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Telecom veteran Webley to lead clean-tech startup Pax Streamline

NOVATO – Telecom Valley veteran John Webley is the new CEO of Pax Streamline, the venture-funded clean-tech subsidiary of Pax Scientific in San Rafael. Founded by biomimicry visionary Jay Harmon, Pax Scientific designs industrial products by studying and adapting the efficiencies of nature.

Pax Streamline will focus on developing turbines, heating and air-conditioning systems and aerospace drag-reduction technologies.

“We expect to be shipping products in two years,” said Mr. Webley, whose telecom company Turin Networks is one of the few to have survived the slump that caused most of Petalu-ma’s startups to close their doors.

Although he wasn’t acquainted with Mr. Harmon or biomimicry, he was immediately intrigued by the concept and by the fact that Pax Scientific already had products on the market.

“I was looking around for opportunities, and I didn’t like the way the market was treating startups in the telecom space, so I decided to cast my net a bit wider,” said Mr. Webley.

Clean tech was interesting and attracting lots of venture capital. But many of the startups in the space were little more than science experiments, he said.

But “Pax Scientific is a business” in the clean-tech space, he said.

“The same investors we talked to about telecom are switching to clean tech. Companies in the space have huge valuations compared to telecom,” said Mr. Webley. “The market is so much bigger, into the trillions.”

Investor Vinod Khosla has put his own money behind Pax Streamline, leading an initial funding round for $6 million. Mr. Khosla’s successful investment in Cerent, which sold to Cisco Systems for close to $7 billion, is legend in the North Bay.

Under Mr. Webley’s leadership, Turin Networks raised close to $150 million in venture funding. But clean tech is more conservative. Pax Streamline expects $6 million to last at least two years while its first products are under development.

“Once we begin to market, we’ll need more, but it’s incredibly easy to find funding in this space,” he said.

Pax Streamline, which just moved into a 15,000-square-foot location on Leveroni Court in Novato, has 16 employees. Mr. Webley expects to have 30 before the end of the year, drawing on the engineering talent pool in Sonoma County.

“I’ll soak it all up,” he said with a laugh. Depending on the product, some manufacturing will be outsourced overseas.

“Others will be so unique we’ll probably manufacture them in the U.S.,” he said.

Pax Scientific’s first product was an impeller that mimics a whirlpool, the path of least resistance for air and liquid movement. It’s used to mix drinking water during purification.

Pax Scientific has since formed Pax Mixer, Pax Water and Pax Fans in addition to Pax Streamline, the only subsidiary to have its own location. The others are headed by Paul Hawken, co-founder of garden products retailer Smith & Hawken.

“My research convinced me that Pax Streamline can be very successful,” said Mr. Webley. “Instead of creating energy, we’ll be creating technologies to save it, with drag reduction, for example.

“Just imagine how popular that would be today among the airlines,” he said.