with Karl Michael Millauer, Founder of KMM Consulting and a former C-Level executive in some emblematic water groups like BWT, Christ Water Technology, Aquatech International, and Aquarion AG.

KMM Consulting helps clients around the globe leverage opportunities in the world of water through mergers & acquisitions, finance & funding, business development, and strategic support.

Infographic: Water Companies for Sales

What we covered:

How unlike McKinsey, Roland Berger, or KPMG, KMM Consulting works with small Water Companies and helps them get sold, further distributed or raising money

How the most common case is to put a water company for sales to solve a succession challenge

How some other water businesses have reached a glass ceiling for their growth and how a M&A move is the way to break it

How healthy water companies can be profitable for 45 years, active in a very good niche and scalable, and still not find any interested investor

How founders often overestimate the value of their Water Company, why they do so, and what’s a good rule of thumb to determine the right valuation

How long a typical due diligence process lasts and what key milestones have to be crossed

How marketing is key in selling a water company and how that often boils down to the founder’s ability to convey his message and value proposition

How KMM Consulting packages its relationship to small water businesses and how that’s a different approach to what most market players do

How ESG and sustainability investors may need to get educated to the specificities of the water sector when they first step in

How some water companies are perfectly healthy and profitable and simply don’t want to grow, why, and why that’s absolutely fine!

How when acquiring a small water company, new owners may get nervous if the founder leaves too quickly and which kind of mechanisms such as earn-outs work the best to please everyone

How the freshly created Aquarion AG acquired the established Hager und Elsässer behemoth and what you can learn from it

Drivers that amend a company’s valuation, healthy growth vs burning money. the biggest hurdles in a water company sales process, how it’s a people’s business, the importance of risk management, pairing technical and commercial skills, focusing on the smaller end of the water sector’s pyramid… and much more!

… and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨  

Resources:

Check KMM Consulting’s Website

Send your warmest regards to Karl Michael on LinkedIn

is on Linkedin

Antoine Walter on LinkedIn

Full Transcript:

These are computer-generated, so expect some typos

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Antoine Walter: Hi, Karl Michael, welcome to the show!

Karl Michael Millauer: Hello. Good morning.

Introducing: Karl Michael Millauer

Antoine Walter: I’m very excited to have you. On that microphone because you have a profile, which is quite rare in this industry, and there’s so many topics on my wishlist to discuss with you today that it might be a packed discussion, but have traditions on this microphone. And it starts with my opening question, which is what can you tell me about the place you’re at, which is Zurich, which I would ignore by now.

Karl Michael Millauer: I’m living here since now. More than 20 years in Switzerland. But I’m traveling a lot all over the world I see me as a very cosmopolitan then as an Austrian based in Switzerland. But you need something like you call home. So at the moment my home is Zürich.

Antoine Walter: you mentioned a bit this traveler experience and the fact that you’re in a cosmopolitan place. You’ve lived three lives. If I’m right in this industry, you’ve been First outside of the water sector, and you’ve had a career in finance and banking, then you’ve been inside the water sector and you’ve had several CSU positions in this industry, and we go in more depth of that later.

But lately, you founded KMM Consulting I was wondering what guided you across these three lives? Is there like a red threat?

After a first life in Finance and Banking, 20 years in the Water Sector’s C-Suite

Karl Michael Millauer: As you say correctly I started law and business administration, so I’m a commercial guy, not a technical guy. I was always in financing. I’ve done many IPOs in Austria before I joined, and in 2001 BWT Group. And I had a reputation of making successful IPOs and BWT and asked me to join to make out of the engineering group, a nice business unit organization and make the company fit fine.

IPO. That was my mission when I came. So I moved to Switzerland because the biggest company. in this BWT empire was Christ Water, which was listed on the Zürich stock market. that was my mission. But then when I started in water business, I got, let’s say, under GIMs infected from water because I came from luxury fashion, luxury industry.

And I was Of course very fascinated about the water and how important it this is for human life and for the planet. So I feel more satisfaction in dealing with water and water issues.

Karl Michael Millauer is the Founder of KMM Consulting

Antoine Walter: And what leads you then to found KMM consulting?

Karl Michael Millauer: Yeah, I think that is more or less when you have an active career on sea levels. And I have been in many companies, few companies in sea level functions. I think at the end of your career you have gain so much experience. You have a tremendous network. It makes more fun to be consultant than to run operatively a group.

And yeah, it makes more fun and you can really leverage your network and you can attend to conferences, ratios. You can meet people, which you can’t do when you are running a water company. What a group. You’re too much engaged with operations.

The architect of Global Water Intelligence’s Opportunity Exchange Platform

Antoine Walter: You, you mentioned your network and you mentioned how you can interact. So I think that’s what leads us to the herd of that conversation today, because I followed this inception by GWI of their opportunity platform, opportunity exchange platform. And I thought that was interesting.

I had Christopher Gasson that microphone a while ago.

And so I looked out, out of curiosity, what was there on the platform and a lot of very interesting companies and offers and perspectives were proposed there. And at the time I looked, there were 35 opportunities on that platform.

And I started clicking those opportunities one by one. And your name was all over the place in every single opportunity you were the contact person, you were the person to introduce it. And it was like 35 companies and not like uninteresting ones. The total opposite, like really cool stuff.

And I’m wondering, how do you build a portfolio of 35 companies which work with you, and why did you list them on that opportunity platform?

35 Water Companies in Portfolio

Karl Michael Millauer: First of all, I have always a close relation to GWI since long time since I started in water business. I was the initiator of this idea because I want to reach a very big public big auditorium and gwi certainly the best to do that. So we were working on such a platform together with with Lou and other.

And secondly, yes, why? Yeah. I’m not a McKinsey or Roland Berger or KPMG. I’m KMM Consulting. So I focus more on the niche markets where the big guys are not looking at, this is a smaller companies. My size is between startup. Companies with zero revenues up to 30 million Euro revenues.

Most of my companies are between five and 15 million Euro revenues, and this is a category which they do not pay retainers to the big guys. They need to be made fit for new owner so this is when I have sales side or capital raise mandates, and I saw there’s a big demand in the market from a lot of small companies.

And startup companies to get capital or to sell or to get licenses. While when I have search mandates, what I also have, these are always big groups. These are big groups looking in the market and asking me to, I know what they’re looking for us, or if it’s matches, then I bring them to this targets.

Two market approaches: Buy and Sell Mandates

Antoine Walter: There’s a lot to unpack. So let’s start by the end search mandate, I guess, is when you have a big group, which is looking for a target, and then you are actively looking on the market, what would be the right target to understand that one right?

Karl Michael Millauer: Yes, but there’s not one I did many mandates. You get an a mandate from a huge water group or from a bigger one, which gave me a clear mandate, a profile, and I screen the market. Worldwide, or Europe or Asia, and then I bring them a long list and out of that we take a short list and then I approach them and see if they’re actionable or not.

This is the way, but that the overwhelming part of my activities are certainly sales side or capital race mandates.

Teaming up with GWI to fill a gap for small-sized Water Companies

Antoine Walter: you mentioned how you worked closely with GWI and Louis de la Pasture, right? As the person, you were working with. So you were the person who came to them and said, look, there’s an opportunity. I think you should be looking into that, and they created it on your initiative.

Karl Michael Millauer: Yes. I talk first with Christopher Gasson, then with Sebastian Lennox, and then I was working on the realization and the implementation with Louis.

Working with Smaller Water Companies

Antoine Walter: what’s your relationship to these companies, which you’re helping this niche ones, which are looking for investment or partnership, which is not covered by the big guys. How do you interact with them?

Karl Michael Millauer: Yeah. First of all, I know many of them from my active career as CEO, So I know mon many companies I visit them, approach them. Certainly most companies I have in Europe, but I have also in Middle East and in Southeast Asia. A couple of clients. And of course few in the United States. So this is my portfolio.

So I know them. And in most cases there’s a succession problem that the founders have no kids or nobody who success, therefore they want to sell. But this is the major part of the sales site mandates, which I have. But sometimes I have also companies who have reached a limit. They need a strategic partner to continue to grow.

And then this is also a driver of such a sales side, or let’s say not real sales side. Very often it’s only that somebody invests money in the company, get maturity and then they can continue the business, but with much more power

Small gems… on which larger water companies often pass!

Antoine Walter: I don’t know how much that is confidential. So you’ll tell me, but can we name one or two examples and look at the path How an investment at that stage would change their path, and what’s the kind of investment or partnership which would really make a difference.

Karl Michael Millauer: I, I cannot disclose this, but it’s, anyway as I told you, the small caps size companies in this range, they were profit power. I have not one loss making company. There are very, some very good, but it’s not easy to find for small companies with six or 8 million Euro sales because that’s too small for most of the companies I’m contacting.

So it’s more interesting for smaller companies want to buy a smaller one to get. Bigger. That’s the main reason. But it must fit. I have some deals running and the long I make it, the more I’m known in the market. And certainly GWI helps here a lot as well. But I’m also attending many conferences and also trade shows and so on.

Selling a Water Company to Solve a Succession challenge

Antoine Walter: So one of these use cases you, you mentioned is there is succession story where the owner. Wants to retire and there is no succession plans. So one of the ways to evolve from that might be to consolidate the company into another one. How often does that case happen in the water sector?

Karl Michael Millauer: Yeah, it’s a smaller companies. I would say two third of my sales site mandates are such case. The owner, mostly the founder have no successor and wants to sell the company that. And once you are these really companies which look for a strategic buyer or a finance investor to grow the company because they’ve reached the limits,

Antoine Walter: You mentioned how this, these big groups have a hard time investing in small size companies, and I live that firsthand in my duties at GF Piping Systems. We’re looking for middle size water companies, but this. Middle-size water companies don’t really exist on the market anymore, and these small-size water companies have a lot of wealth and very interesting access to market technologies to offer.

So do you think you need to educate that market so that even the big groups are looking into these smaller gems?

Small water companies even if profitable can be a hard pass for larger groups

Karl Michael Millauer: Yes, of course. I would say because okay, if it’s a normal me too engineering company, but they make profit, I have companies which make since 45 years profit, not one year loss making. I have companies which have found very good niches which are scalable. And of course I have many Companies here, which is say minimum size is 20 million.

Otherwise we don’t look at a smaller company. I think of course, that may be a mistake On the other side, understand the huge groups because they have to spend a lot of resources for small companies. So I think maybe they should have a more differentiating look and see if it’s scalable or not, and then they decide if to look at that.

But I know with many companies, I cannot approach the bigger company. Because I have a minimum, sales target, what they want to have. Otherwise, they don’t look at this opportunity.

M&A policies can be restrictive in large groups

Antoine Walter: So do you try to convince them and do you actively go into these groups and say, I understand why you’re not interested, but I think you’re making a mistake.

Karl Michael Millauer: No, I would say, It’s very clear. They look, when I say, have a look, they look and then they say, yes, come back to me. When they are bigger. When they get bigger and that is not so much time. I do not have, so I’m, I’m trying then to find mid-size companies which are more interested or sometimes you find also water funds who are investing in that if they think it’s interesting, to give them a growth possibility.

The Valuation expectations of Small Water Companies can be a showstopper

Challenging is always in this, that the founders are always overestimating the value of its company. So this takes sometimes One, two years until they realize the real value of the company. And then they came down. If you as a consultant tell them this valuation is too high then they will look for another consultant.

They want to hear what they believe. And therefore I also learned my lessons. But of course you can argue with multiples, but when they came with multiples for Veolia mobile water with 22 times EBITDA, I them forget it, you are four or 5 million Euro company. This is a 60 million. There’s a huge difference in size.

And so I have to explain a lot. And very often the companies have not a good accounting. We have to also make them fit. They have also battery, not audited numbers, I told you have to pay that they don’t want to spend the money for audit. So it’s not so easy as it looks like to make them fit for an acquisition for other parties.

Rule of Thumb: the right valuation for small water companies is a 5-6 times the EBIT multiple

Antoine Walter: You mentioned the example of Veolia mobile solutions, which was sold to Nijhuis or Saur with this 22 times the EBITDA multiple, do you have like a rule of thumb for a. Smaller size company, let’s say with sales under 10 million euros, which would be a reasonable target in terms of

Karl Michael Millauer: of yes, I would say if they all depends here on the recurring revenues, do they have a higher percentage of their revenues in recurring revenues? It’s a value driver, no doubt. But without some A bigger part of sales, I would say five times, six times. EBIT is the maximum you can get.

If you have more recurring revenues, you may have able to go a bit higher. When they have some special IP or a technology, then it’s a different story. And then the question, what the strategic buyer sees as value in this technology. But very often this is then attached to an earn out. They don’t.

Like to pay upfront something is too risky. But there’s an earnout solution then for such cases. but the market is coming down because the interest rate have now increased, so now I see the market is calming down. It was a bit overheated the last two years. I think the multiples are dropping now, at least what I have seen.

What’s the influence of the consolidation frenzy on Water Companies’ valuation?

Antoine Walter: There are many elements of that heat when you have the number one in the world acquiring the number two in the world, and then some months later, Xylem acquiring Evoqua. It gives this sense of consolidation is happening, we need to move. And maybe that drives the price up well. You mentioned this earn out, which is one of the processes.

I guess how one of these moves is a process. How long would you say it takes between the moment where they say, look, I need to look for an acquirer? Then there is this time where you have to educate them that maybe the valuation has to be put at the right scale. Then you find someone which might be the right partner.

, you have the marriage which happens, and then you have this earn out or transition phase. All that process, how long does it last?

How long does it take to take over a small water company?

Karl Michael Millauer: That’s a very difficult question because it’s case by case different. I have a case now where we made a good process, we selected the best offer, they started due diligence, everything went well. But one of the shareholders want to stay in the company. And then after share purchase agreement was okay, then they came to the shareholders agreement.

And in the minority rights, they are now disputing since nine months, they have not found a compromise on the minority rights. So this is something you didn’t expect, mean all other hurdles have been taken. So it’s very difficult to say. But the due diligence, normally in smaller companies, you should be finished in six to eight weeks or depends how good is the documentation.

If it’s very good, you can do it in four weeks. And then I think the purchase agreement is then, which takes a bit more time, especially when you have lawyers, which one to make money out of that. So they tried then to put everything in. So it’s very important for the sale buyer that they control their lawyers.

Rule of Thumb: 3 months, sometimes 4 weeks

 then it can be done quite quickly. So I think the biggest hurdle is to find an LOI and sign a term sheet. Then it should be normally in three months, I would say, finished everything If everything works well. Yeah. Yeah. But there are small companies, they have almost no subsidiaries.

You have to look at the backlog. You have audited numbers. If not, then you have to make a more intensified financial due diligence. And they have to anyway, give a balance sheet guarantee that no tax reps and warrants. And very often what I’ve seen, they keep 10 or 20% of the purchasing price on an escrow account for one year.

This is also quite usual so that they’re protected here somehow. They buy, especially when they sail leaves when the seller sail and might walk away.

Is Bootstrapped Entrepreneurship undervalued by Water Investors?

Antoine Walter: You mentioned how some of these companies exist for 45 years and have been profitable since almost day one and profitable all the way long, and how still they might be difficult to get attractive for middle to big size groups because they’re not making a lot of sales yet. That sounds like, you know, the bootstrapped approach where you grow.

In a traditionally maybe conservative but very stable and sustainable fashion. And on the other end of the spectrum, you have water companies which to this date have never been profitable, which are listed, which are worth half a billion. If I take the example of NX Filtration, for instance.

It sounds like those companies which are going for hyper growth are more attractive to investors and big groups.

Do you believe they’re making a mistake here or do you understand the logic?

You need to market your water company right to be able to sell it

Karl Michael Millauer: Yeah, I sent the logic. It, you know, in also in our business, marketing is very important. I have an example of a membrane company which have fantastic membranes. I ask many membrane expert and they said, This membrane, if this is true, what they are stating, this is really a differentiating product.

But the owner cannot sell his company. He’s too technically driven. He’s with one question. He goes in so nitty gritty details that all investors fall asleep. And down the other side you have a company where you have a good management. Passionate lot of energy. We want to conquer the world.

, and then they get very easy, their money, of course, they have to prove then, but I must say it’s very important that you have a committed, passionate management, which can sell their story very well. This is extremely important. Yes. If it’s mid, long term, if they oversell we will also see such cases.

