What’s it like to pitch to Richard Branson? Soon, three startups will know firsthand.

As part of the Extreme Tech Challenge, entrepreneurs from three companies will travel to Necker Island, Branson’s private island, and pitch their business directly to the titan.

Sphero, Bloom Technologies and Giroptic beat out over 1,000 other startups. Each will get 15 minutes to present to Branson and several other judges.

Pitch day is the final round of the six-month challenge, which is run by nonprofit MaiTai Global.

Related: BB-8 maker takes its robotic ball to schools

Boulder-based Sphero catapulted to fame last year with “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.”

Sphero created the pint-sized robotic toy version of the movie’s BB-8 character. It became one of the hottest toys of 2015.

But before BB-8, the six-year-old firm was quietly making waves among tech enthusiasts for its first invention : an app-controlled robotic ball.

Sphero even evolved it into a teaching tool for schools.

“This past year has been transformational for Sphero on all levels,” said CEO Paul Berberian. “Earning one of the top spots to pitch Branson is an opportunity of a lifetime for our company.”

Related: Richard Branson reveals his “Aha” moment

Bloom Technologies, founded in 2014, has developed prenatal technology and put it at the fingertips of expectant moms.

The San Francisco-based startup created a wearable device that syncs with a smartphone and allows women to measure the frequency, duration, and intensity of contractions.

Giroptic, based in Lille, France, is the third finalist. It created a 360-degree camera that can record full spherical images and videos and will work with any virtual reality platform.

The three finalists will pitch to Branson, along with Google Maps co-inventor Lars Rasmussen and Samsung Electronics President Young Sohn, on February 10.

The winner will be picked that same day. All three companies will get the same prize package: mentoring from top entrepreneurs, tech and infrastructure support from IBM (IBM) and Amazon (AMZN), and the potential to raise new funding from investors at Necker Island.

However, the winner gets the bragging rights and an opportunity to be invited back to Necker Island and schmooze with Richard Branson next year.

CNNMoney (New York) First published January 14, 2016: 2:28 PM ET

Lehman Brothers is synonymous with financial catastrophe, but one entrepreneur hopes the brand will make him a fortune — as a range of Scotch whiskey.

James Green, 34, is launching three whiskies with Lehman Brothers on the label. The most popular of the range, “Ashes of Disaster,” claims to have a “wicked suggestion of burning banknotes, a hint of ripe autumn fruit about to fall.”

Lehman Brothers collapsed in the largest U.S. bankruptcy in history in September 2008, sparking the global financial crisis.

A British real estate investor, Green filed in 2013 with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to use the term “Lehman Brothers” for bars and spirits.

He says he’s now taking online orders for the whiskey from bar chains in London and New York.

Barclays Bank (BCS), which bought parts of Lehman Brothers, filed in 2014 to stop Green using the name. It noted, among other arguments, that the investment bank often gave “cut crystal whiskey decanter[s] etched with the mark Lehman Brothers” as gifts, which means its trademark should extend beyond banking. The filings show Barclays suspended its case in October 2015.

Barclays declined to comment.

Green told CNNMoney an outcome of the dispute is “pending” so his lawyers have told him to sell as much whiskey as he can.

“It’s full speed ahead,” said Green, who expects bartenders on both sides of the Atlantic to be pouring the whiskey within months.

Related: Drink up? Whiskey investing brings huge returns

Another of Green’s Lehman whiskies is his spicy American-made “Snapfire,” which he suggests is “perfect with reckless maneuvers, long gambles, and explosive consequences. Drink alone, if possible.”

Green is now looking for investors to help him open Lehman Brothers themed bars, including one on Wall Street. It would perhaps be the perfect place to sell the third whiskey in the range, called “Evergreen.” It is being marketed as “perfect for when fortune is with you and you are riding your luck. Tastes best when you are sitting on top of the world.”

CNNMoney (London) First published February 8, 2016: 10:34 AM ET

Hillary Clinton is there. Ted Cruz is there. So are Bernie Sanders and Marco Rubio.

Who’s not there in Bleacher Creatures’ newest lineup of plush dolls inspired by the 2016 presidential candidates? Donald Trump.

