35 about it. Oh, that's like really golden advice, actually that a lot of people, you know, forget to. about is like, focus on their problem, focus on what their needs, the initial meetings that

43:48 you have having, you don't even have to be selling as much, but actually really good sales people listen more than they talk. Exactly. And I want you to comment a little bit on your peers, maybe

43:60 here in Houston, because I find sometimes entrepreneurs in Houston don't actually want to talk about what they're working on. And I don't know if that's a Houstonian thing or if that's a, I don't

44:10 know, experienced engineer problem, but what have you observed without shaming anybody? Yeah, no worries, because that is part of the vulnerability. So I think you have to manage your emotions

44:21 as a CEO. That's one of the hardest things to do, but think about how you're feeling and if you're scared and not let that affect your ability to connect with your customers. So what I always say

44:34 is you don't have to impress them. What you have to do is be able to talk about first. identify what their needs are, and then talk about the business problems you're solving, like what the

44:47 technology enables versus the tech itself. So - It's not about how it works. Correct. So this is a typical sales philosophy. If I have to learn what the product does, I'm gonna suck at sales. I

45:02 almost wanna be blind to the product and you tell me where's the area and I'll go discover their needs, and then I'm gonna come back and say, change the product this way, and then we can sell this

45:12 much to this person, right? So you do not wanna lead with what your product does. You wanna lead with what are the biggest challenges your organization is facing in this particular aspect that your

45:25 product is trying to solve or address. It's funny, I started reading this book that I got Nada 'cause we're gonna start selling software here at the Nexus. And chapter four, the guidance is, when

45:36 you introduce your product, do not share every future of your product the customer's eyes will glaze over and then they won't buy your product. You gotta listen and hear the one thing they wanna

45:46 hear about and then explain how you solve their problem, right? And it's funny how pervasive that challenge is. Even for experienced entrepreneurs, you have to like relearn that skill over again.

45:56 But it's so valuable to know. In many ways, it's not about the technology. It's about the person and what their business need is. And yeah, what's hard, I think, for some salespeople who are

46:09 purely salespeople versus an entrepreneur, some salespeople are like, they have a process, they just want to sell the thing. And they don't make that connection back that they're actually the

46:18 front line of understanding what the product should be. And there's this challenge where salespeople and marketers are not the same. There's a reason you split them out. And a marketer sometimes is

46:30 out there trying to listen to the market. They're the ones kind of informing messaging, but there's never a good function that kind of straddles all of it. And that is what the founder has to do

46:38 what the CEO has to do.

46:42 And like as a founder, you have to learn the skill or you don't make it. That's just kind of unfortunate reality. It is, and I would also say though, it's how you can have a good conversation

46:52 with your customer and get them to trust you is the quality of the questions you ask them. 'Cause it shows your research and understanding of a particular field. So for example, when I talked about

47:03 the carbon handling being a major issue for turquoise hydrogen or the electrical usage, how much is required because that's a major driver of economics. Knowing that going in and asking good

47:16 questions from your customer, what is your expectation of electrical usage? What's your first past conversion? What are you hoping to, you know, how, what, and they'll tell you, they'll tell

47:28 you interesting aspects or they'll say, you know what, that's not really that big of a deal to me. Now, one thing as an entrepreneur, you have to understand, maybe not a big deal to person A.

47:40 But corporations are large. Make sure you ask like at least 30 different people and take the average, right? But when you start seeing that customer A, customer B, customer C, and customer D,

47:52 all care about just this one metric, that's when you know, okay, that's where my product tests to perform. And that's without talking about your technology at all. And that's the unique selling

48:03 point that we always go back to is like, what's the thing that gets people to say here's the check? I'm gonna give it to you versus anyone else. That's good Yeah, so as we're getting kind of

48:12 closer to the end of our conversation, which we wanna keep on going. But talk to us about like the future outlook, right? Like a lot has changed in the past year in terms of like there's been

48:21 uncertainty but the market's still done well. How have you had to pivot and what do you see for the future to get Rosalind out in the market and succeeding as a product for the industry? So I think

48:36 in general, you have to make sense from a cost perspective. So we have a huge advantage that we can take on the current incumbent in terms of cost. And then on top of that, you have to scale. If

48:49 you're too small and too modular, it's not gonna be interesting enough. That being said, that's to my particular oil and gas company customers, not necessarily the entire market. So there's no

49:01 problem with an entrepreneur wanting to niche into a smaller market, get their RD paid for, and then scale later, we're just choosing a different path for us. So yeah, I think it's really