Technical founders may not be the best sales people

Antoine Walter: if I get you right, and I’ve seen these cases quite a lot, so I, I see where you’re coming from. The founder and the head of the company is usually a guy who invented the technology, so he’s a, what a big group would call a chief technical officer. But here, He’s the boss because it’s his company and maybe sales is not his first asset and his first key talent.

So he has a good time explaining the technology, but a bit more of a difficult time to convey the vision as to why. That is really great.

Karl Michael Millauer: great. Correct? I have many such cases. Just tomorrow I visit one of these companies. Founded, , never Take one loan, very profitable. Find a very good niche, but he cannot sell his company. It’s, It’s impossible. He doesn’t speak English at all. This is the next problem.

Helping technical founders to market their water business

Antoine Walter: And so in those cases, can you help them out by being this person which has this sales acumen and this business? This acumen, which can translate their technical word into something which is attractive to investors.

Karl Michael Millauer: Yes, of course I try to help them as good as I can. But , my business model is totally different from other. Consultants. I do not go for retainers, which that it’s my way how I can get to this 35 sale site mandates because they do not want to pay retainers. The small companies, they don’t know you, they don’t want to spend money for and don’t get value.

KMM Consulting’s business model to work on Small Water Companies’ M&A

This is what they see the risk. And I have a very often a non-exclusive. In some cases I have exclusivity, but I don’t need any only exclusivity for the investors I nominate, then I’m protected. And then I work on a success fee basis. So I can certainly make a visa, I make a pitch deck, I help them. But I cannot spend too much time because you get retainer, you have maybe five or 10 targets.

If you have no retainer, you need 30 targets in order to have a viable business model running on them.

Antoine Walter: if I try to translate that into my muggle and layman word, because I’m not a financial guy at all. You are acting a bit like a rent office or if someone wants to buy a house, there’s gonna be someone in between who will not get money for selling the house, but if the house is sold, takes a commission on it.

So that’s the same instead of the house, it’s a water company, but that’s the approach you have.

Karl Michael acts as a “Real Estate Agent”

Karl Michael Millauer: You have? Yes. This is what I’m doing, especially with the sale site mandates. It’s different when I have a real buy site mandate, then I insist on a retainer. Everybody will insist. Because you have to spend a lot of time , in screening the market, identifying the targets, revenues, ownership market position that stand like a head hunting.

You have to screen the market fine then you need some retainer because you spend a lot of time. And then at the end, the client may say, oh, I don’t like that, or goodbye. Or but sales site mandate in the regular you, you check the company, you make a visa, but you organize the course and you use your data bank and select who could be interested strategically in this target or.

How does a Buy-Side Mandate project look like?

Antoine Walter: When you have a buy side mandates, what is the type of inquiry you get? Is it a company who says, look, I don’t have. A co D measurement inside my portfolio. So I want one. Please find me one. So then it’s very targeted and you know what to look for. Or is it more like, Hey, we have 30 or 50 millions because we’re a family office, which we want to invest in sustainability, we have been told water is sustainable.

What would you advise?

Karl Michael Millauer: Yeah, I think it’s different among the cases, the last cases I had was more or less we want to expand our business. For example, we have no food toward in European market. And then they tell you exactly what they’re looking for. So they can use it as platform company where they put in their technologies, their solutions and count.

The typical use case for buy-side mandates

They do not want to start at Greenfield with Crown with Zero. So this is what I have very often. Sometimes I have also, which say I want to enter in a new industry. For example, semiconductor industry or the pharma process, what that then they’re looking specified for such companies which are already active in the market, which have references which they can then build up.

And then I have also cases where they. They want to grow an organically worldwide, and then they look worldwide, but of clear, they have a clear profile. They want the EPC company or they want only a component company or the equipment company. There are many. They say, , I don’t touch epc. It’s too risky.

But I like equipment, I like component. I like services. I like operations and maintenance. All these skin. So here, This is where you have to find out the profile they’re looking. Then what is the minimum size they want? What is maximum size? Want the maturity, want a hundred percent? All these things you have to check with your client.

How “educated” are new Water Investors?

Antoine Walter: I had a conversation on that microphone some months ago with Reinhard Hübner from SKion Water, and he had that sentence:

Reinhard Hübner: Too much stupid money is chasing too little good targets.

Antoine Walter: Do you share that opinion? Did it change with the fact that’s now.

Money is a bit more expensive because of the interest rates or what’s your opinion there?

Karl Michael Millauer: There. Yeah, I think it’s not completely wrong. I can say that’s correct especially. Water got now very important. It’s sustainability. The whole ESG discussion this is, drives a lot of finance investor, a lot of private equity funds into this part. I must say water gets much more interested than five years ago or three years ago.

ESG investors venture into Water yet don’t fully understand it from the get-go

This is what I see everywhere. Water is key point where they want to invest and very often, They do not understand the water business. They like just water, mega rent, water shortage, climate change. This is the driver. And this is when he meant stupid means they, they are not experienced in, in water and which part of water and that can be, have certainly made also the market very hot.

And I think it should come now in a more reasonable labor pack again.

Will Water Companies’ Consolidation slow down?

Antoine Walter: So the big consolidation wave we have been experiencing over the past three, four years, you think will calm down and come to an end.

Karl Michael Millauer: Yeah, I don’t know. The problem is that the smaller companies, which I have, which want to grow, They need capital, because to access the market is the biggest problem for them to build up distribution channels and so on. And here, certainly a bigger group is, can be very helpful for them.

Other otherwise they have to build up their own and that needs a lot of capital and time. So there will be always, Good bunch of companies looking for a strategic investor, finance investor to grow their business in future, what is stay small. I have also seen companies, which is amazing which are very profitable , but they do not want to grow.

They’re happy what they’re doing.

Is there a necessity to grow as a Water Company?

Antoine Walter: I guess you’re opening a very interesting philosophy question, which is, do you need to grow because maybe you’re sustainable and very happy with your three or five millions of business, which is already a huge thing to build in that sector. And then why would you need to take big risk to go to the next scale?

Karl Michael Millauer: Yeah, I would say yes. The smaller companies where the owner have put personal guarantees for bond lines, for credit lines. They have a certain limit. They do not want to go beyond this. Otherwise they risk their home and everything. So here, there’s, they therefore have such cases where they see, now I need a.

A partner , who relieves me from my guarantee, so then I can grow the business. Otherwise, they stay smaller. They’re happy what they’re doing, they get a nice dividend, they have a nice living. The only problem is when the whole company is focused on this person only, it’s very difficult to sell because every buyer says, sorry, I need you for another two, three years.

Yeah, we have to build up a successor and they’re all nervous when he leaves. What happens with the networks, with the contacts, all these things. So this is also the risk.

The story of Hager und Elsässer’s Acquisition by Aquarion

Antoine Walter: I have to go a bit back in time. Now, actually, the reason why you have this network and that so many people trust you for being the one which can maybe bring them to the next scale and look for investors and connect them with the right type of profiles is because. That’s what you’re doing in your third life, but in your second life, which we scratched a bit in the opening, you made some very bold and impressive moves.

And there’s one which I’d like to revisit, revisit with you, is that in 2013, you’ve been creating Aquarion and leading Aquarion for the following years. And in 2014, you’ve acquired the, at that time insolvent Häger und Elsasser, which you turned into H+E. And that was a very, very, very bold move.

And maybe I didn’t use enough very words here. Can you tell me the story what led you to take such a step?

Karl Michael Millauer: Of course when Aquarion was founded there was a also private equity. T money which helped to grow the company and take clear. mission was to acquire companies and not to grow organically because the start of Aquarion was from zero, more or less. And Häger und Elsasser uh, was in troubles, but not Häger und Elsasser it was the Stulz Rena group.

Stulz-Rena became insolvent dragging H+E down

They were in liquidity crunch. And H+E or Häger und ELsasser was interesting enough, not loss making. They were in the industrial area, money making, but. They have given all their loans upstream, all the guarantee. So when then the parent, the grandparent collapsed, it was thrown into insolvency as well.

And that was certainly luck for us because We were one of the last interested buyers and therefore finally we got it. And I must say H+E Germany was a good acquisition. The company is doing very well, or quite well, not loss making. And from this point it was then the key, part of the Aquarion group.

Gobbling up a Large EPC as a shortly created Water Business

Antoine Walter: So that means Aquarion starts from zero in 2013 and in 2014. It gobbles up a company, which is pretty big.

Karl Michael Millauer: Yeah.

Antoine Walter: How do you digest such an acquisition?

Karl Michael Millauer: Yeah, because we had former colleagues who worked for Häger und Elsasser they left H+E and so it was for us Not so difficult because I could get these people and they could come back to and continue to run H+E, which they know very well. And so therefore, for them was a home player, right?

It was it was quite simple and easy to restart the company. Of course, every insolvency is a tough situation, as you know, with suppliers, with clients. To, To regain confidence with clients, to regain confidence with suppliers and with banks. All these things have been quite challenging.. So it’s not so easy as it looks like you need them some time until they market.

And the stakeholders trusting you again, you know.

It’s a people’s game: you need the right team

Antoine Walter: if I get you right, the first key learning is it’s a people deal. If you have the right profiles and the right people among your team, which understand your target and which have a good fit with the targets, then chances are that is gonna be successful.

Karl Michael Millauer: Yeah. So in our business, people are most important. I thing in many other, almost all, especially engineering is a service business more or less sort. So you need very good engineers, talent engineers, you need reliable trust for engineers, which are making the whole. Costing and the project execution here where experienced people are needed.

And when you have this team, then you can be quite successful and a good procurement of CO as well. You know, then you can have a success. This is the DNA n a of a engineering company, you know?

Multiplying the Sales of a Water Company by 5

Antoine Walter: that’s one of the two stories which I picked into your past. I could have picked much more, but I had to pick some. The other you, explain a bit in the opening is when you joined BWT, so you were sensed from. Austria to the very distant Switzerlands to take over Christ water. And you’ve been multiplying the revenue of the company by five.

Karl Michael Millauer: The company was growing quite strongly. Partly organically because of semiconductor farmer, which was growing quite strong. But the idea was an ipo, o therefore it was hired, but the margin in the EBIT margin was too low. We were always around 2% on average, and with a 2% ebit.

A de-merger for Christ Water instead of an IPO

And it’s not very attractive to make an IPO. And therefore we were more or less it was a de-merger spinoff of BWT. So we had a separate listing until we had a stock exchange. So we were them public, but it was not a real IPO. It was a demerger or the spinoff. the reason of the low margin was certainly that we had not enough differentiating technologies in our portfolio.

and semiconductor is very volatile business, as you know, few years boomed and few years loom and pharma, we could build up step by step in a stable business. But of course in the other areas, Like a municipal drinking water, sea water switch treatment. The margins are very low so when you make more mistakes, then you are, you had immediately a negative result in the books.

So, and therefore the idea was to bring, for example the Christ group had no biological technologies, was important to bring aerobic and aerobic in and all these things which were missing at this time.

Taking a strategic turn to better align with the market opportunity

Antoine Walter: that means you are hired to, to take it to IPO. Very swiftly. You realize that the EBIT wouldn’t be a good fit for the IPO. You finally go for the demerger route, but still you multiply the sales by five. if I understand your right, by focusing on the rights. Niche application. I mean, pharma in Switzerland is bigger than the niche, but the right application, which has potentially better margin and also less risk than the traditional EPC business,

Karl Michael Millauer: Yeah, it cannot be so general said. It is. It is always different factors. Coming in of course we have been too widespread. We have not enough differentiating technologies and this have to be changed. Anyway, when I left and the Christ Group, one year later, it was sold by the owners to, today’s Ovivo.

But BWT kept the pharma business, which was certainly the jewel in the group because it was a constant, when semiconductor is also nice, but it’s very volatile. Well, pharma is a constant business when you’re international set up. B is corrected. We become from a purified water to total system integration as we offer the whole solution to the farm industry and therefore BWT pharma.

Now it is as it is, quite noise. Market leader qualified in this sector.

Key Advice: Focus on the right market

Antoine Walter: I’m trying. To extract the key learnings. To me the key learning of your H+E story was that it’s a people business as you confirmed. Here the key learning, if I’m right, is focus on the right sector and on the best fit with the sector. Would you have across your very rich path, a third best practice or key piece of advice which you could share with the companies wanting to strive?

Karl Michael Millauer: Yeah. I would say certainly the very important in this business, you can produce components like membranes, pumps. It’s a different story when we talk about project engineering. Business, of course very importantly, standardization. But everybody knows that recurring revenues are very important to get a stable cash flow.

And I would say extremely important is the risk management, especially when you have many subsidiary risks that you really try to get good control over the costing project execution and that you have also good. Let’s say project manager and reliable and trust, were managing directors in each company.

You know? So I would say, looking back it, it is very important for me that such a group is run by a technical guys and not by commercial guys. Yeah.

Antoine Walter: Is it something you learned the hard way?

Karl Michael Millauer: way? Yes, of course.

What’s next for KMM Consulting?

Antoine Walter: Coming back to the presence and now to the future, I’m really dragging you across the timeline. With KMM consulting, you have this portfolio of companies which you’re helping. I guess you have a vision for your impact of the years to come.

And if I make you look in my crystal ball and you look into the next five or 10 years,

Karl Michael Millauer: years,

Antoine Walter: what will tell you that you’ve succeeded?

Karl Michael Millauer: succeeded? Yeah, of course. I want to grow the company. I want to hire employees. I, I want to build up international network. Either I do it for my own, or I join another. Consulting group that they have to see what are the pros and cons. But the clear is to become a bigger international consulting group.

While I will always focus on the lower end of the market, that means with the small companies maximum small to mid cap companies sizes, because here I see a good niche for my activities, you know,

More interactions, support and synergies with small-sized Water Companies

Antoine Walter: So a good fit between your network, your experience, your expertise, and the need.

Karl Michael Millauer: Because I was always in the small midcap industry. I was never in a Veolia or in the big group, Siemens or not. So I’m re was always in the small midcap world. Yeah.

Antoine Walter: Well, Karl Michael, it’s been a pleasure to have that deep dive with you. Thanks a lot for the openness and everything you’ve shared. I have a tradition to close on that microphone. You got the opening tradition with the postcards.

The closing tradition is to take you to the rapid fire questions.

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Rapid fire questions:

Antoine Walter: So here have short questions, which aim for short answers. And my first one is, what is the most exciting project you’ve been working on and why?

Karl Michael Millauer: Yeah, this was in my former career, the IPO from Boyk. That was my uh, I P O when I brought the tax luxury stocking to the market. It was a big success and very interesting experience. And of course you mentioned already. They take over of Hager und Elsässer. Was certainly also a big achievement, which was certainly very lucky at this moment.

Yeah.

Antoine Walter: Can you name one thing that you’ve learned the hard way?

Karl Michael Millauer: Yeah, I mentioned also before is certainly the risk management in the countries. You cannot cover all risk and something always happens. One big risk happened to my group at this time, which nobody have foresee, foreseen political risk but of course to have not too many subsidiaries and having a good risk management in storage.

Antoine Walter: Is there something you’re doing today in your job that you will not be doing in 10 years?

Karl Michael Millauer: I do not know. I don’t think I will work 10 years anymore, so I think I will want to build up the next five years now this business and then I guess I will beat and more looking at roles in supervisory reports and just, that’s it.

Antoine Walter: What is the trend to watch out for in the water sector?

Karl Michael Millauer: Yeah, that’s important. Certainly reuse is very important. Now, CO2 reduction is a very important point. What I see in the digitalization is, is the main drivers from my point at the moment in this sector, and you should focus on that. Yeah.

Antoine Walter: And last question, would you have someone to recommend me? That should definitely invite as soon as possible on that microphone.

Karl Michael Millauer: Yes, I know veterans, let’s say gurus, icons in the water business, which I use regularly as consultants. that’s mostly technical guys like Jim Hoki or , which is very strong in SLU all the plant. Brilliant technician guy because this is my weak side and I got very good inputs from this because they understand the technical commercial side very well.

That’s a good advice. Always. Yeah,

Antoine Walter: So I think we’re back to the first advice, which is have the right team and the right people around

Thanks a lot for sharing everything you did today. If people want to follow up with you, where shall they contact you?

The best.

Karl Michael Millauer: Yeah, with my email, km miau consulting.com, but it can always on the website. I think this email is the best way.

Antoine Walter: So as always, the email, the websites are in the show notes. So if you’re listening to that, just have a look. I think it’s worth checking out how you can interact with someone of your experience. Thanks a lot. And will you be at the upcoming Global Water Summit in Berlin?