Bleacher Creatures is best known for its 10-inch plush figures of famous athletes like New York Yankees’ Derek Jeter, Cleveland Cavaliers’ Lebron James and the Patriots quarterback Tom Brady.

Last year it hit a home run with its Pope Francis doll (selling more than 50,000 of them) to commemorate the papal visit to the United States.

On Saturday, Bleacher Creatures will unveil its newest dolls in the likeness of political characters at the North American Annual Toy Fair in New York City.

“This is our first foray into politics,” said Matt Hoffman, CEO of Plymouth, Pa.-based Bleacher Creatures, which sells more than 1 million dolls a year.

Related: Pope Francis has arrived…as a plush doll

Hoffman said early polls determined who got a Bleacher Creatures transformation.

So why is Donald Trump missing from the group? Heck, even former presidents Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan earned a doll.

The official explanation from the company is that Trump is a celebrity and celebrity likenesses require licenses.

“We worked directly with the Trump Organization and in the end we weren’t able to get a deal,” said Hoffman.

The Trump campaign declined to comment.

Hoffman said he has a Trump doll prototype ready if the candidate changes his mind.

Related: Barbie’s new body: Curvy, tall and petite

Hillary Clinton’s Democratic rival Bernie Sanders almost didn’t make the cut.

Hoffman said the company was closely following the early polls to decide which candidates to go with.

Sanders’ virtual tie with Clinton in Iowa won him his own Bleacher Creatures doll, but too late for the toy fair.

The new political plush dolls (priced at $19.99 each) are on pre-sale on the company’s website.

He also said Clinton, whose doll wears a pant suit, could get a wardrobe change in subsequent versions of the doll.

Hoffman said the political dolls will ship to customers mid-summer, or 30 days before the Republican and Democratic national conventions.

CNNMoney (New York) First published February 12, 2016: 4:13 PM ET

Carbon dioxide gets a bad rap.

Out of all the waste gases produced by human activity — manufacturing, agriculture, electricity production, transportation — carbon dioxide is the biggest byproduct and is fingered as the leading culprit behind global warming.

In fact, it accounts for 76% of all annual global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

But Emily Cole doesn’t focus on the negatives. The 32-year-old scientist has created technology that would recycle carbon dioxide into something extremely useful.

Related: Elon. Evolution

Cole is cofounder and chief science officer of Liquid Light. The startup is pioneering a process to convert carbon dioxide gas into a chemical that can be used to make consumer products.

She founded the startup in 2009 and immediately got to work developing technology to capture carbon dioxide and recycle it.

“Right now, waste carbon dioxide is captured and sequestered,” said Cole. This means the gas is collected from facilities like industrial plants or manufacturing sites, compressed in pipelines and then injected into rock formations deep underground.

“Instead of storing it, we’re utilizing it and converting it into something of value,” she said.

Liquid Light is the first company that’s developed a catalyst (a combination of water, sunlight, electricity and other chemicals) to make other chemicals out of carbon dioxide.

“We take carbon dioxide from its source [like power plants or factories], add water and electricity to it, and create liquid fuels and chemicals such as ethylene glycol and glycolic acid,” said Cole.

Those chemicals could eventually replace petroleum in everyday consumer products like plastic bottles, carpets, antifreeze, even facial creams.

The benefits are manifold: “We reduce our dependence on petroleum, which is not renewable,” said Cole. “We make these products with lower carbon dioxide emissions and we can possibly lower the production costs.”

Related: These startups could change the world

Cole has a Ph.D. in chemistry from Princeton University. But her passion goes back to her high school days in Texas.

“I had a great teacher who really got me interested and excited about chemistry,” she said.

At Princeton, she collaborated with Professor Andrew Bocarsly, who had already been working on ways to recycle carbon dioxide. “His project was stalled for many years because there wasn’t a lot of interest or funding for it,” she said. But she saw potential, and worked to take his research one step further.

After graduating from Princeton, Cole attracted investment from venture capitalists to start her firm and develop the technology. (While she declined to say how much Liquid Light has raised, CrunchBase reports it has received $23.5 million in several rounds of funding.)

