The humble garage is so steeped in Silicon Valley lore it’s almost cliché. Yet that’s exactly how Caleb Boyd and Kevin Bush started Molten Industries: in the garage of the Stanford professor’s on-campus home, where Kevin rented an apartment.
It had everything they needed: space and, most importantly, power. The two wanted to break methane’s back, so to speak, stripping hydrogen from carbon in a way that didn’t emit atmosphere-warming carbon dioxide.
“We call it a garage, but it was really just a carport. We plugged into his EV charger, heated up a methane pyrolysis reactor to around 1,000 Celsius and started cracking methane,” Boyd told TechCrunch.
The professor who lived there “was super helpful,” Boyd said. “He would just come by, help us tinker with things and give us advice.”
While the garage can still be a great place to do basic research, it’s the next step that poses a problem. Climate tech companies often face a “valley of death” between lab experiment and investable company.
Founders have typically had to solve that problem themselves. But increasingly, investors are intervening early.
When Boyd and Bush were still in the garage, they received a visit from Ashley Grosh, vice president at Breakthrough Energy, the climate tech organization founded by Bill Gates that includes a for-profit venture capital arm and various nonprofit programs. Grosh was representing one such program called Breakthrough Energy Discovery, a new division devoted to early-stage companies, the company told TechCrunch.
Full story: Why Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy and other investors are scouring universities for founders | TechCrunch