49:17 important to understand not just what your product does, but how you want to enter the market and who you're selling to, and if that makes sense from how much capital you can raise to support the RD

49:28 of that product, right? So if you need a lot of money to go after this customer, maybe they're not your beach head. Are there any like emergent trends, was we talked about some negative trends,

49:39 but are there any emergent positive trends that are exciting you about the market? Oh, that's true, okay. So first off, I would say that oil and gas companies look longer than one political term,

49:52 okay? Like 30 years. Yeah, they look at a 30 year cycle, okay? So they have not given up on decarbonization at all, okay? But they are not also going to ruin their balance sheets Free cash flow

50:06 or the balance sheet, yeah. So there has to be a balance between what your technology is driving in terms of cost. And if you can reduce cost, and then also play upon payback of your project,

50:17 where you're not dependent on air permit, that's a huge advantage to going and getting implemented today. Yeah, so I think one of the trends I don't know directly, 'cause I'm not in the market the

50:26 way you are, but it seems to me that the industry started out four or five years ago thinking, okay, Now it's time to decarbonize. And that'll point now where they kind of understand the levers of

50:37 where it's gonna be hard and eat versus easy. And that's shaken out, shaken out in the last like 12 months. And that's actually a really big advantage for Resilent because what happens is you'll

50:48 get a lot of companies that have picked maybe a microwave or a plasma torch or something that can't scale that requires millions in RD to get larger.

50:57 And they're like, oh, I can hit a dollar, I'm less than a dollar per kilogram. And I actually even heard someone say, well, you have to say that if you wanna get funded, we just put it on our

51:08 project roadmap, but that's where we're headed, right? Whereas we can actually show specific direction in terms of either capex reduction or process steps removed that gets us to that number. And

51:21 so that's much more convincing. And I think that's kinda where we are today, is that you really have to have a technology story and not like a hope and a dream to get to the number.

51:34 All right, so let's talk about where you're gonna be in 10 years. Oh gosh. What does future you look like? Hopefully on a beach.

51:44 So I don't have a lot of ego. I do expect to be replaced as CEO. I don't, to me, this is such a gift to have this opportunity to be the CEO of Resilent. But I also know that if it's really going

51:58 to solve climate change, it can't just be me I need to partner up with the biggest, strongest, most intelligent oil and gas companies and have their expertise, their in-house engineering, as well

52:12 as their finances, as well as their capability of running large projects and being successful at it and move forward that way. So I expect to be acquired before 10 years, for sure. However,

52:28 I want to be part of the ride So helping out supporting any way I can to make sure that successful, and that this becomes something that changes climate change. This team, this particular team at

52:41 GE, has created trillions of dollars of first-of-a-kind product. We've shaped and changed industry before. We feel we're the ones responsible for taking out coal in power. We have an idea to take

52:43 out coal in steel as well. So there's a lot of good opportunity here to really shape industry, which is just incredible to

52:48 be able to

52:53 participate in

53:07 that. Get on that rocket ship and ride it all the

53:12 way to the top. Exactly, right. Yeah, how can people get in touch with you? Is there anything we can help you with? Anyone listening? Yeah. Sure, I am on LinkedIn, and I am responsive. But

53:22 my email is emilyresilentcom. If you're interested in learning more about the technology, a spell resolent for me. Oh, sorry. No, sorry. That's E-M-I-L-Y at because Emily spelled different ways

53:35 too. R-E-S-O-L-L-A-N-T dot com. The double L gets me every time. Yeah. Yeah. No, is it raining? It's raining.

53:46 I'm not sure it'll make it to the mic, but yeah. Good. And what can people help you with? We're looking for customers. So we are going to do a one ton per day pilot for next year So if you're

53:59 interested in participating, it's going to be trailer mount, so we can ship it around to multiple customers. We are looking for funding in Q4, and we're looking, we have a couple EPCs, so I

54:12 probably don't even know those, but you know, and just anyone that's enthusiastic about supporting or helping the team, we welcome you. Good. Thank you. Thank you for coming on today. And

54:24 speaking of people that are helping and being supportive. Thank you so much, Jason and Nada, for having me on today. I really appreciate everything that you guys do, not just this moment, but

54:34 everything that Energy Tech Nexus does to educate and support entrepreneurs and make them successful, both the network, the training, just the opportunities like this to come on and speak. Thank

54:48 you so much. Yeah. No, we're happy to make it worthwhile. Yeah. Thank you.