Karl Michael Millauer: Sure.

Antoine Walter: So

Karl Michael Millauer: I’m looking forward to it. Yeah.

Antoine Walter: we will have the chance to meet in person. Well, thanks a lot. And then talk to you soon, probably in Berlin.

Other Episodes:

FREDsense: Revolutionizing Water Quality Monitoring with Biosensor Innovation

By Antoine Walter | 7 May 2025

Swirltex: Revolutionizing Wastewater Treatment with Bubbly Innovation

By Antoine Walter | 30 April 2025

Blue Foot Membranes: The Next Evolution in Water Filtration

By Antoine Walter | 16 April 2025

Echo River Capital: Pioneering the Future of Water Innovation

By Antoine Walter | 3 April 2025

1001 Fontaines: Engineering Sustainable Water Access Through Social Entrepreneurship

By Antoine Walter | 22 March 2025

Amazon’s Water Footprint: Tech Giant’s Quest for Water Sustainability

By Antoine Walter | 19 March 2025

Turing: The AI Revolution Quenching the Water Industry’s Thirst for Innovation

By Antoine Walter | 26 February 2025

Altillion: Pioneering Digital Intelligence for Water Asset Management

By Antoine Walter | 6 February 2025

Flocean: Pioneering Ocean-Based Water Solutions

By Antoine Walter | 15 January 2025

Botanical Water Technologies: Harvesting Liquid Gold from Plants

By Antoine Walter | 4 December 2024

The post The Fascinating Story of the Man Who Has 35 Water Companies to Sell appeared first on (don't) Waste Water.

with Jennifer Möller-Gulland, Water Risk Expert and Water Economist for the World Bank and the United Nations Development Programme

Jennifer is the founder of the Water Risk Assessment Blueprint Training, a 12-week online course that helps water professionals to know the Water Risks, convince decision makers to consider and address them, be part of the solution, and accelerate their career.

Infographic: Water Risk Assessment

What we covered:

3⃣ How there are three types of Water Risks, physical, infrastructure, and governance, and how one should tackle the assessment of these risks

How water risks shall be understood at all levels, from government to companies and individuals

How water risks are connected to economic development, social development and gender equality and how ignoring water risks can have long-lasting impacts on individuals and communities

How the governance risk in managing water crisis (such as Flint) is often not given the attention it deserves

How the “40% water availability gap” risk given by the 2030 Water Resource Group is often misused and doesn’t consider qualitative risks such as polluted water

How the UN Water Conference can be taken with a positive spin, assuming you joined with no expectations, and how the outcomes are pretty typical of this kind of multilateral behemoth

How political cycles don’t match with the infrastructure investments required for long-term sustainability and how decision-makers over-focus on making voters happy

How infrastructure problems cannot always be fixed incrementally, how they may require complete overhauls and how there’s no clear plan on how to finance it

How linking a water risk assessment to GDP impact can help incentivize governments to take action based on it

How Jennifer created her water risk assessment training, who it caters to, and what one can expect to learn from it

Positive reinforcement of Water newcomers, the human right to Water, PFAS and its potential health consequences, the fate of a consultant’s report, working for the World Bank or the UN, Water Futures, Water Markets… and much more!

… and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨  

Resources:

Check the Water Risk Blueprint Website

Get a Water Risk Crash Course

Get a FREE Masterclass on how to assess and communicate Water Risks

Send your warmest regards to Jennifer on LinkedIn or on Instagram

is on Linkedin

Antoine Walter on LinkedIn

Full Transcript:

These are computer-generated, so expect some typos

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Antoine Walter: Hi Jennifer. Welcome to the show.

Jennifer Möller-Gulland: Hi, Antwan. Good to be here.

Antoine Walter: you bring a fresh topic on that show, something we never covered so far. So I’m really looking forward that conversation and exploring all that’s inside this quite interesting topic, but have still traditions on that microphone and those traditions. Start with asking you to send me a postcard and you’re sending me a postcard from New York.

So what can you tell me about New York, which I would ignore by now.

Jennifer Möller-Gulland: I’m just here for the UN Water Conference, so we had great discussions meeting everybody again after a long time and looking positively towards the future.

Antoine Walter: I warned you that I would maybe disagree with you. I’ve seen your, your feedback on the UN Water Conference. Expressing how impressed you were with the outcome with the power moment where the president of the assembly pushed the button. And that is maybe the biggest disconnect I had.

Because to me that was an no awkward moment. Like one of this button you see in a quiz game on the stage of the un and like I push it and everything is gonna change. I reviewed not all of them because it’s a lot, but the commitments of this war action agenda. And I’m not that impressed about the ones which didn’t make the news yet.

So it sounds like there’s a lot of bulk, which is me, and then a couple good ones, which people would put first. But you were really in New York and you are still really in New York while I was doing all of that from my studio. So maybe I really missed the point. So did I?

Jennifer Möller-Gulland: Nothing, it’s two things to look at. Of course, it isn’t what you would want, to really move the needle forward. I mean, we always get disappointed by these big meetings because expectations are high and a lot has to be done right? So I think we, we expect to be disappointed and I went there with the expectation to be disappointed.

Which I think then my feedback afterwards is more positive than it would’ve been if I had gone there with expectation to be wowed. And I think now I’ve going to many conferences over the years, and each time they are a bit disappointing. It’s just the way it is. But I think on the same hand, we have to look at it is moving forward, right?

Like it is gaining awareness. It is, people are making commitments. It might not be the most amazing wide witching commitments, but they are moving in the right direction. And I think to promote and to encourage people making these commitments and moving forward, I think it’s good to be a bit more positive rather than bashing it and saying, you should have done this.

You should have done that. It should be committing. It should be, with a tight deadline, it should be somebody monitored by somebody. I think that would put people off. I think now many people are just putting their, toes into the water, testing the waters, and looking at where, what happens.

They would make a commitment. Can I manage, can I not, how does it work in my company? How does it fly? And giving people that space and giving them some positive encouragement. It does a lot right. But I agree it’s not word changing, but I think, you know, with the going in the right direction, encouraging people to go in the right direction and then reviewing it, of course if, see did they actually do what they promised and hold them accountable afterwards.

I mean, we don’t wanna see people promising they did something which they didn’t do right. They fully agree, but at least being supportive for those who are new in the field and are committing to something, kind of letting them play a bit. And then see what happens out of it. And and then we can always be critical afterwards again.

And then say, okay, now you played and now you have to commit to something. Which is more tangible. Which has more, which makes hold you more accountable. But just to avoid being completely depressed in the water space, we do need some kind of optimism, right? And I think that’s why my post was optimistic cuz I went, there was expectation to be disappointed.

Antoine Walter: So you are a health full glass type of person and I think you are fully right to, to watch and look at it that way. So you mentioned how these people are now new to the Waterfield and to connect to your story. That happened a while ago, but at some point you were also new to that water fields.

You’re coming from an economic background. So how do you get interested in.

Jennifer Möller-Gulland: That’s a good question. So I was studying international economics and finance with the intention, I was the fascination of why do some countries develop and others don’t, right? So I was really looking into what are the key factors which are bringing like Germany ahead of the game. If we look at, I dunno, Gambia, just to name random with G what is the difference which makes them develop and not develop?

And we were doing. Long calculations over pages with the assumption of markets are perfect, people are rational, which are all complete nonsense assumptions, right? I mean, they would never hold true. So, your calculations also based on assumptions which are very shaky, which made me quite frustrated, right?

Like, how are we gonna solve the world’s problems like that? And I went to modern United Nations conference at university and there was a person, Kevin Coe who had a presentation on his PhD topic on the human right to water. And it blew me away completely. I’m like, wow, water. That is exactly the factor underpinning everything we need that decide if we develop what doesn’t or we don’t develop.

It’s the absolutely core foundation to what has required. At the absolute minimum, right? You have to have water security before you can develop. So it really hooked me into water. And then I looked at, okay, do I really want to specialize in water? Cause I’m actually economist, maybe business but water, like what does water have to offer to really fill a career?

So I did an internship with pwc and there was you in water, and I was like, wow, it actually really is great. But I did a master’s at Oxford and Water Science Policy Management. I’m like, wow. Even after one year, it’s even more fascinating. So I stayed ever since.

Antoine Walter: would you explain? Rings a bell. To a conversation I had with Tom Rooney on that microphone where he explains that water is the base of this Maslow pyramid. It’s part of this bottom of the pyramids and how you build upon that. So that was my very muggle and layman translation of economic theory you, you’ve been working with international multilateral agencies, which are often quoted, including in one of your polls as the dream employer. Like you would dream to work for the United Nations, you would dream to work for the word bank. You’ve achieved the dream. So is it a dream and how cool is it and what did you.

Jennifer Möller-Gulland: So I always worked as a consultant. I was never staff with UN or Word Bank. I just think is a distinction. But what I have to say is these organizations, they do hold a lot of power, of course, right? So if you do work with them on the project, it opens doors. Like for the water risk assessments I was working on with the World Bank.

You knocked on the door of a government agency and they would just open the door and invite you in immediately. There wouldn’t be a long waiting time, right? So it really does open doors. For connections. On the other hand, you also realize what you don’t see from the outside is that it’s a very bureaucratic agency.

You know, it’s, the amount of things you want to do because you come in like highly motivated with a big passion. You want to change things and you realize very soon that you’ve got many roadblocks because it is such a large agency, there’s such a large organization, you’ve got many stops in between.

It’s like a government organization, right? Like very bureaucratic. You’ve got many levels of approving you need to pass. It’s slow. It’s slower than you want it to be, for sure. You can move things, but you need to bring in a lot of patience, which I think I really underestimated, right? Because you see.

World Bank, un, changing the world. And then you realize, oh, it, it might be a bit little by little and little by little. And the last thing I would say is what I didn’t realize before, which I think is interesting for people who want to work for these organizations, is that all the interesting reports we see which have been published by the World Bank, by the un, many things are done by consultants, not by people actually working in staff positions.

So if you actually work in the word bank or the UN or the staff position, I mean, mostly I would speak for the word bank, and you expect to do these very nice reports and do their detailed research and everything. You might be managing it, you might be guiding it but you wouldn’t be doing the depth of the work, right?

Like consultants will be doing that. So if you’re really interested in learning, like doing more research, engaging more, learning more about your topic of interest, you might be better off actually being a consult. Working on these projects, which I didn’t realize before. So if you work as a staff position, it’s a lot about managing your portfolio, right?

And maybe commissioning studies, which , yourself would like to work on, but you don’t have the time for. So you have to hire consultants.

Antoine Walter: We had that conversation with Gonzalo Delacamara on that microphone who shares, I guess, with you, this experience of being a consultant for these big agencies. And he was highlighting how there are 40 UN agencies with a mandate for water. How do you navigate that jungle?

Jennifer Möller-Gulland: God, I mean, I set up my internship with you and water I mean my water career. And I was extremely disappointed, let you tell you that. I mean, that’s exactly what you say. They’re all working on water and they can’t get organized. So you develop a new organization to organize or the other organizations, but then you’ve got like all the different.

Complications around it, so it doesn’t really move forward. I mean, that was a long time ago. I don’t if it changed by now, but it definitely wasn’t what I would’ve expected it to be, and it wasn’t what I think we would need nowadays to really move things forward. And by the way, I Gonzalo quite well.

We worked together in my very first job at Ecologic Institute.

Antoine Walter: That’s an interesting link.

Jennifer Möller-Gulland: Yeah.

Antoine Walter: Here’s another stretching and in maybe interesting, maybe a stretch link, which I’ll make here, which is, I’ve been in sales and in sales, usually when you have a hard time selling, you blame it on the fact that the customer is not interested on the product, on the solution, on whatever you’re delivering.

And most of the time, the real reason is that you didn’t understand the problem or you didn’t really address the problem. My understanding of the topic of today, which you just shortly mentioned, water risk assessment water risk, and the risk word is that maybe a lot of the reasons why we are not moving that fast in the water word is because we misunderstand, misjudge or under evaluate the risk.

If you don’t notice there’s a problem, why would you solve the problem? That’s why I’m really excited to have that conversation with you about risk today, and I’d love for you to start by defining what you understand by this risk and water risk.

Jennifer Möller-Gulland: I, I agree. I think that’s why I like water risks and a specialized into water risks from water economics because it was exactly the lever I needed to kind of change something because people around realizing like what is actually at stake, and finding a way to explain it easily to them, does change things.

So how I define water risks, I look at it from three different categories. One is physical water risk includes water stress, so mismatch of supply and demand water pollution and water related disasters, the floods droughts, landslides and such. The other big categories, water infrastructure risks.

So everything from. From source to when we treat wastewater and discharge wastewater again and in a hopefully treated way, most often it’s not treated. And then the final one is governance risk, which I think is extremely important and very much ignored. If we look at water risk assessment, so looking everything at the legal system what is the institutional setting?

What are the different stakeholders? How are they coordinating with each other? What is the level of corruption? How does it influence what is happening on the ground? Like often, just ignored topic, right? It’s super prevalent in all the countries we’re working in actually in all countries, just to different degrees, right?

What is the level of capacity? Can people actually do the tasks they’re supposed to be doing? What is data? Data also falls under governance. And then looking at these three different categories, so physical water risk, infrastructure risk, water governance risk together allows you to understand what dis risks we are dealing with in the location we’re looking at.

Antoine Walter: Who needs to understand those risks?

Jennifer Möller-Gulland: I think everybody needs to know the risks. For different purposes, , even you and I, we should know the level of water risks we’re facing in the place we’re living in, right? If we look at Flint and Michigan and the US for example the government is supposed to provide clean safe drinking water, right?

But they were like providing water, which had far high levels of lead. And even after they were highlighting it, they weren’t taking the request seriously. And if the citizens hadn’t realized themselves that they’re drinking polluted water, who knows what would’ve happened? Even now it’s bad enough.

I mean, Shelvin have got. Lifelong damages, cause of the lead poisoning and everything. But I think even for a consumer, it’s important to understand your level of water risk where you’re at. But otherwise, I mean, for government, of course it’s critical. You’re supposed to manage your country.

You need to know water risks. It’s connected to your economic development, it’s connected to your social development, it’s connected to gender equality. If we look at women spending so much time collecting water instead of going to school and working, so it’s connected to every facet of an economy.

Then companies, you’re responsible if only within your factory boundary. You’re responsible to take water sustainably and discharge water in a tweeted way according to the best standard. So you should know about water risks too.

And If you’re a company on industry and you need some level of water, You would need to know if you’re in a water stressed area or not if you need some kind of level of quality water. For example, if you’re a data center, you need to understand what is the pollution in the water?

Like, how much do I have to treat it, what would it cost me to treat the water to level I can actually use it. And what does it look like in the future? So if you want to build a new site, How safe is the water situation? So we see with Tesla, for example, which opened a factory in close to Berlin they underestimated the water risks, right?

And they incurred quite high costs because they had to change things before they were allowed to open finally. So just, it’s a financial implication for companies. So you’ve got like governments, you’ve got companies, you have just civil society, just you and I. Like, it’s important for each one of us to know it’s important from multi national development agencies to understand like, where’s my focus?

What I’m gonna prioritize? How are things connected? It’s important for investors, for lenders. If I ever give somebody a loan might it default because there’s a lack of water or polluted water, is it gonna be a drought or flood a landslide? So it’s really relevant for all of us from different angles, right?

Antoine Walter: it is relevant to all of us and you say very rightfully that we should know more about it, but if we are realistic, How much do we really know about? I mean, let’s take a stupid measure, but just to put a level on that, on a scale from one to 10, what is our awareness about the water risk we’re facing today

Jennifer Möller-Gulland: That’s a good question. And I think it depends a lot on who you ask, but I think overall as a society, I think maybe a three out of 10, we don’t really know. We don’t really know.

And again, I might be looking at it in a positive way, right. but. Even if you look at the data available data we have, for example, in daca, the capital of Bangladesh, it nearly fully depends on groundwater. Like I think 70% at least is using groundwater, right? It’s like a massive multimillion city.

We do not know how much groundwater we actually have available, like how long it’s going to last. We know it’s falling. But you know, if you look at the estimates of the actually groundwater volume, you know, they’re like hugely different. So we actually, we don’t know, we know like an upper bound, we know a lower bound, but the so far parts are basically say we actually, we don’t know.