Related: 3D printers could soon make human skin

Liquid Light, which now has a team of 12, hopes to pilot the technology next year and then license it for commercial use.

Big companies have already taken note.

Last year, Coca Cola (KO) partnered with Liquid Light to help accelerate the commercialization of the technology. The technology is especially relevant to Coca-Cola because it could help reduce the cost of producing mono-ethylene glycol, one of the components used to make the company’s plant-based PET plastic bottles.

She said there was another “big industry name” that would soon be announcing a partnership as well.

“My dream is really that we’re able to commercialize this technology and reduce our dependence on oil,” she said.

CNNMoney (New York) First published February 12, 2016: 9:15 AM ET

Solving the refugee crisis should be a collaborative effort.

That’s the message of a global grassroots nonprofit called Techfugees.

Techfugees held its first U.S.-based event on Tuesday. Roughly 180 tech professionals gathered in New York City at Civic Hall.

Attendees — who hailed from places like Warby Parker, Mastercard and General Assembly — had eight hours to work on tackling four aspects of refugee education, like enrollment barriers and language hurdles.

“People don’t know how to take their compassion and turn it into action,” said Brian Reich, director at The Hive, an innovation lab that’s a part of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. “Our job is to move the refugee crisis into a frame people understand — into a product challenge.”

Related: How to make Americans care about refugees

Techfugees was founded in September, shortly after images surfaced of a dead young Syrian child who washed ashore in Turkey. A small group of European techies wanted to help people leverage their technical skills and innovative thinking in a way that could tangibly help agencies and refugees.

“Most of the people in the room wouldn’t have responded to ‘cry and buy’ messaging,” said Reich, referencing the traditional methods of appealing to emotion for donations. “This is not about philanthropy on the margins.”

Related: This plastic toilet could save lives

The goal of this particular Techfugees event was to create a list of the major questions that tech needs to answer — and then start thinking about how the solutions might look.

Questions like: What keeps girls from attending school? Who are the teachers and what are their backgrounds? What kind of devices do students have and how reliable is their Internet access?

There were hundreds of questions, and the discussions at the New York event just scratched the surface. The idea is that other groups will use it as a jumping off point and start actually coding solutions. (A group called Hacktivation plans to host a 48-hour coding retreat for Bay Area engineers to build some of this out.)

Opinion: Big business must ‘hack’ refugee crisis

Traditionally, “no one talks to each other,” Reich said. “Groups are all trying to solve [the crisis], but events happen disparately.”

The beauty of Techfugees — which Reich said has 25,000 in its global community — is that it brings together people from all different disciplines: nonprofits, startups, corporations and government.

“I hope that today will just be the beginning,” said Samantha Power, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, who opened the event Tuesday morning. “We are facing the largest refugee crisis since World War II. It is a 21st century crisis and we need a 21st century solution.”

CNNMoney (New York) First published February 9, 2016: 5:35 PM ET

The cannabis industry is quickly becoming a magnet for female entrepreneurs.

Medical or recreational marijuana is legal in 23 states and the District of Columbia. As legalization has increased, so have sales. In 2013, the industry was at $1.8 billion.

In 2015, it was estimated at $5.4 billion (accounting for evolving business models), according to the ArcView Group, a cannabis-focused investment and research firm.

“The cannabis industry is so new that there are very few barriers to get in, especially for women,” said Giadha DeCarcer, CEO and founder of New Frontier, which provides data analysis for the marijuana industry.

More importantly, she said the marijuana industry isn’t as heavily skewed toward men as many other industries. It’s what personally appealed to DeCarcer, a former investment banker and consultant in technology and defense.

“Those are all heavily male dominated areas. It was the biggest frustration for me,” she said. “It made it harder to rise to the top.”

DeCarcer launched New Frontier in 2014. She said the business doubled in value and size in less than a year. She said it’s profitable but won’t disclose revenue.

Related: Take a weed break at work. It’s allowed

Women account for 36% of all executives in the cannabis market, according to Marijuana Business Daily. That far surpasses the 22% national average for women in executive roles across all industries, according to Pew Research Center.

