He found an angle on oil drilling and created an urban fracking firm.

At 26, Matt Owens dreamed of gathering hard-to-reach hydrocarbons buried in the earth. At the time, most oil firms drilled vertical wells, but Owens had improved a technology that lets operators steer their drill bits horizontally, minimizing surface impact while reaching new areas. So he launched his own company, Extraction

Oil and Gas, in Denver, in 2013. In addition to improving horizontal wells, Owens made the risky decision to frack near urban centers, rather than in swaths of back country; this allowed him to tap electrical grids, as opposed to using loud, diesel-burning generators. His oil rigs run quietly.

Before too long, though, he was running out of cash. Reason: “In oil and gas, you actually have to spend money to make the money,” Owens says. An IPO would be the most efficient path to funding.

His timing could not have been worse. Between 2013 and 2016, the price of oil plummeted from $100 a barrel to around $35. His firm went through the filing process for 20 months, he says, waiting for the market to rebound. To keep going, the company figured out how to cut drilling costs from nearly $5 million a well to about $2.5 million.

The strategy paid off. In October 2016, the company raised $630 million, valuing it at more than $2 billion. “It was a lot of blood, sweat, and tears, being the first oil company to go public in almost two years,” says Owens. In 2017, Extraction Oil and Gas generated more than $600 million in revenue, and it is on track to turn a profit.