And then what are the risks of that? Or even pollution. We don’t even know. With pfas coming up more and more, we don’t know why PFAS is in which water sources is. Cause we’re not measuring it. So you’ve got so many unknown factors.

And we’ve got so many unknown factors in every place. We are.

We’ve got so many unknown factors.

Antoine Walter: for, For pfas it’s easy. It’s everywhere. It’s raining pfas in Antarctica, so you can assume that if it’s raining pfas in Antarctica there, there’s pfas everywhere, which we don’t know though, what are the exact health consequences of it with suspicions, but we don’t have like hard proof for every single compound.

And for the combination of those,

You mentioned three categories of risk the physical risk, the infrastructure risk, and the governance risk. And you mentioned the example of Flint. I think that’s an interesting one because people will know the case of Flint first because it’s been discussed quite a lot for a lot of reasons and a lot of good reasons.

But if you’ve just watched the Michael Moore movie, what you know about Flint is they had a LED problem. So physical risk, quality, risk, they solved it hopefully. So the physical risk is gone. So we are good. But if you look at the way, let’s take governance. let’s look at the way all of that was managed.

Did anything change in the way it’s managed? Probably not. So the governance risk is still exactly the same, and yet people will consider flins to be solved. Do I misunderstand that because I’m a half empty type of person or?

Jennifer Möller-Gulland: I think I’m not sure about the exact governance changes in Flint. So I didn’t work in Flint, so I couldn’t give you the specifics about it. But if you look at governance in general, it’s not really set to identify risks in a strange way, right?  If you’re in the government, you want to make sure you keep your job .

You wanna make sure you don’t flag too many things, which could be costing you your job. So if something strange happens the first reaction would be , let’s keep it another carpet for now. Let’s have a look what is going on? And if we don’t know, let’s just keep quiet, somebody else is gonna take care of it, right?

And let’s, attitude is really dangerous, especially around water because we depend on it, it’s dangerous for anything, but especially for water. So unless you have any kind of very quick , functioning mechanisms It’s not going to change. So unless they have like some kind of nationwide way of response, like, how do I respond if I get like an unusual measurement of lead, of arsenic, of pfas, whatever it is, am I drinking water?

There has to be established protocol, which is followed. And there have to be different areas where I can call to really make sure I get supported. Because the people in Flint, they were having crazy results and their water quality samples, and they were being told it’s animality. It was a, kind of an outlier or whatever.

Like, no, people were actually really affected, right? And they didn’t have any place where they could really go and have the creek action they needed the thing. Unless we have any kind of escalation mechanism like that, the governance’s problem also isn’t solved.

Antoine Walter: Let me take one risk, which, and you’ll tell me if that’s relevant to, and classify that as risk, but which is to me the most famous, at the same time, maybe the most misused one, and I’m well placed to say it’s misused because I’ve used it to lead into my TED Talk. So maybe I’m the first. Person to misuse it, but it’s this disfigure given by the 2030 Water Resource Group, which shows that if we don’t change anything the way we behave with water, well by 2030, we are missing 40% of the water needed to strike a balance.

And when I discuss with people tell me, yeah, like, that’s ever gonna happen. We will find a way. Yeah, but what’s the consistent way? So that’s my first problem with that risk. My second problem with that risk is that if you look at startup pitches, they would just randomly say, we are missing 40% of the water.

Hence we’re doing something totally unrelated. But that was just our lead intro into the topic. So how do we understand this water quantity risk, and how much are we missing the core of it? If we just focus on this kind of lighthouse risks,

Jennifer Möller-Gulland: Yeah, it’s a good number to use to get attention. For sure. it does show we’re facing a real issue. But I think the number doesn’t tell you, like, the extent of the risk one, because water is extremely local, as you know, So 40% is an average. In some places it’s a lot worse. In some places it’s a lot better, So the 40% of itself doesn’t really tell us the extent of the situation in which we. Should be worried about. Another thing is it only includes, as you say the quantitative risk, right? It doesn’t look at the qualitative risk.

So of the 40% gap, the 60% which we’re kind of meeting, right? How much are we actually using water we don’t really want to use. Cause it’s polluted. I mean, if you look at countries, I mean we, from working in India, in Bangladesh and Indonesia, you’ve got rivers which are just dead. There’s sewage, and there’s like massive volume.

There’s not like a small flow on the side of the street. Like no, these are massive rivers, massive lakes, foaming, burning water you can’t use. It’s not considered in those numbers. I would say it’s even worse. then we have other risks like infrastructure risk. How much are we losing through non-revenue?

Water of the water We’re is actually physically available, treated, put into the system. And then, being lost under way the thing, these factors aren’t, Included in this numbers, I would say the number is even worse. However, it’s a good start to kind of start the conversation, but in terms of

how to move beyond it? Like how to solve it?

, you really have to look at it in a lot more local space, right? You have to look at least on a river basin basis, if not sub river basin, and understand the whole situation. And then look at, okay, in this place, what can I do?

Like what is the physical gap? What is the quality situation like? What does the infrastructure look like? What does the governance situation look like? Why are we here in the first place? Because I believe if you have good governance, you wouldn’t have the problem, right? Because it would be taken care of, because you would have good governance.

And then you would have to find solutions from that situation. And I think looking at it from a national level or global level won’t help us very much because we need to just. Become , more aware of where is the actual problem? How do I solve the problem? It’s very different in every country.

So like, one solution fits all as it’s very localized.

Antoine Walter: One problem I would see is, We as humans, we can easily deal with black and white on and off. Let me give you two examples of that. If you look at the infrastructure in the US, and, sorry, I don’t want to be just tackling the us, but it’s just the number have not from the top of my head. In the eighties, they evaluated that they needed to invest 180 billion to bring the infrastructure back to the quality stage.

It should be by the latest E p a assessment. We are at 550 billion. So we are really evolving in the wrong direction. But as long as it doesn’t break, I mean, need to improve it, but it’s working, so why should you do something about it? So, so that would be my first example of black and white.

My second brings me back to Germany. Germany is using 19.5% of its renewable water resources. And the threshold says if you’re below 20%, then you’re good. So Germany says, I’m good. 19.5 isn’t 20%. And then on the other side of the border, you have Denmark, which is at 20.3%, and which is behaving since two decades as one of the most water stress countries in the world, and really taking a lot of actions because they’re above the 20% threshold.

So

How do you bring this sense to decision makers, to water professionals, to big companies? That it’s not about black and white, it’s about shade of gray.

Jennifer Möller-Gulland: These, These are good questions. So starting off with the first question he had was the infrastructure investments required and not being taken action because we can fix it somehow. . If you have a, bottle of sparkling water because it’s got more pressure inside. And then you put holes into the bottle and you start fixing about putting tape onto it, right? Like the more holes you have. At some point the tape can’t hold anymore. It’s just going to explode, it’s gonna leak. And I think the same is with our infrastructure.

We can fix it in small increments. It’s going to last yes. But at some point it’s just going to break. You’ve got like an old dam, you can fix small holes. At some point it’s going to break. And I think because with the political cycles, they have like five year cycles usually, right?

So you don’t wanna have a massive investment in your five year cycle. So if you can push it to the next five year cycle, you would do that. And with the money, instead of investing it in water, which, usually causes an annoyance. Like if you re review, renew pipes in the street, you cost traffic jams, right?

So people are gonna be annoyed with you instead of being like, happy that you’re gonna have, safe water in the future, right? So you want to have the next person dealing with people upset with the traffic. If you use some money instead to build a kindergarten or a school or a nice park, people are going to be happy about it, right?

So any decision maker looking at a short-term gain to cannot be reelected in the cycle. We’ll be focusing on what can I use my money for to make my voters happy. Which is not a blocked up abroad and traffic jams and everything, right? So looking at that and then realizing that at some point it’s going to blow up just because the way decision making decisions are made is not made for the long-term sustainability, right?

It’s made for a short-term gain, a reelection cycle of five years or four years, depending on your country. Which is gonna be a problem for all of us in the future. And we’re just waiting for the first countries to really fail. If we look at the US, they have got these infrastructure scorecards, right?

Where they evaluate all the infrastructure and give them a grade. And I think water was d in the last one. A being the best, f being the worst. And I think it, it improved to C minus, I think, a major improvement. But you know, you can see like, it’s actually bad. It’s actually bad.

And if you look at the definition of D it’s bad. So it’s just a matter of time, like to see when the first situations are going to really show that you can’t fix problems incrementally, anyone. You have to overhaul it completely. But I’ve been asking professionals, like, how would you overhaul, for example, England, London’s infrastructure from the Victorian age, how do you do that and how would you pay for it?

And I haven’t received an answer yet, which is very concerning, right? Then looking at the black and white. I agree. I think, I mean, decisions have to be made on something, right? And you have to have some kind of indicators of people who don’t understand The degrees, the shades of gray of different issues, right?

So you have to just find some kind of metric to help decision makers make a decision. But I agree, like these thresholds, like the 20%, it’s a bit arbitrary if you look at, of 19.5, is okay, but 20 point 22 I think you mentioned is, an issue. You have to look at it in a more holistic way, of course.

I mean, I would say it’s not too bad to be water secure, right? Like to aim to be water secure. I think it’s always good, but then you just don’t look at, balancing budgets and making sure you don’t go overboard with anything. But I think having decision make us contextualizing it, right?

Like, and I, in my water risk assessment analysis I show like, you’ve got like the different water stress index thresholds, right? And you say, okay we aren’t there yet, but we’re coming close, to just become aware of that. The same with the the gap you mentioned, right? The 40% gap.

It’s like a water supply demand gap. Estimate, right? Which is, severe water stress if you put into the water stress index. But I’ll be showing the water stress index as well to make sure people don’t think, oh, we don’t have a gap, so we are okay. You want to make sure we don’t have a gap.

Yes, it’s true, but we’re moving from low water stress to medium stress, to high water stress, to severe water stress, which is in the gap. So if we’re already in high water stress, you’re short before you have the gaps. You have to take action right now. So think giving a more context to the numbers would.

Antoine Walter: you mentioned this pedagogy and how you are implementing that in your assessments. You’ve been directly involved in eight multi-year water risk assessments for, I guess, eight different countries,

Jennifer Möller-Gulland: few of them are in the same country but in, in different regions of the country. So Mongolia for example, we worked on with the 2030 Water Resources Group when I was still with pwc. We looked at a national level assessment and then we found two regions which were like really at risk, which is the city of Ulan Bator, the capital, and the mining regional of the Southern Gobi.

So we’d be looking at like in depth, looking at the assessments in these areas to zoom more, to find cost effective solutions. And yes, and there was a Vietnam, Indonesia Bangladesh, Kenya, like multiple countries over different years. Yes.

Antoine Walter: And how do you run one of these assessments? Where do you start? What’s the deliverable? How much time do you have? Who are the stakeholders which involve.

Jennifer Möller-Gulland: it can be really short. So for multinational companies, you be doing the assessments. You can do like a city a week, for example, if you really want to push it, right? We’ll be having a high level assessment. But for these assessments with the World Bank and 20 City Water Resources Group, they were much longer because they were intended to really understand the situation of the country.

So I would say at the very least, you would need. At least a year um, from beginning to end. And you have to understand first why are we doing the assessment or like, what is the intention of the assessment?

And then you would kind of tailor it accordingly and looking at the different stakeholders. So we always start with looking who are the key stakeholders in this country? We speak to them to see, okay, what are the problems we’re looking at? Over the years, they developed a blueprint looking at the different areas I want to look at in the water risk assessment, following the physical water risk, infrastructure risk, governance risk, ?

To just not be led astray by all the different opinions, but it’s very much contextual, right? So safe have to understand and the country, like what are the key problems we’re looking at, which direction do we want to go into? What are the points of emphasis, right? Because you can’t look at everything.

You have to look at a few hotspot topics which are most relevant for the country, be it pollution, be it water stress, be it infrastructure issues. It could be, or just, even governance, right? Like you’ve got like a law missing or something, which we identify and then you just do an analysis, collecting all the data just doing the technical analysis of it and.

With the 2030 what resource group, what we did was bringing together a multi stakeholder platform. So bringing together private sector, public sector service, society to one table and asking them, so this is our analysis. What do you think? What did we miss? What do you think are the biggest priorities?

What do you think are the underlying reasons which we might not have captured? Why are these things happening? To really come to the bottom of it, I love the question why, and I think we should use it a lot more. I usually kind of tend to ask why seven times? And at the end of it, you really know you came to the bottom of it, ?

It’s like annoying four year old, like, mommy why? But. The energy come to a good conclusion. And then based on that, like, and we really understand the underlying challenges, we can then develop solutions, ? And if you have the different stakeholders in one table, you can really see, okay what solution can we bring forward and what do I need to make the solution work?

For example, the private sector may say, yes, I do want to, like in Vietnam for example, yes, we do want to recycle water, but currently there’s no regulation allowing it that we are allowed to reuse treated water. So we can’t do it. If we do it, we’re going to be going against regulation, which we don’t want to do, right?

So the one side, you’re telling us we have to do it, but then you don’t realize we don’t have the regulatory requirements to actually do it, ? And these things can become very clear when you bring these three stakeholder groups into one table because , you are all in your own silo, ? Like, you’re just thinking you’re doing the right thing and what the other people are not behaving because for whatever reason, until you realize that actually they’re not doing the thing you want them to do because they just can’t because of.

X, Y, Z, right? And civil society is always great to bring in because they’re very good at highlighting the actual challenges, right? So nobody can hide from civil society organizations, ? And what I like to do is, in these assessments with civil society, I like to look at the extreme opinions.

And as a consultant, I can do that. Like, if were to be staff of Word Bank un it would be harder to go like to the ngo, which child’s loudest, ? Because it might become like whatever they might use it for media or whatever, but for me, I can just go there innocently and ask them where what is the problem?

Why are you so angry? If you really go to the extreme ends, ? And there will always be some kind of truth in it, right? Like, nobody is angry or annoyed for no reason. And then you can see, what is a common ground? I can look between the two extremes. And then you really understand the issue much better. And then if you wouldn’t be speaking to them and you just stay in the same narrative, everybody says the same thing, so I always try to get very different opinions just to make sure the analysis is inclusive, right.

Antoine Walter: And what happens next? You produce a report, but what’s the fate of that report? How does it get executed?

Jennifer Möller-Gulland: Yeah, that’s the thing, which is an annoying part of being a consultant, right? Like you, you submit report and you give it the blessings and you send it off and you just, keep your fingers crossed and people are going to use it because that’s why your area of action kind of ends, right?

But so for example, we’ll see MA platforms with the training study, water resources group, and I’m just quo them cuz I work with them for the last seven years. And I just stopped like, I think last year, but until then it was like continuous and building multiple stakeholder platforms and working with them in different areas.

But you’ll be developing different work streams. So you’ve got the national level multi stakeholder platform, which you, what I mentioned just now, you kind of discuss a report and search, then you identify what are the key areas I wanna focus on. So you’ll be splitting this Platform developing new working groups and the different topics.

And again, you always have private sector, civil society public sector together on one table. And then you focus on, okay, what can we do to solve this problem? And you’d be looking at options and kind of bringing solutions, having pilot projects or bigger projects and just, implementing the changes.

Now if the report is for the World Bank, of course they would be including it in their lending operations, right? They would be including it in the national country strategies whereby they’re doing the reports to be able to help the countries. And to have like a targeted strategy within the lending operations and to go to the countries to propose different projects based on what the priorities were identified in the report.

And the governments themselves, I mean they, in Vietnam, they’re very interested in the report we did for them because we connected it to G D P impacts. And we noticed as soon as we did that, we got like a whole level of different attention of course, because they were focusing on of course improving their economy, growing.

And we found, I think in Vietnam it was 6% loss and GDP yearly by 20 35 if they didn’t take action, which was a huge number. And it’s very conservative because, you can’t quantify all water risks, right? So it just, once we could quantify and there were many more. So just looking at that and then, the government is taking action a bit like wastewater treatment plans in Hanoi.

And we’d have to follow up again exactly what is happening inside the government. Which is bit difficult to do. From my perspective. But I do follow up again with the different teams to just see, okay, what is happening and things are happening. It’s just are they as fast as we want them to be?

No, of course not. But again, it’s like this kind of trying to not get depressed by it. Like, at least being happy about the positive changes. Even if there aren’t as much as we would want them to be.