Finding the overall number of female cannabis entrepreneurs is harder to come by. But the anecdotal evidence is strong that more women are getting a foot in the door.

Jane West is at the forefront of this trend.

West, “a proud cannabis user,” cofounded Women Grow, a professional networking group for women in cannabis. Its first event in 2014 had 70 attendees. Now it has chapters in 44 cities, with 21,000 subscribers to its weekly newsletter and 30,000 followers on Instagram.

The Women Grow summit kicks off February 3 in Denver. West expects the three-day event to have more than 1,500 attendees this year, including singer-songwriter, Melissa Etheridge.

“There is nothing but opportunity for women in this industry. We need to spread the word,” said West. “Women are coming up with terrific business ideas. Many of them are driven by their advocacy for legal marijuana.”

Related: The women of marijuana

Salwa Ibrahim has been an advocate of legal marijuana for a long time. “I’m also from the Bay Area, which is the birthplace of the medical marijuana movement,” she said.

Ibrahim and a business partner opened Blum, a medical marijuana dispensary, in Oakland, California, in 2012. It was a steep learning curve, but she made some smart moves to quickly get established.

“I attracted the best possible talent and gave them incentives to stay and grow with the business,” she said. Blum now sees 800 to 1,000 patients a day, and has added a cultivation center, production facility and 70 employees. More than half of her staff are women.

Last month, her business was acquired by Terra Tech Corp (TRTC). Ibrahim is staying on as executive director and adding two dispensaries in Las Vegas and one in Reno.

On the cultivation side, cannabis growers are still predominantly men.

That doesn’t sit well with Jennifer Gote.

Related: Forget Ohio, ten more states try to legalize marijuana

Gote fell into the industry out of necessity. “I got out of a bad relationship and became a single mom to four kids,” said Gote, who was living in Arizona. A friend suggested she take up a job as a trimmer at a marijuana cultivation facility.

“That’s how I got started,” she said. In a year, she learned every aspect of the business — growing, harvesting, packaging and distribution.

When a manager position came open, she threw her hat in and was promoted. “I earned everyone’s respect because I worked my way up,” she said.

She quit last November to start AOW Management, a cannabis cultivation and dispensary management company.

“Business is going really very well,” she said. But Gote now wants to see more women on her side of the business.

“I would love to hire women,” she said. “In fact, I would hire women right now with no experience. This way I can teach them from the beginning everything that I learned.”

CNNMoney (New York) First published February 3, 2016: 7:38 AM ET

Jane West cofounded Women Grow, a professional networking group for female cannabis entrepreneurs, in 2014.

The group’s first event had 70 attendees. Today, Women Grow has chapters in 44 cities, 21,000 newsletter subscribers and 30,000 followers on Instagram.

Related: Women cash in on the marijuana boom

“I was stunned that the industry was mostly made up of Caucasian men,” West said. “It didn’t seem right. My vision of the industry was to have more women in it.”

Everybody poops. But not everyone has access to a toilet.

“It’s shocking that this basic necessity is unavailable to nearly half of the world,” said Jasmine Burton, founder and president of Atlanta-based Wish for WASH.

Burton, 23, was a freshman at Georgia Institute of Technology when she learned that as many as 2.5 billion people don’t have access to a toilet.

It bothered her even more that this sanitation problem disproportionately affects women and young girls.

“Young girls in the developing world frequently drop out of school because there isn’t a toilet,” she said. “It angered me as a woman in higher education and as a product designer.”

Just 18 at the time, Burton channeled her feelings into a mission: She would design a toilet.

While at Georgia Tech, she collaborated with three other students to invent an inexpensive, eco-friendly mobile toilet that could convert waste into renewable energy. They called their sanitation system SafiChoo Toilet.

Related: 5 startups that are reimagining the world

Made of plastic, the toilet is designed for sitting or squatting, which is a common practice in some countries. It can be placed directly on the ground, or it can be elevated by adding an attachable base. It can also function with or without water.

The system features a waste collection unit (that can go above or below ground), which separates the waste into liquids and solids. There’s also a manually-operated bidet that can be attached.