Antoine Walter: You’ve been in the trenches and you still are somewhat the, in those watered trenches. Yet you’ve added a new dimension to it, which is that you want to raise the awareness and the understanding of these water risks. And you’ve been launching a training on those water risks

More than a training, but you’ll explain that.

What is the reason why you, you wanted to go into that direction and who are you catering that to and how does it look like?

Jennifer Möller-Gulland: So basically, I mean, I’ve been working on this topic for a long time, and people were reaching out to me asking me, so how do I assess water risks? How do I do this assessment? How do I do it properly? I did have the answers, but it was like too time consuming to tell everybody individually, right?

And there was no place I could direct them to. There’s no website telling you like, what are water risks? How do I assess them? What are the pros? What are the cons? What are the dos? What are the don’ts? And at the same time, I was seeing like many assessments coming onto the market, so to say, of being done.

Which we’re not really looking at all the water risks, right? Like many times they were just looking at water stress using like the water risk filter from WWA for W ACR product, which are great tools and I use them a lot. But you can only use them really to prioritize. The areas you would like to look in more deeply, ?

I can use them , to prioritize from a hundred sides that can look at the top 10 to then do my actual assessment. But the people wouldn’t be doing the actual assessment. They would just be using the filter or these tools to use it as a whole retro risk assessment. you know, the thing is, which I also speak about in the training, the different reasons why you shouldn’t be doing it.

One is this global dataset, so it just doesn’t give you the risk for you and free your location, right? So what I was seeing is that we’ve got like many assessments and many people working with water risks, which isn’t correct. Let’s put it like that. And then you see, as a person, I am passionate about kind of bringing water security forward and I see what’s happening.

So I think know we can’t waste our time with. Incorrect assessments and kind of building decisions on those. There was one reason, just like, kind of think that there’s a gap in the market for actually what are water risk assessments. Then people coming to me again and like more frequently asking me like how do I assess it?

How do I deal with water risks? And I mean, not having any place to to send them to. And not even a university program. I dunno, any program which actually deals on exactly. Looking at water risks. I think it was just a need of the hour, so I was feeling frustrated about seeing what I was seeing.

When I was doing my assessments, it was difficult to get people who actually knew how to do assessments and not having any good answers to people, which were coming to me. So I actually did a survey and just asked people, if I were to do a training, what would you want to learn?

And I got like, such a huge response. I mean, 200 people responded to my very long survey. So thank you for everybody listening who actually did and kind of motivated me. Okay, there is demand, there is need for it. And I did spend last 10 years, understanding how to do assessments, right?

Like a trial and error back and forth. I think people shouldn’t be doing that again. They can just benefit from what we learned on the way. So we decided to do a training and it’s a 12 week training. Just because what people wanted to learn was quite substantial. And I also know what they need to know to be able to achieve what they want to learn, right?

So it’s a training, teaching you the foundations teaching you how to use, I mean, basically what are water risks? How do you assess them? Who should be assessing them? What is a corporate water risk? What will governments look at? Then looking at how to use tools where you can do a quick level scan.

And then also how can you use them? How should you not be using them? And whenever you need to go beyond it, how do you go beyond it? And then the biggest module is really around how do I assess water risk holistically, looking at water resources, risk, infrastructure, risk, water governance, risk, the sweet categories we spoke at the beginning.

And then the last module is really around what do I do once I have my assessment, right? Because you asked me what happens with the report once you finish it. So the thing, what you can do is you. Make the report the best way you can do it so that people are actually gonna be using it, right? So we look at how to prevent your findings, how to communicate your findings, how to put them into context with GDP risk, financial risks what if scenario storytelling, all the different ways you can actually bring your message across.

What solutions would you have to the water risk You identified how do youth multi stakeholder platforms and how do you include your water risk assessments and different types of decision making tools like cost benefit analysis and such. So at the end of the training, the students will really be able to do their own water risk assessment and they would be pretty much knowing everything around water risks which was my intention.

I want them to really come out of the training and know everything about water risks and be able to do it on their own in a way, which they have done before in the training. They do their own water risk assessment. I review it so at the end, they really do know that they can do it right and I’m confident that they can do it.

So, Yeah, with the intention that they’re gonna be better risk assessments in the future.

Antoine Walter: You mentioned the students. What’s the typical profile of someone who would get trained in your 12 week training?

Jennifer Möller-Gulland: You know what’s funny? Like I targeted initially to young water professionals, but there’re not many young water professionals joining us. Like 20% Max.

Antoine Walter: I was gonna tell you exactly that when I read your introduction it really catered to these young professionals and let’s crack the secrets. I got you. You were recommended by some of your Ali and they are definitely not, I don’t want you to insult their age, but in terms of experience

they are definitely not younger, the professionals, they are very experienced ones and arguably some of the people which would know the most about the sector.

So it gives a hint at the level of value you’re sharing because. If those people learned something inside that training, then I can guess everybody would learn. So,

Jennifer Möller-Gulland: I have to say I’m really humbled and sometimes people join the training and I look at them like, wow, I think I would feel like you would be my teacher rather than the other around. But I think because it’s such a specialized topic, I think everybody can actually get value from it. So you do have young professionals coming who feel like university didn’t equipe them with enough tools to actually get a job or to work like in a proper job.

But then as you mentioned, you’ve got seasoned water professionals who’ve been working in water for 10, 15, 20 years who come but who are just looking at a different aspect of water, right? Like you’ve got. Who are maybe consultants, they’ve been working on consulting all their lives but they want to kind of add the water risk niche to their portfolio.

Then you have engineers. I get quite a few engineers who of course are brilliant with the engineering side, but they would like to understand the bigger picture of what is beyond. , my focus of engineering to be able to do a better job in the engineering. Or maybe people want to just shift career, right?

Like you might be an engineer, you might be working on a specific topic in water or beyond water. And you want to just focus on risk assessments, maybe shift to more water stewardship, more policy and governance. So you can take the training, which kind of helps you make that step. Or keeping people new to water as well.

So as I have people who are new to water, completely new and it even works for them, they have to do a bit more work in terms of understanding what is groundwater, whatever. But it doesn’t take too much effort. Like I had a lady working for investment company joining who were creating a water fund and they just needed some support.

And like, what do I put into a water fund? What do I look at? How do I evaluate my investments? Looking at water risk? You have all kinds of people. And the nice thing is, for one the different ages, it’s this extremely diverse group, which is very nice for conversations cuz we have the workshops too, right?

So there’s a very diverse in age. They very diverse in profession, they’re very diverse in experience, a very diverse in geography. Like in one training, I had somebody join in Los Angeles getting up at like five o’clock in the morning and the fire end in New Zealand getting up at like two o’clock in the morning to just join the training, so it’s extremely diverse.

That would be my answer. I didn’t quite name in my target group yet.

Antoine Walter: How many people did you train so far?

Jennifer Möller-Gulland: It’s around 55. So it’s small groups because I do their own assessment, so I want to make sure that I can give enough support while doing the assessment. I kind of choose the people who take the training to make sure it’s a nice group also in terms of building a network afterwards.

Antoine Walter: There is a gate , to that 12 week program aside from the one you just mentioned of you’re looking at people and only offering to people who would extract the value from it. Gate is absolutely the wrong word for it, because it’s the opposite of a gate. It’s an open gate.

Let’s say it’s an open door. You have a, a first workshop, which you are offering for free. If I’m right.

Jennifer Möller-Gulland: Yeah, that’s right.

Antoine Walter: I think it was yesterday, your last one but if someone would still listen to that after the last one you’ve shared, is there any chance for them to have like a second chance and to watch how that looks like?

Jennifer Möller-Gulland: I can share the link with you and you can put it, I think you’ve got show notes. I can share a link with you and people can just sign up and watch it.

Antoine Walter: Because I, I guess if someone’s listen up to that point, it’s probably a good sign that they’re interested to the water risk. And if so many brilliant minds tell that there is. Value to extract from what you’re proposing. It would be a pity that they can’t benefit from the first step of your funnel.

I could even take you to an enter sidetrack because, , my partner in crime on the water show, Björn Otto is a marketing specialist and he’s looked up your funnel and he’s like, amazed by the way, you set all of that up and he was wondering if you were doing that on your own or if you had some support

Jennifer Möller-Gulland: I’m glad to hear, like, I think I’m trying to bridge the words cause I don’t know if but I lived in Bali for three and a half years, and of course in Bali you have a whole bunch of coaches and yoga teachers and entrepreneurs. And during Covid, they were all working on let’s put it online, right?

And they were doing a great job on and just creating their online products. And we’re thinking yoga and coaching is great, but waters us are really important. I wonder we can kind of bridge the gap and take it to a very untraditional space of water and just test the final strategy.

And it’s been interesting. It’s been a quite a journey. I did take a training on how to do an online training, which I can recommend it from coaching masters. And that taught me everything I needed to just start with. I, of course, as a what specialist, you’ve got no idea of marketing and how to do an online training and what is required and how do you do, if no idea, does this training really help me?

So I can recommend that and guide people to it if anybody wants to do this training. But thank you for the feedback. It’s kind of, unusual space to be, right? Like for water professional.

Antoine Walter: Yeah, it is so many levels, an unusual space to be. Someone has to open the path and to dig up the ground. So that’s you.

Jennifer Möller-Gulland: Yeah. But I think, water is so important and I really do feel water is extremely important. And I think maybe we have to kind of go out of our silo of traditional way of doing things. I also really encourage my students , to share the knowledge on social media, like to share the knowledge on LinkedIn, because, I mean, we feel shy about doing it right, but in the end, if you have one person with your insight you already contributed to, supporting the cause of, moving towards water security.

And I think kind of changing our mindset of just, let’s just share what we know. I mean, coaches share what they know. Like yoga teachers share what they know. Why can’t we share what we know? Yeah.

Antoine Walter: I think for the exact reason, which I would’ve given you spontaneously, but now it sounds like I really read everything , you published because I, I would say it’s Dun Kruger. read this effect of. It’s a curved with four, four different points.

You start by knowing nothing and hence having this confidence of I know nothing. And and then you get a little bit of knowledge and you believe you know everything. And then there’s this big gap where you realize you don’t know everything because you know what, you know when you believe everybody knows what you know and then you notice everything you don’t know and then you have to climb back that hill.

And I think a lot of water professionals are in that third stage of done in Kruger believing that everybody knows what happens beyond the tap, beyond the flush. And in fact, nobody knows. And so that’s, it’s, it’s an industry with 80% engineers. So

Jennifer Möller-Gulland: Yeah.

Antoine Walter: an engineer is not that confident in sharing with the word.

So that’s another barrier to, to overcome, but

Jennifer Möller-Gulland: Yeah.

Antoine Walter: don’t want to rent for too long on that one. to, To bring you, you back on track. My last question to understand where you’re aiming at in, in that deep dive is you have trained these 55 people, you will train more in the future.

You are building a higher awareness towards disorder risk, how to do an assessment and how to act upon the assessment and how to move the needle. If you look now in the future and up to you to decide if it’s five years, 10 years, I don’t know, what’s your horizon? What will tell you that you had an impact?

What’s your kpi?

Jennifer Möller-Gulland: That’s a good one. So I think for me it is helping as many people as I can get the job they really want to work in, ? Because I believe the first step in creating changes, working in a job you really enjoy. So if people would like to work more on water risk or water stewardship or something, then this training can help them to make that step out of, engineering or out of whatever they were doing.

That’s one kpi, which is very untangible, people who are having job satisfaction, right? But the next thing is, the people are including. And water risk assessments into their work. So either they change job and they go somewhere it’s being done, or they’re kind of including it in the current workplace.

So the more assessments I see and people are realizing about how to assess water correctly and using it for their work, the better. So I think my kpi p I would be in 10 years time to see that water risk assessment are mandatory to before you do any kind of investment. Like, or any significant investment.

So if the awareness is there that I realize as a company, I want to expand my operations to somewhere in India, the first step I’ll be doing, I mean, not the first step, but one of the steps is I would do my water risk assessment to have a look at it actually is safe for me to do that without impacting the other people around too much.

And then if yes, what are my measures to kind of reduce water usage or whatever you have to do to kind of reduce the impact. And looking at governments too, like that they just have it as part of their regular assessments. Looking at, in my country, what does the water risk look like?

and how is it changing from year to year? Here, the accountability comes in, right? Which we don’t have in the UN water conference, which governor should definitely have, right? Like, what does it what does it look like in my country? How am I moving towards my goals? What are my goals? And yeah, what kind do come to Watson?

So I think for one thing, what people knowing about water risks is great. And then seeing like the application of it, of water risk assessments and all kinds of activities like for companies, for multinational organizations, for loans, people before you give a loan, just be quiet, quick water risks check, just to safeguard yourself.

I think the benefit is in water risk, is that reason why I’m drawn to it too. It’s got a very strong lever. It actually makes financial sense to do a water risk assessment. For anyone, I mean, for a country, of course, for a government for a company, for investors. So I think, we are gonna see one future.

It’s just it’s gonna take some time before it. Hits awareness. But I think we are gonna see a lot of it more in the future. And then if I can contribute a tiny bit to that, that would be my kpi where I would say, okay I actually did something good in my life.

Antoine Walter: I said it was the last question. I lied. You just raised much more with what you just explained. Let me start with a difficult one. You are clearly over what you explained over the past hour. You bring a lot of value to a lot of different people. But if I. Really push in a corner and say you have a starving crowd.

Who is that specific profile, specific type of stakeholder who will benefit the most of looking with much more accuracy into water risks?

Jennifer Möller-Gulland: I think the different ways of looking at it , for their own benefit, I think it would be companies operating in areas of water risk and investors investing in areas of water risk because they have a direct financial benefit of looking at water risks.

I think it would be a a direct feedback loop. I avoid an investment in a water risky area. I don’t lose my money. I, it’s a pretty, pretty good loop. Or like, or I take different measures, I don’t have to not invest, I just take different measures to mitigate my risk.

But the bigger group responsible for a larger amount of people would be governments clearly, but there, there’s not a direct benefit to one person, it’s a job, it’s a mandate, it’s what they’re supposed to do. It’s a collective benefit.

Antoine Walter: I, I can’t open that sidetrack now because an entirely different podcast, which we would be restarting from now. I’m fully with you on the companies and the investors. I have a hard time to see governments really acting on something which they’ve been actively ignoring for decades. but I don’t want to open I,

Jennifer Möller-Gulland: I’m gonna keep my mouth shut.

Antoine Walter: no, it’s, the point is I do know that I have um, unpopular opinion on that one.

I got called out in conferences, like being the devil’s right hand because I don’t believe in governments on that specific point. A lot of trust in government for a lot of stuff. I just have my struggles with water, so I don’t want to put you in a bad situation with my crazy opinions. But when you mention the companies and investors and the way to mitigate it, the other bell, it was ringing in my head, and you’ll tell me how wrong am I?

If I’m making a water risk assessment as a company, and I realized that one of my risk is linked to physical risk, one of the way to mitigate it might be to heavily invest into water futures. That’s the beauty of having this financial mechanism now to cover it. And that sounds like an easy way out.

Like , there’s gonna be a financial product, which covers my risk regardless of the risk.

Jennifer Möller-Gulland: You mean the financial product?

Antoine Walter: you invest in, in water futures. In, for instance, if you are in North America, you would invest in water futures. If you’re in Australia, you invest on the Murray Darling reefs. If you’re in Chile water is traded as well.

Jennifer Möller-Gulland: Yeah. So the three, so three examples you mentioned are pretty much the only examples where you have water markets, where you also have the Colorado water market, but otherwise, except for those, you don’t have many more watermarks where you could just do that, right? I mean, in Germany I can’t invest in water future here because there’s no watermark, so, and to have a water market, I actually want augmentation on that in Oxford on water markets. That’s funny you kinda mentioned that. But you have to have so many criteria which come together to make it possible to have a water market. You know, You have to have the infrastructure, you have to be able to measure it.

You have to have the governance structure in place, you have to geography to be able to kind of, have like your in and your out. It’s not an easy thing to do and many of them have failed in the pursuit of doing it. So I don’t think, a water futures market’s gonna help you maybe in very limited places.

But even then, I mean, what do you do? You buy a water future and and then suddenly you’ve got like a one and a hundred years drought. And they saw too many water futures. What are you gonna do?

Antoine Walter: You’re gonna transfer your money into a nature assets company, which is the next class of financial stuff you can invest in. No I’m, the

Jennifer Möller-Gulland: Yeah, yeah, Yeah. Yeah. Play, play.

Antoine Walter: I had a deep dive with Scott Hamilton on that microphone about the water market in Australia and how we destroyed the river.

So I’m not a proponent. I had a much more balanced episode with Ellen Bruno about the potential of having a water market for groundwater trading in California, which showed the perspectives the positives, the negatives and all the inbetweens, and had several conversations on that microphone with Nicola Lei Ravello about the water futures and the way to to have like an entrance on water.

But you’re raising fair concerns. I’m just, if the most direct value of the water risk assessments is extracted by financial, private players, which sounds like absolutely logical, there’s also this temptation to, to solve it the same way, solve it in a financial way by just investing on a market. But

I’m a muggle, you’re the specialist.

Jennifer Möller-Gulland: Yeah. No, and I think the a lot safer option, cause we know our stock markets are a bit risky at times. Especially if you need to be able to rely on them, this suddenly tend to do strange things. But I mean, I would say a much better investment would be just to invest in water efficient technology.

Because if you just reduce your water requirements by 50%, you already say 50% of the futures you have to buy. So I think that might be a smarter decision, especially for places where you don’t have water future markers.

Antoine Walter: think you’re hitting the nail on the head here. It’s really about, if you can in depth understand this water risk element, it is crucial as a water company. Because why would you convince an industrial to invest into a water reuse scheme into a high technology, which might be costly?

You have to first. , I’m bringing it back to how I opened that deep dive about the sales element of you have to understand the problem before coming with the solution. And that’s exactly, it’s the problem is there won’t be water for everybody if just everybody is acting in a wasteful way with water.

And that just, I do get one of the elements o of the water risk but just that one already justifies that you would dive into it. I understand how 55% got value and and I’m sure more people will have value in the future.

Jennifer Möller-Gulland: Yes, but you must come to your point. I mean, the reason why companies don’t invest in these infrastructure is because the low price of water, right? Which, you know, is politically kept down and you can’t increase it. I mean, for many reasons. I don’t see it happening any time soon.

But that’s why you would have to understand as a company yourself, what are your water risks? What’s your financial impact if you don’t do it, I mean, regardless of the water price, you forget about the water price. Like what happens if you just don’t have water anymore or you don’t know, 50% less? Like what is it gonna do to your operations and how likely is a scenario to happen?

If it’s likely you better invest in something to reduce your water usage? Because it’s just a clear financial benefit for you. And and I think kind of arguing from that perspective, which is why water risk assessments are useful because they show you like what value is at risk. If I don’t take action and what are my risks?

So I’m not fully agree. Like if you just ask a company out of the blue, like, you should be invest millions in a reuse infrastructure, and they’re like, why would I mean, water costs is nothing basically, so why would I do that? There’s no business case in it.

But then if you come from and say like, look, what a stressed area, you’ve got X percent of population growth, X percent of industrial growth, X percent of agricultural growth, we might have a reduction in water supply because of climate change or whatever the reason may be.

So we’re seeing, like in the foresee future, we’re seeing some stress coming up, which could happen in certain years. You can do these percentages, you can do scenario analysis, right? You can say like, we’ve got like a X percentage of you not getting so and so much water in this. figure out how, what kind of implication it has on you, your production.

And these things do happen. You do have , like in France where power companies had to produce less energy because there wasn’t enough water in the river. So these things do happen. And just being smart about your own investment, it just makes financial sense.

It’s not even just me kind of coming here as a water hippie telling you, it’d be nice to water. It’s really like, no, it’s got a financial implication on your operations if you don’t consider it,

Antoine Walter: you mentioned France, and then I promise it’s my last additional sidetrack. Within the sidetrack of the sidetrack. Just as we record France announced yesterday their plan towards 2030 when it comes to water. And one of the things which they announce is that 12th percent of the water uses today to cool down the nuclear reactors.

And they want to divide that by two. They also want to go from the 0.6% of water we used to have today, up to 10 percents. They want to cut the water leakage and all of that if you look on the paper makes a lot of sense. I’m just wondering, did they do a proper risk assessment and then came up with that plan or, yeah, 10% value reuse sounds good, so why not put it on a piece of paper.

Jennifer Möller-Gulland: I’ve got no idea what you guys did in front,

but ideally you’d be looking at like what are the risks of of having a water gap. Like what is the planning man gap in the particular area, and how much can I close in a cost effective way? It’s a benefit between like how much can you invest?

It has to make financial sense again, even in your mitigation measure. So you can’t say you’re gonna have like a zero water system, however you would manage that for millions if. You know, It doesn’t balance what’s the potential risk you’re mitigating, right? So, I mean, you should be looking at, , what is the chance of you not having water?

How much water would you not have in which percentage? Like which per, which kind of, what is the probability? And and then how much would it cost you to invest in technology to reduce your water requirement, right? And then balance the two factors and see whatever it’s cost effective and do that.

Antoine Walter: Well, Jennifer, Thank you for staying with me, despite me dragging you all over the places for the past 15 minutes. But thanks much for all the value you shared in, in that deep dive. I see so many good tracks , to do a follow up with you and to open one of the doors which just scratched on.

In that ending, I propose you to round it off by switching to the rapid fire questions

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Rapid fire questions:

Antoine Walter: and I promise you that I will keep my promise on that section, which is to have short questions aiming for short answers. And my first question is, what is the most exciting project you’ve been working on and why

Jennifer Möller-Gulland: My Mongolia project because it was my first water risk assessment.

Antoine Walter: the Ulan Bator one or the mining one

Jennifer Möller-Gulland: The national one

Antoine Walter: national one.

Can you name one thing that you’ve learned The hard.

Jennifer Möller-Gulland: Yeah, like how to assess water risks and without going into 10 million rabbit holes, I spent like hours and days of my life when unnecessary pursuit of information.

Antoine Walter: Is there something you’re doing today in your job that you will not be doing in 10 years?

Jennifer Möller-Gulland: Yeah. Somebody hit me with administrative stuff and data collection please.

Antoine Walter: That’s a fair one. What is the trend to watch out for in the water sector?

Jennifer Möller-Gulland: I think new ways to get data. With my pain point of collecting data, I don’t wanna do that in 10 years anymore. We’ve collect a lot of satellite data, ai everything coming up at the moment. It’s an exciting space to watch.

Antoine Walter: let me cheat again. there’s this book by David Lloyd Owen global Water Funding who is also a consultant for all this multilateral organization, I think is part of the 2030 Water Resource Group as well. There’s a ton of value in these books, so I’m not restricting it to one thing, but one thing which really marked me by reading the book is how limited the data is.

In most of the cases, we simply have no clue. So I guess in your position, you have to start by looking for data which doesn’t exist or which is in bulk. Some.

Jennifer Möller-Gulland: Yeah, but you know what? I switched it around. Like I got frustrated by I was saying we don’t have enough data. So I’m switching it around now to show like, what we don’t know because we don’t have data like Indonesia. I’m saying like, look, we don’t know for 75% of the population what kind of water quality they’re exposed to because there’s no measuring station.

Rather than saying we don’t know, we don’t, we’re not gonna mention it. We’re kind of highlighting the problem of the impact of not having the data, right? So we don’t know like how they affected, but we know they, they, we know they are going to be affected because the downstream of huge cities or mining areas, industrial areas that we know it’s not gonna be pristine, jungle water, but we don’t know how bad it is. And that’s the risk in itself, not knowing.

Antoine Walter: Let me bring you back to the rapid fair questions. Do you believe we will meet SDG6 by 2030?

Jennifer Möller-Gulland: No. I have to join you in your negative perspective.

Antoine Walter: So as I cited David Lloyd Owen, do you believe in his thesis that we might meet SDG6 by 2050?

Jennifer Möller-Gulland: We’re 50. I mean, we don’t wanna be too negative. I mean, 2030 is a clear No. 2050. If we change the way we think. Yes. If we don’t change the way we think. No, I think it’s a mindset issue. It’s not a complicated thing to fix, it’s just a mindset and prioritization issue.

Antoine Walter: And last question, would you have someone to recommend me that I should definitely invite as soon as possible on that micro.

Jennifer Möller-Gulland: I do I don’t know, and I think he hasn’t been on your podcast yet, but as Greg Ko, he used to be the leader for water stewardship in Coca-Cola International. . And now he is the director at E RM and he’s an amazing person to ask any question. And so I’ve had the benefit of being able to ask him any questions and he took somewhat of a mentor role during the years for me.

And whenever I have a question about private sector around anything really, he’s so knowledgeable and he’s got such a great perspective, like very varied from many different facets and it’s each time enlightening to hear his answers. So I think he would be a great conversation partner.

Antoine Walter: Well, Thanks Ed for the recommendation and I do hope he’s gonna be at least as good as you. You were know some conversation partner, so thanks a lot for sharing everything you, you did today. You’ve been one of the few guests I had on that podcast so far, which was so thoughtful with you. Homework. So I have a bunch of links to your various ways to contact you, follow up with you.

All of that is gonna be in the show notes. If there’s one of those which he wants to highlight specifically so that people really start there, or one which you wouldn’t have given me yet. That’s your chance.

Jennifer Möller-Gulland: Okay. I think you can follow me on LinkedIn. Just under my name, I think I, I try to share everything I find out on LinkedIn and if you’d like to follow the free work class Antoine mentioned it’s gonna be in the show now. There’s a great entry point to understand like how I see water risks and I do have different trainings like a crash cost training.

So we just wanna have a quick insight. It’s a very short training just to kind of tip your toe to the water, so to say. And I have a 12 week intensive training on water risk where you actually learn how to do your water risk assessment, how to communicate water risks and where you know, everything at the end of it about water risks.

Those would be the links to look at, I think.

Antoine Walter: Oh, check the show notes. Everything is there. And once again, Jennifer, thanks a lot and I hope to have a sequel conversation with you at some point.

Jennifer Möller-Gulland: Thank you so much Antwana. Thank you so much for doing the podcast. It’s great of, and part of what I mentioned, we should speak about water, we should speak about our knowledge, but thank you for giving a platform for that. That’s great.

Antoine Walter: My pleasure.

Other Episodes:

FREDsense: Revolutionizing Water Quality Monitoring with Biosensor Innovation

By Antoine Walter | 7 May 2025

Swirltex: Revolutionizing Wastewater Treatment with Bubbly Innovation

By Antoine Walter | 30 April 2025

Blue Foot Membranes: The Next Evolution in Water Filtration

By Antoine Walter | 16 April 2025

Echo River Capital: Pioneering the Future of Water Innovation

By Antoine Walter | 3 April 2025

1001 Fontaines: Engineering Sustainable Water Access Through Social Entrepreneurship

By Antoine Walter | 22 March 2025

Amazon’s Water Footprint: Tech Giant’s Quest for Water Sustainability

By Antoine Walter | 19 March 2025

Turing: The AI Revolution Quenching the Water Industry’s Thirst for Innovation

By Antoine Walter | 26 February 2025

Altillion: Pioneering Digital Intelligence for Water Asset Management

By Antoine Walter | 6 February 2025

Flocean: Pioneering Ocean-Based Water Solutions

By Antoine Walter | 15 January 2025

Botanical Water Technologies: Harvesting Liquid Gold from Plants

By Antoine Walter | 4 December 2024

The post How to Leverage Water Risk Assessment to Unlock Business Opportunities appeared first on (don't) Waste Water.

with Alex Rappaport, CEO and Co-Founder of ZwitterCo. 

ZwitterCo leverages the benefits of Zwitterions to build Membranes that treat the world’s toughest wastewater. 

Infographic: Zwitterions turned into Wastewater Treatment Membranes

What we covered:

How ZwitterCo’s unique leverage of zwitterions overcomes membranes greatest weakness: fouling

How Alex Rappaport built a record-breaking membrane scale-up somewhat against the odds and how ZwitterCo was founded

How improving membranes and wastewater treatment was on the founding team’s agenda from Day 1 and how they executed on it

How ZwitterCo leveraged the SuperFiltration category to depict the unique properties of their wastewater membrane

How Water Scarcity and its increased awareness in industrial circles create a massive opportunity for the right set of technologies to address it

How ZwitterCo defined its scope of deliveries and how the company decided for the best-suited Go-To Market Route

How Alex’s company just raised a record-breaking Series A and what this will unlock

How the real impact ZwitterCo is aiming for goes beyond numbers – even if we are talking unicorn potential

What “Zwitter” actually means, how zwitterions are special animals, extending the range, leveraging real-world cases and feedback

… and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨  

Resources:

Check ZwitterCo’s Website

Send your warmest regards to Alex on LinkedIn

is on Linkedin

Antoine Walter on LinkedIn

Full Transcript:

These are computer-generated, so expect some typos

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Antoine Walter: Hi Alex. Welcome to the show.

Alex Rappaport: Excellent. Glad to be here. Thanks for having me.

Zwitterions are named after the German Word “Zwitter”

Antoine Walter: I have a first riddle that you need to answer for me. I heard that the word Zwitterion comes from German. So do you pronounce it like the Germans, like ZwitterCo (dzwitterco), or is it ZwitterCo (zouitterco)?

Alex Rappaport: it is ZwitterCo. I will say we have had several members of our larger circle who have German roots, and I have often been getting the linguistic lesson about the origins of our company name!

Yeah, Zwitter, actually, has some meaning in scientific usage here. The zwitterions are both positively and negatively charged.

Zwitter as a German word refers to both, the hybridization, right? That, the positive and negative there. So, the science checks out with the language.

ZwitterCo is based out of Cambridge, MS

Antoine Walter: So that was a teaser. What we might be discussing later on, but I have traditions on that microphone and it starts with the postcard. So what can you tell me about the place you’re at, which I do believe is Cambridge? What I would ignore by now,

Alex Rappaport: Absolutely. So we’re actually right on the outskirts of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Actually our headquarters is in Woburn. And one of the beautiful things that I get to see on my drive to work every day is that we are right outside the Middlesex Fells reservation, which is this large. Forest and reservoir that I get to drive through.

So you have this beautiful Vistage of water the way I start my day before coming into the office. It’s a wonderful place to get to see.

ZwitterCo spun off of TUFTS University

Antoine Walter: So does that mean that you have a special link with water or how did you encounter that topic? Was it at university? Was it before university? Was it after university?

Alex Rappaport: Yeah, so it did proceed University. I can’t say that I ever wrote on a middle school. What I want to be when I grow up is someone who works in membranes. But I did know that I wanted to be in Cleantech, right, in sustainable technologies. And part of where my love for. The environment for the natural world.

And how that ended up folding into my career path was I was a river raft guide. I used to teach whitewater standup paddle boarding to campers, you know, aged seven to 15. It sounds scarier than it is, but it is standing on a paddle board in the middle of class three, class four whitewater couple very scary near miss scenarios there.

I used to spend all of my summers on the Potomac River outside of the Maryland DC area. And so those experiences the communities that were built, spending so much time in nature, and then knowing obviously , that there’s a whole bunch of challenges in the world that we’re experiencing.

That was why I went into environmental engineering, and that was some of the passion underlying the birth of ZwitterCo.

Seeing Alex succeed in Water Entrepreneurship may have been a surprise for his University Professors

Antoine Walter: So going into environmental engineering, that’s one thing, but still going into entrepreneurship in that field isn’t the common route. Might be more developed nowadays than it was a while ago, but still, when did you decide you wanted to be an entrepreneur? Was it from the beginning of your university days or at some point you thought, oh, that’s really so cool, I have to create a company order that.

Alex Rappaport: I really hope at some point some of my old environmental engineering professors get to hear some of these stories cuz I was not the student that they might’ve expected, would’ve ended up actually pursuing a career in environmental technology, let’s say I would not have been the first on that list.

I obviously loved the discipline and I loved the idea of technology for solving environmental challenges. Entrepreneurship was my second love at school. I come from TUFTS University. A lot of the technology and the team members at ZwitterCo also came from Tufts.

I was the head of the undergrad entrepreneurship club. I had the fortune to build relationships with a lot of the professors in the entrepreneurship and engineering management departments at Tufts.

And when I was first exposed to the idea of actually doing rapid prototyping, rapid business model development, lean Six Sigma… All the concepts that help you organize how you would build a venture and how you would take technology through the rapid commercialization pathway that dovetailed with engineering as a sort of engineering as the medium and entrepreneurship as the force. And the two of them together.