Burton said these features are intended to help curb contamination and the spread of diseases.

The SafiChoo toilet costs about $50. “That’s the highest price point we want it to be,” she said

Related: These startups are heading to Richard Branson’s private island

In 2014, Burton and her team won first place and $25,000 at the Georgia Tech InVention competition, the nation’s largest undergraduate invention competition.

“We didn’t think we’d win because products at the contest were always high-tech with super sexy designs,” she said. “Ours was a simple toilet.”

The win enabled Burton to pilot SafiChoo (which means clean toilet in Kiswahili) at a Kenyan refugee camp. She also launched Wish for WASH, the parent company of SafiChoo.

Related: She’s $10 million closer to replacing plastic bottles

John Zegers, director at Georgia Center of Innovation for Manufacturing, contacted Burton after her InVention competition win. “We thought it was a great product that needed a little bit more development,” he said.

The Center gave a grant to Georgia Tech to develop a SafiChoo prototype and helped Burton’s team find an Atlanta-based manufacturer.

Zegers said he hopes that Wish for WASH is able to keep the toilet a Made in America product.

Burton is currently living in Lusaka, Zambia, as she tests the toilet there. The company is also running an Indiegogo campaign to support the Zambia pilot.

She hopes to begin selling the toilet to U.S.-based customers and to NGOs in 2017.

“It’s amazing when you see how many people have never used a toilet before and what [the SafiChoo Toilet] could mean for them,” she said.

CNNMoney (New York) First published January 22, 2016: 7:55 AM ET

Ohio has a message for women- and minority-led startups: Move to the Buckeye State and you have a real shot at getting funding.

Leading the charge is Cleveland-based JumpStart, a nonprofit that invests in young tech firms.

“Part of our focus is to accelerate opportunity for women and minority entrepreneurs in Ohio,” said JumpStart CEO Ray Leach. It now wants to expand that mission nationally.

JumpStart has launched a $10 million seed fund that will solely invest in women and minority-led tech startups.

The Focus Fund will invest in about 20 companies in less than three years — ideally young companies with five employees or less. JumpStart will also take equity in the startups, although it would not disclose how much.

Each startup will get $500,000 in funding. The catch: Entrepreneurs will have to move their headquarters to Ohio to score the money.

“We do require them to move Ohio, but they don’t have to stay for any particular period of time,” said Leach. “Having said this, we believe once they come to Ohio they will not see any need to leave.”

Related: These three startups are heading to Richard Branson’s private island

Ohio already has some strong pockets of innovation. Cincinnati, Columbus and Cleveland all have vibrant startup ecosystems, fueled by top-notch accelerators and a growing pool of VC money and angel investors, said Leach.

Healthcare IT, biotech, cleantech and wearables are some of the hottest areas.

“Ohio has invested nearly $500 million in the last five years to advance its entrepreneurial ecosystem,” said Leach.

Related: A man’s world? Not to these women

Public-private partnerships, like the JumpStart Focus Fund, are part of that effort.

JumpStart, founded in 2005, has invested in 85 early-stage tech firms in Ohio. 35% of those have women or minority founders.

That amount of diversity in its funding portfolio is unusual, given that 95% of venture capital funding in the U.S. goes to male-led startups, said Leach, who’s also a member of the National Venture Capital Association’s diversity and inclusion task force.

Related: She left Iran at 14. Now she runs a multimillion-dollar U.S. firm

Leach said the Focus Fund is the largest seed fund of its kind to focus entirely on women and minority-led tech startups. (The state of Ohio is providing half of the investment, while JumpStart will provide the other half.)

JumpStart is moving quickly to find the right firms, and it expects to make the first investment in the next 90 days.

“We know there are great innovators who will bring their expertise, talents and relationships to advance Ohio’s entrepreneurial economy,” said Leach. “It is also our hope that Ohio will be better recognized as one of the most dynamic entrepreneurial states in the country.”

He also hopes that the Focus Fund will set an example for the VC industry as a whole.