“Stumbling” upon the technology that turned Zwitterions into a Membrane changed the game

When I had the opportunity, when I sort of stumbled upon the technology that now is the basis of what we work on at ZwitterCo it was a wonderful match between.

There was something that had this vast performance enhancement and that could be used for these incredibly challenging industrial wastewater treatment opportunities. And that was just at that nascent stage of something new had been made, but it had only been at the stage of lab scale technology and patented work.

There had been no commercialization plan organized, so I got. Take a lot of the learning that I had built over the last few years in early stage venture development and apply that to something , that I cared so deeply about, which was doing work in the water space.

Alex met the perfect match in Chris Drover’s sector experience to build up ZwitterCo

Antoine Walter: You mentioned how a lot of the people working with you today also come from Tufts University. If I’m right, that’s the case of your co-founder, but not exactly the same time than you. So what’s the story? Where do you meet?

Alex Rappaport: Yeah, sure. So Chris Drover is my senior by a few years. I won’t age him too far. But he was previously at Doble Engineering and then at Oasys Water which in its own right was a company that had really been pushing the boundaries on membrane technology, working on forward osmosis for brine concentration.

And so, as Oasys in that journey was winding down, he had really well connected his experience within the chemical engineering world at Tufts.

And the invention behind ZwitterCo’s technology is a novel material, right? A new chemistry for membranes. And that had come out of one of the research labs out of the chemmy department.

All came right for the launch of ZwitterCo during Alex’s last semester at TUFTS

So I had been spending the last couple semesters working on building the business case for how we would go scale and commercialize and gain funding to support the growth of the company.

And I had walked away from my master’s program with a business plan, with a first place prize in the Tuft’s 100k competition, about $10,000 in the bank account, and no idea what I was doing. So it was about that point that I started working more closely with Ayesha asset taken.

The professor who invented these new class of material, And we had been working together on what is gonna be the path to first prototype, to first scaled up process, to first customer test, and how do we replicate and better create quality structures around the things that they were doing by hand in a lab we needed to transfer to industrial sale production.

We had been tossing some ideas around. I came up with, let’s call some not so intelligent ideas about how you scale membrane technology and the more she was sort of aware of the needs we were about to go under, the more important it was that we started to really build the technical firepower behind the company.

Building up the perfect founding team

So she actually connected me to Chris Drover. And that was a wonderful first union. As we think about all the challenges that we had in our first few years, figuring out what this chemistry really was, how we would end up translating it to something where you could be producing miles of membrane into really well controlled circumstances, and that we knew how to tune and tailor the performance to the different applications we cared about.

Chris has just such a wealth of background, everything from the organic chemistry to the design for manufacturer to running R&D operations to the development of intellectual property and so much more. So, that was one of the things that helped us all jump off a cliff together as I was graduating, as we were forming the company, was the knowledge of the sort of collaborative skillsets that we were each bringing into this.

ZwitterCo’s special sauce lies in the Zwitterionic Copolymer

Antoine Walter: You mentioned several times the material, which is at the core of what you’re doing, what is it? Is it the Zwitterion? Is it the polymer? What is this core special sauce?

Alex Rappaport: It is a Zwitterionic copolymer, Two core backbones to the material. What we refer to as the co-polymer is actually a class of materials. So there are different kinds of compounds or constituents that you can include within that sort of base idea of the recipe. But the co-polymer is the active layer, right?

So we are using Pressure based tangential flow filtration the same way that you would think about for any other flat sheet or spiral wound membrane configuration. But the difference is the active layer that actually encounters the wastewater is made from this Zwitterionic copolymer.

So what it does, the way it works, why it has the performance it has is the relationship between the Zwitterionic group and an hydrophobic group that it is co polymerized with. So let’s do a first quick story on Zwitterions and why they’re relevant here.

Zwitterions are some of the most hydrophilic materials known to man

They are positively and negatively charged by definition. That means that they behave like a salt or they have a strong affinity to interact with polar solutions like water. And that allows them to be really hydrophilic. The Zwitterions we use are actually so hydrophilic, they’re hygroscopic.

We have to operate in a desicant chamber when handling them in certain circumstances cuz they’ll wick moisture out of the air and swell into a gel.

So you have this material that loves water. If you made a membrane just out of Zwitterions, it would dissolve immediately, which would not be very effective for filtration.

And so different attempts to integrate hydrophilic compounds and Zwitterions specifically into membrane chemistry have been something that people have been exploring over the last couple of decades.

Most of the attempts have been post-processing methods, grafting of these Zwitterions chains onto existing polymer bases.

… so hydrophilic that they may become week unless you use them right

And the challenge that was found in a lot of those use cases was, Superficiality that it both helped create some surface improvement, but that it was not something that was super long lasting and robust.

And when it comes to the reason why membranes or filters clog, why they are, Often experiencing challenging operations or failure modes when you throw lots of fat soils in grease and other challenging compounds at them is not just that the surface fouls up, but you actually have poor penetration.

Stuff gets stuck inside the matrix of the membrane. And when you do a surface treatment of Zwitterionic style coating. That’s only the two-dimensional layer at the very top. You need the whole three-dimensional structure to be fouling resistant. If you’re gonna really change the way that a membrane is operable.

Marrying Zwitterions with an hydrophobic co-polymer brings the best of two worlds

So now you enter in the sort of second half of the equation, which is the zwitterionic group is co polymerized with a hydrophobic group. And what you get here is because those two groups have such different energetic behavior, you can institute a self-assembling property. Where as our membrane is formed, the Zwitterions will orient themself to become the pores of the membrane.

So this is no longer just a surface level alteration. The pore structure itself, the passageway that water transfers through is all Zwitterionic. And so you have this sort of hydrophobic glassy matrix with salt channels in it, and those salt channels because they are so hydrophilic, you could imagine.

If a water molecule and an oil molecule are both competing for surface interaction and you have the surface is all Zwitterionic it wants to grab onto the water, it wants to hold onto the water and stay fully hydrated, almost acting like a shield or a water barrier that keeps any of those organic compounds forever hitting the surface, sticking to it, and staying there long enough to form that clogging behavior.

Key Benefit: It creates a Membrane that never clogs!

So when we clean our membranes, because what you’re doing is basically shearing off any stuff that gets stuck to the surface or conglomerates in that first place where the wastewater meets the active layer. What we get is 30 minute freshwater rinse or very mild bleaching caustic, and you’ll fully regenerate the membrane back to its starting performance cycle after cycle.

Whether you throw tens of thousands of parts per million oil in grease, whether you have protein, whether you have anti foam agents or silicones, surfactants, we have seen. And amazing about ability for the membrane to regenerate and continue operating even in some of the streams that you know, a classical membrane would say it’s gonna be dead in hours.

And that’s all because of how well those Zwitterionic channels allow you to keep unimpeded pores, unclogged matrix of the active

Are Zwitterions and Fourth Phase of Water linked?

Antoine Walter: The last time on that microphone that I spoke with someone addressing gels, hydrophilic, hydrophobic, that was with Gerald Pollack, and we discussed his set of research about the fourth phase of water and beyond, and I have to wipe that out of my mind. Is it the same topic we’re discussing here?

Is it an adjacent topic or does it have really no link?

Alex Rappaport: I am afraid I’m not close enough, to that material to be able to comment. I will say there’s a lot of work that’s been done on hydrophilic materials and that behavior of hydrophilicity as a property that can help with things like fouling resistance or that can help allow you to lubricate certain operating environments.

That’s a well understood behavior or phenomenon. Seeing it actually in a sort of robust, commercially available product I think there’s a lot of other sort of examples that you can point to. If you look at some of the quantitative metrics that you’d use to determine surface wettability our membrane is well, well above any other competitive product in terms of that behavior showing up.

ZwitterCo directly thought of leveraging Zwitterions to build a Wastewater Membrane

Antoine Walter: So you had this base material, so this Zwitterionic Co-Polymer, which you put together, the hydrophylic, the hydrophobic together. When did you decide that has to be a membrane and when did you pick the application field for that discovery?

Alex Rappaport: the first fundamental invention was on the basis of trying to produce a membrane. And particularly a membrane that was going to solve, the achilles heel of filtration, fouling, clogging. So when I was first introduced to the research, there had been lab scale membrane coupons that had been developed.

That had been run on some high strength wastewaters or some fouling prone feeds, and there was evidence that the cleaning behavior, the ability to recover was vastly different. So the use of this material as a thin film layer was sort of understood and there was some evidence of its value as I came into the picture.

As we thought about driving that towards something that could be a product we had to, while maintaining the elegance of the hydrophilicity and the self-assembly. We had to figure out how to re-engineer a lot of that to be something that could be turned into a product that could work on roll-to-roll web conversion that was going to hold up in the kinds of environments from a temperature and a solvent and various different kinds of constituents that you’ll see in industrial wastewaters.

The company rolled out rapid prototyping on real-world cases

So that was really the way we took the engineering forward from that initial. Lab scale prototype was towards the kinds of environments and use cases where it was gonna be able to have that value realized by end users. Which then, second part of your question we did a whole bunch of studies.

We took a whole bunch of samples from a whole bunch of really smelly, vibrant wastewaters from every industry for whom you see the common signs of. It’s a tough wastewater, so I’m hauling it away by tanker truck. It’s a tough wastewater, so I’m throwing it down the drain and paying surcharges. It’s a tough wastewater, so I’m not reusing anything in it, whether it’s the organics or the water. It’s just an operating cost to my facility.

We saw this in obviously the produced water space in meat, poultry, seafood, in agricultural waste, like digestate. You see it a lot in ethanol. You see it in a lot of bioprocesses.

So those markers of organics as the limiting feature of the water from doing something that looks more like reuse or looks like valorizing, that waste stream. Those were some of the first indicators that this membrane might be able to perform a separation that was gonna be valuable. But you only get that insight as you start interacting with those fluids firsthand.

ZwitterCo’s first investment was in building a Lab

So one of the earliest investments that we made was creating a laboratory environment where we could be taking in five gallons of wastewater from various sites at a time and running bench style studies that could give you, you know, you’re now removing this much BOD COD. You’re having a hundred percent removal of all suspended material and oil and grease.

You are able to unlock using something like reverse osmosis to get you down to potable quality or reuse quality water because you’ve removed all of the organic material that would’ve otherwise compromised that use of reverse osmosis.

So those kinds of exposures to the different waste environments helped us begin to characterize how the go-to-market model was going to evolve, because now you could understand status quo.

You could understand the operating costs, you could hear the level of urgency or pain from folks who had no other sense of what tools they could apply to these challenges. And it’s one thing if it’s just a cost center, but when folks are running out of water, when they’re in violation, when they are seeking to pioneer sustainability in their field, you see this…

I’ve never had to walk into a customer conversation and convince them that doing something more interesting with their water was a good idea. Those days are long gone. So helping just partner on now there are new tools and now there are new capabilities that we can bring into the idea of an integrated solution for you.

That conversation was often met with a lot of positivity and a lot of interest, even for folks who had never really seen membranes in action.

ZwitterCo re-created a Membrane category: SuperFiltration

Antoine Walter: I’ll come back to that customer experience, which by the way, it seems to me like whether you’ve been very lucky or really you’ve met the right people.

But still, I wouldn’t say it’s the norm, yet. It’s maybe becoming more, but not yet the norm. I’d also like to readdress your go to market, I think there’s one important step we missed, which is you explain how you have this co-polymer and how the Zwitterions themselves are the pores

But still those pores could be any sizes, and usually we find them from cartridge to reverse osmosis through microfiltration, ultrafiltration nano filtration you mentioned forward osmosis and you have a different concept, which is super filtration. So what’s that thing?

Alex Rappaport: certainly. I will say and my marketing people are probably gonna yell at me for saying this, we did not invent super filtration. We didn’t even come up with a term, so the first indication that from a communication exercise, we needed a different way to talk about this membrane is because it ended up being quite a mouthful to say, well, it’s like a tight, ultra filter.

It’s gonna give you low pressure operations. It’s gonna be really easy to clean. It’s gonna be very chemically tolerant. Also, it’s doing nanofiltration level organics removal. It’s not the desalinating, it’s not taking out divalent ion species. So you wouldn’t use it for an NF application, but it’s gonna give you better permanent quality than you expect from a UF

how’s that sound for a product?

At the intersection of NF and UF, “SF” brings clarity on the terminology

And that was the genesis of: can we give the industry a new language to think about why this separation profile is different? So it is roughly a thousand Dalton molecular weight cutoff or about a one nanometer pore size. Part of the way the membrane is manufactured gives you a really good distribution or homogeneity in the size of pores and where those pores line up on the active layer.

So we get a very precise ability to fractionate compounds. Larger than an nanometer? They really all come out. Smaller than an nanometer? They all really pass through. And it’s not doing the kind of desalination or, partial ionic separation that you’d expect from an NF level separation.

So, As we were thinking about where this separation class is relevant, you get a lot of interest in things like protein rejection, right?

Proteins that are in that low thousands of Dalton range. You can suddenly get very high yield, very high retention, even of protein fragments or peptides that are all valuable products that you might want out of a bioprocess or out of a dairy stream.

And when it comes to wastewater applications, you see UF, MBRs, these kinds of separations being sufficient in certain circumstances to pre-treat or to really help you get to those final tertiary polishing stages.

When Ultrafiltration reaches its limit, you need a better tool: that’s where SuperFiltration kicks in!

But there were also a handful of use cases where we were finding, loose or mid scale UF wasn’t enough. That enough dissolved organic material was passing through even a UF. And that was showing up as you’re cleaning your RO every day or every week, or you are gonna experience more severe chemical requirements in those cleanings.

So we think of super filtration at that very lowest possible edge of ultra filtrations or tight ultra filtration as what could produce the most ideal feed water for ro, what’s gonna get you full removal of fat soils and grease and suspended solids? What’s gonna get you really excellent protein yields and ash passage, but that’s not gonna have energy penalties that you get from NF or RO and it’s not gonna have the cleaning restrictions that you also typically have from polyamid chemistry.

You can really chlorinate our membrane, lots of, tolerance, to wide pH ranges, different acid-based combinations as well as oxidizing agents.

With which Water Technologies does ZwitterCo’s Zwitterionic solution compete?

Antoine Walter: So if I try now to put you in a box. Sorry about that. You, You mentioned how you are tolerant to organics obviously you don’t have this problem of irreversible fouling. Probably, that helps you with the opex over time, with the lifetime of your membrane. Still the water ecosystem exists for decades.

So whether you found really a niche which was unaddressed, and I’m very concerned about this industry because that means we were really polluting stuff for the pleasure of doing it, or you’re still living in someone’s space and eating up that space and replacing an existing technology. To me, you named one of the suspects to that, which might be the MBRs which you could, as you explain, have.

Probably better opex than an MBR and similar characteristic physically speaking. The other one might be dissolved air flottation. Is there any other one which you might be eating up, replacing, disrupting you decide what’s the best term

Alex Rappaport: Yeah, you could think of ceramic or inorganic membrane products as the other common tool that you point to for challenging waste streams that you could otherwise think of ZwitterCo as a tool for

Could polymeric membranes on Zwitterions limit ceramic membranes’ perspectives?

Antoine Walter: that’s a difficult one because, regularly ceramic membrane people on that microphone predicting how they would wipe out polymeric. So if now a polymeric player says that he can take on ceramics, then we’re in a circle.

Alex Rappaport: Well, how, you know, how many different companies over the years have said things like, performance of a ceramic at the cost profile of polymerics. I mean, this is an angel discussion that. There’s probably more nuance and gray area than anyone black and white answer.

I’ll give you an even more frustrating or, it depends. Style answer for this, which is, I have seen now too many examples in each different industry that we operate in where the thing you thought you were competing with over here is a complimentary tool to you over here that I truly feel there is such a vast blue ocean.

In the new realm of Water Scarcity and industrial wastewater reuse, there’s space for everyone

The need for new advanced treatment showing up in a lot of these applications where again, land application, direct discharge, municipal discharge. Hauling or some form of offsite disposal. These are all features of, I’d say a very large majority of where we think about industrial wastewater management today.

So the compilation of new tools that help provide you an integrated solution where you’re not just getting clean water, but you’re also creating feed stocks and fertilizers and other value added co-products. As you go through these different stages of processing, that introduction is gonna mean.

If I’m in dairy wastewater and I have a lot of lactose and other low molecular weight sugars, maybe a biological process as part of that treatment train makes sense to consume those easy to digest sugars.