“We have a long way to go to embrace diversity in this industry. But you have to start somewhere,” he said. “We want to see a ripple effect of what we’re doing in Ohio to happen across the country.”

CNNMoney (New York) First published January 20, 2016: 8:07 AM ET

Women are buying handguns in record numbers — especially weapons that are small enough to conceal.

But they are frustrated by the lack of firearm accessories catering to them. So some are starting companies of their own to tailor products to women.

“I thought to myself, ‘Where’s all the women’s stuff?'” said Lorelei Fay of Boise, Idaho.

Fay couldn’t find a suitable holster when she got her own concealed carry license. Her mother had taught her to sew, so she made her own: an elastic belly band with a holster for her Sig Sauer semiautomatic handgun. It also has pockets to hold two backup magazines.

When her friends laid eyes on it, they wanted one too. So she stitched up some of the corset-style holsters and starting selling them in 2014.

Fay called her company Miss Concealed.

“When I started selling my stuff on eBay (EBAY), it started selling like hotcakes,” said Fay, who peddles a lacy line of holstered corsets called Hidden Heat for $30 to $50. “I couldn’t keep enough inventory. As soon as I make them, they’re right out the door.”

Fay said she hired seven sewers as revenue swelled to $200,000 in 2015. She made more than half of that in the last three months of the year.

She said orders spiked after a mass shooting in San Bernardino killed 14 people in December.

“Women want to protect themselves,” said Fay. “There’s so much craziness going on right now. Men and women don’t want to be a victim.”

Last month, when she was exhibiting her products in Las Vegas at the National Shooting Sports Foundation’s SHOT Show, she had to temporarily stop taking new orders because her sewers couldn’t keep up with demand.

Fay wasn’t the only woman entrepreneur at the SHOT Show catering to the growing market.

Related: Gunmakers streamline pistols for women who carry

Self-protection is serious business for Leslie Deets, founder of a gun-centric handbag startup called Concealed Carrie. She and her husband also co-own Sharp Shooters USA gun range in Roswell, Georgia.

Being in the gun business “hits close to home,” said Deets, as she described a harrowing assault while a college freshman. “He kidnapped me, stabbed me and held me at gunpoint.”

Deets sells handbags containing hidden holsters for small handguns, like her pink Walther PPK .380 semiautomatic, which she can access in a “crossbody” draw from her purse. She designs her purses, satchels, clutches and compacts to be fashionable as well as utilitarian, providing quick access to concealed guns, TASERs and pepper spray.

Related: Guns, guns guns: 2015 was a record year for FBI background checks

“We want to enhance your wardrobe, not distract from it,” she said. “We don’t want everybody to know our business.”

Prices top out at $229, though she offers free replacements to women who shoot through the bags to protect themselves from assault.

Tessa Renaud, an Ob-Gyn from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, has also made a business out of self-protection. She got a concealed carry permit when she used to work in the ER because her shift ended in the wee hours and she wanted to be armed when she walked alone to her car.

But she didn’t know how was she going to holster her bulky Smith & Wesson (SWHC) 1911 semiautomatic pistol and her Ruger (RGR)SP101 revolver.

“I looked for weeks and couldn’t find the right thing,” she said. “I got so frustrated I decided to come up with something on my own.”

She designed a line of lace flexible wraps that are fastened to the body with metal clips, like Ace bandages. Her booth at the SHOT Show featured a mannequin covered in lace wraps like a mummy, with replica guns strapped to its torso, arms and legs.

Related: How the Iron Pipeline funnels guns into cities with tough gun laws

Renaud started Lethal Lace about two years ago with her husband, Mike, an ex-sheriff and stay-at-home dad for their six kids. They said they sold 1,000 of the products last year, with revenues totaling $25,000 December alone, which was their best month. The wrap holsters cost $58.

At the SHOT Show they launched a new wrap holster for men, sans lace. But the Renauds said they’ve already sold a lot of lace wraps to men.

“I wear the lace one,” said Mike. “It’s concealed. I’m man enough to wear it.”

— Abigail Brooks contributed to this report.

CNNMoney (Las Vegas) First published February 2, 2016: 10:46 AM ET