If I’m in, you know, landfill leachate, maybe what you really want is just the easiest way to concentrate all of that leachate through a membrane based process before taking it to a thermal process so you have something semi-solid going back to landfill.

There will be use cases for technology combinations

If you are in anaerobic digestate out of manure or food waste, you may want something like a stainless steel microfiltration to take out fiber before you go to ZwitterCo or RO to do the nutrient capture and to get you down to clean water.

So it has shown us that the thoughtful integration of the right tool for the right job. I’ll put on my optimist hat, is gonna prove to us that there is not a zero sum game here. That it is not one tool will dominate over another.

Even air flotation, which I would say in a lot of the food wastewater applications, reducing the chemical payload on a DAF by having a membrane barrier afterwards that can take more heavy organic effluent from that DAF is one of the things that we’ve looked into. Or even eliminating the DAF entirely in some cases that makes sense.

… so it will be about engineering the right solution for the right challenges

In other cases we have some partners we work with who use chemical free DAF as a way to create a non-con contaminated byproduct that can be sent to rendering or that can be otherwise turned into some sort of fat or lipid feed stock to a biodiesel process.

And you actually want that DAF performing that function. And then the membrane takes all the effluent from there. And a DAF that might otherwise be perhaps a little less reliable in what kind of affluent quality it has, or that is not gonna be able to adapt as easily to changes in the industrial conditions at a plant.

Suddenly you’ve used a membrane to protect against that weakness of the DAF while using the DAF for what it’s good at, which is a very low cost way to extract a decent bulk of the solids and fat soils and grease that’s in that stream. So I know it’s there’s always like in front of investor slides, a competitive matrix.

Here’s all these other tools and here’s all the X’s on all of them. And ZwitterCo’s got all these green check marks, but as many an esteemed water scholar has said, it’s complex set of problems. And you really wanna have the right kind of open-mindedness to which tools help get you the overall process efficiency.

ZwitterCo’s elevator pitch to their Unique Selling Point

Antoine Walter: Don’t get me wrong, I’m a water guy, so I would fully support your answer, which is the right answer, but I’m still gonna push you in a corner if I’m meeting you in an elevator. So you really have just, and I’m not going very high with that elevator, so you really have like 10 seconds. And there is one clear advantage of your technology, which you do know is the reason why people come to you. What would it be?

Alex Rappaport: in five years we’ve never found a fluid that permanently foul the membrane. The diversity of organic heavy streams that we have been able to process and enable water reuse for the first time has shown up in so many applications.

Antoine Walter: Perfect!

Alex Rappaport: How many floors did we just go up in that elevator? Was That’s good.

Antoine Walter: I would stay a bit longer and maybe forget where I was going at first. So you win on that one.

You explain how your membrane brings that value. Now, when I spoke with several membranes company on that microphone over time, most of them started saying they wanted to build a membrane and then found out they had to build a module just because the membrane itself wouldn’t be integrated that way.

What’s your approach to that?

What’s ZwitterCo’s ideal delivery scope? “Just” Zwitterions Membranes or full modules?

Alex Rappaport: there’s a great quote, oh, I’m gonna blank on the author of this. We tossed this one around the company often. You can’t sadly dump a bunch of flat sheet membrane or even modules on the floor of an industrial plant, pour water over them and hope to get filtration. Unfortunately, that is just not the way these systems work.

So you really gotta think about your position in the value chain, right? This is: where we bring the most amount of expertise and competency and ability to continue pushing the boundaries on what performances is possible, certainly lives at the membrane level, but to deliver something that others can easily integrate and use, you need to give a module.

And so we’ve made choices. To go far enough into the value chain to make sure that the thing we’re gonna give someone looks and feels similar to the thing that they would’ve otherwise had to buy.

To remove customer friction, you need to deliver a new solution in a similar shape than the existing one

So you’re gonna make that friction of trying something new, as low as possible. In our go-to-market concept, you know, the follow on question from there is, so do you build the system?

How far do you go into system engineering? How far do you go into project delivery? And this is where you start being honest with yourself and with your organization and what you’re good at. There’s a lot of companies that are a lot better at project delivery than ZwitterCo could be. We don’t have that kind of, building block in our DNA to go build buildings and pour concrete and manage all of that project delivery process.

And meanwhile, we have a growing cohort of really close partnerships with just top tier. Very high caliber engineering firms who are able to bring some of those other complimentary unit operations that with ZwitterCo, often as a cornerstone of these processes, or that helps bolt on some really valuable new capability.

Empowering engineering firms with a new zwitterionic tool

They’re hungry for having a new tool in their toolkit that lets them provide greater value to their customers and to the water industry. So that’s a moment. Is there anyone providing what we feel is this differentiation in the quality of filtration that’s possible and how these tools can be built to do all sorts of new separations?

I think that’s a place where ZwitterCo shines. Is there an existing value chain for how. Wastewater treatment engineering projects get delivered. And are there a handful of very well acclaimed strong balance sheets, strong engineering teams, strong existing set of complimentary tools to bring to bear?

Absolutely. So we sort of stopped at the module and we said we can do a lot with membrane science, even a lot with module science and we are gonna make sure. When we work with a partner, when we work with an engineering company, we’re not just gonna hand them a module and a spec sheet and say, good luck.

Tell us when you’ve sold, a couple million dollars. We spend a lot of time thinking about all of the other ancillary services, documentation, know how tools, processes to help us integrate into the way they sell and the way they think about validating a new technological process.

Is ZwitterCo Integrator Agnostic?

Antoine Walter: So that would mean that you’re not integrator agnostic because you want to make sure that it’s integrated the right way. It’s not like just it’s on the market, just buy it.

Alex Rappaport: the current form factor of the super filtration that we sell today is a spiral wound element that in theory will fit into standard pressure vessels and that you would think of. A similar design concept to how you might put together like a dairy UF system, pie recirculation, you know, multiple stages, achieving very high concentration factors.

That’s a common and fairly generic design basis to start with.

But there’s so much more that goes into not just the delivery of a new solution, but even the mindset and the mentality around innovation and around risk sharing and around how you finance these projects. So while we love to and, are growing, the number of systems partners that we work with, we do think very carefully around.

As a Scale Up, ZwitterCo has to be conscious of its time to deliver the best value

The kind of investments we make. We are a small, young company and so we have a certain amount of bandwidth that we can support for partnership onboarding, and we wanna really make those partnerships successful. So we focus a lot of our attention on. Bringing leads to our partners, to bringing additional services to our partners, to making sure that if they’re going through a first engineering design, where ZwitterCo’s membranes are built in that we are there with them, sort of every step of the process to help fill in some of the gaps and how you think about best optimizing the system.

So it’s hard to say that we’re a integrator, agnostic or not. It’s sort of the relationships and the capabilities that we’ve seen from some of our top partners right now are just a wonderful collaboration and sort of common mentality, common shared purpose around the needs of the industry are changing so fast.

There’s so many opportunities. Let’s really enjoy the sensation of feeling like all of our work collectively matters and that our teams are dedicated to this mission. And that’s a point of synchrony between our various organizations. That framework, that mindset to go about these projects is often one of the best indicators of partnership success.

The intended Go-To Market route defines ZwitterCo’s agnosticism

Antoine Walter: Maybe agnostic isn’t the right way to define it. I’m thinking, you know, of. You could go to, let’s take an example of municipal tender, which I do know is not exactly where you’re fitting into. But if you go into a municipal tender, you can convince the end user that he needs your membrane module, and then he’s gonna make a tender in which it’s written that whoever can take the tender, but the modules have to come from ZwitterCo.

So that would be one way to be fully agnostic because. At the end of the day, you don’t care which EPC gets the job. You would be part of it. The other extreme of that would be you do, like, Royal HaskoningDHV does with Nereda, which is to have some licenses, which they would then hand out to one particular EPC, and then that EPC is the only one in the country allowed to leverage the technology, which is, I would say that the highest level of partnership you can have.

If I understand you’re somewhat in between in the sense that really anybody could pick it up because the form factor is really agnostic. But then when it comes to taking and extracting the most out of the technology, you have a certain bandwidth and you cannot train everybody at the same time. So you’re going step by step, educating the market.

The company aims to partner with integrators, but not fully up to the license model

Alex Rappaport: Yeah that’s a really good summary. We’re probably not in the middle. We’re probably further towards that really close partner Almost a license model. I understand that. The analogy there just because also the partners that we’ve worked with who have invested their own time, their own resources into developing these applications we wanna protect, you know, the way that they have invested their time and channel development.

And we wanna make sure that they’re the group, that we really work on go. So it helps them also appreciate, regardless of the structure of the agreement that we’re really bought in on them and their success. And you just don’t quite have that same relationship with your key partners when you are anyone, you know, we, we sell anything to anyone and you’re all just gonna compete together.

I would also argue that’s kind of the history of how commoditization in the membrane industry has happened, is you just, you lose touch with. A value strategy or value pricing analysis, both because of your disconnect with the end use application, the way that you organize your partnerships. It’s everyone wins and value can be maintained when you’re really thoughtful with your channel strategy.

What will ZwitterCo spend its $33 million Series A on?

Antoine Walter: You mentioned how these partners invest in you, which makes me like a weird bridge, but I’m taking it still. We just closed the series A, which is the largest ever in the water sector.

Alex Rappaport: Yeah.

Antoine Walter: you mentioned how you have a limited bandwidth today, given the size of the company, I guess that’s history. Now you just raised 33 million dollars.

So what does that change?

Alex Rappaport: one of the really exciting announcements we’ll be able to make very soon, so I’m gonna give you a little sneak peek here.

Building a new production complex to fast track Zwitterions adoption into the wastewater world and beyond

And part of what was the primary use of funds from this round is that ZwitterCo has and will be operational very shortly. A 30,000 square foot production complex here in Massachusetts, what we refer to as our innovation center, the Technology Innovation Center.

And the purpose of this facility and all the capabilities inside is a co-location of all of our offices, all of our laboratories, and also a significant space for prototyping and product scale up.

So we have one main commercial product we’re selling today, which is our super filtration membrane. That’s not all that this chemistry can do. That’s certainly not all of the kinds of tools and products that we’ll offer. We will offer products that look more analogous to what you might classically think of for ultra filtration, nanofiltration, RO, et cetera.

And the speed of product development is all about owning your manufacturing process, owning that scale up, learning how each different piece of equipment has to be operated, at what tolerance is under what quality paradigms, and that we can do that iteration and maintain that learning and do so as fast as possible.

Bringing all the steps in the production chain under the same roof

So our goal with this facility is to actually have production capability from the polymer to the membrane, to the elements, to the quality testing.

So that we can go through those learning cycles in under a month.

A new polymer formulation comes out of the lab and is immediately turned into coding fluid and is immediately turned into membrane, is immediately turned into elements that we’re testing and that speed and that ability to continue pushing the boundaries of what the chemistry’s capable of.

Now, with a lot of the incoming feedback from partnerships and from, the adoption in the marketplace and seeing how the membranes are performing, Is helping us move on a couple different product enhancements rapidly.

And that’s part of the promise of what our company is trying to be the source for continuing innovation in breakthrough filtration and continuing to give more and more tools to solve more and more challenges in water.

… then beefing up the sales arm to share the word about the perks of zwitterions applied to the Water Industry

So as we think about use of proceeds, one of the major features was building this center and all sort of capital and operating costs that go around with that. And then of course, Building out some of the other elements of our commercialization, whether it’s sales and marketing teams our pilot fleet all the other things that help us put our tools in front of as many end users or as many partners as it makes sense to do so.

So, It is, I’d say a really exciting stage of growth for us. You raise a round like this. It definitely builds a lot of expectation. But the goal is to not just show the immediate. Value created from current products and to show that we can enable water reuse and show that we can provide a practical, economically viable means to address challenges in a number of industries, but also to show that as a company, we are building the engine internally, the habits, the framework, the processes that allows to continue that kind of innovation in the years and decades to come.

And that’s what is sort of underneath all of what we’re trying to do at ZwitterCo.

Will there be more products in the ZwitterCo range?

Antoine Walter: You mentioned the decades to come, you’ve said product enhancement before. Does that mean that you will enhance the existing product or will you build a complete product range?

Alex Rappaport: Stay tuned for some announcements later with Year Antoine.

Antoine Walter: I take it you mentioned the pilot fleet and the sales and marketing. What’s your go-to market with that regards? You have to start with a pilot every time. Or can you also just do a lab analysis and say it’s gonna work and then own your words and come with some process guarantees?

Alex Rappaport: we actually are pretty involved with our partners and in project delivery on how we think about different risk sharing models. So we definitely will stand behind the val resistance, the chemical tolerance the permeate quality we can produce.

Finding the right place for piloting within ZwitterCo’s growth strategy

But, you know, piloting serves a number of different values and virtues, and I know many a water startups have struggled with the just length and frequency of pilots required. There’s think there’s been more than one book written on like death by pilot in this space.

One of the things that we are seeing is that repeat installations in the same kind of industry or application, especially if we have a strong partner who is the one sort of leading the charge in how we go from our, fifth digestate project to our 50th.

 The cost of sales the timeline, the amount of unknown and uncertainty around how the process is really gonna shape out given different site constraints or different nuances of the project, that diminishes pretty quickly over time. So there’s a decent amount of upfront investment and we want to make sure we can always walk into a new opportunity or a new partnership discussion and be able to bring all the knowledge and capability of our team around our systems and unit operations, which is why we maintain our own pilot fleet.

… and only piloting under the right set of parameters for potential follow-up success

But a lot of times pilots are collaborative where we’ll bring the SF system, someone else is bringing the RO or the evaporator or the coarse filtration, and we will make sure that we have a joint understanding.

What assumptions have to be true for the economics and the performance to make sense. And we’re validating that on testing both for everyone’s benefit, right? We’re now gonna walk into a risk sharing agreement. And there, this is the first time we’ve ever seen Zwitterionic membranes. It’s a big ask and so we wanna know that they’ve seen the data as well to think about how they’re going to inspect that into their projects.

 I don’t think this is a unique answer. I think this is probably true in a lot of the new technology adoption processes. There’s more upfront learning and risk sharing and demonstration that’s required. But I think we are already seeing in some of our more mature applications, turning the corner on pilots as a investigation or exploration as opposed to pilots as just a point of final validation.

What’s ZwitterCo’s valuation?

Antoine Walter: On the business. Of things. When you raise 33 million dollars, where does that put you in terms of valuation? 150, 180. You cannot disclose?

Alex Rappaport: It puts me somewhere on a beach right off the coast of Bermuda. Very nice drinks. Yeah.

Antoine Walter: You, you people listening to that won’t know that. You’re not joking that you’re on the beach. I see it on the camera but yeah it’s obviously a fake office.

Alex Rappaport: Yeah, I mean, valuation’s really not what we focus on or think about, in these kind of contexts. It is the credibility that comes from these kinds of announcements and the kind of stakeholders that are supporting us. It’s the ability to have the resources to go solve our sorts of new problems and really accelerate, Sort of pedal to the floor on product development.

That’s the value of a round like this is you both catapult forward in how others are aware of what you can offer and you’re able to really bring the kind of firepower and capability you need into these tough projects.

Could ZwitterCo become the Water Sector’s first unicorn?

Antoine Walter: The reason why I’m asking is that you are an award-winning entrepreneur. You are Forbes 30 and 30. You’ve just led the biggest founding round for a Series A in the water industry. There’s one achievement nobody ever did in that water industry. It’s to build a unicorn. Never happened. I don’t know if that matters honestly, but still never happened.

So is that a path you might be setting yourself on?

Alex Rappaport: You know what would be really cool, and genuinely, I’m not just trying to give a, a flip into answer here, but truly what would be so, so motivating to us and to the team is to be able to do three things. one, To be able to prove water as an investible thesis, right? To be able to start having a different outcome.

When new water entrepreneurs are trying to put the logo salad on their slides in front of investors, of all the different outcomes that led to great investor returns, I would love for this to become a beacon or a lighthouse that helps bring more dollars into this space. Bring more hungry young minds into this space.

… this would actually be the wrong metric to measure Alex’s success

Two I would like to make sure. Those who have invested so dearly into ZwitterCo, into me personally, from a mentorship, from an advisory, from a networking perspective, not just the investment of dollars, but there has been such a collection of experienced veteran serial entrepreneurs who have helped me on so many different chapters of this journey.

I would love to see. Us be able to help provide the returns. That helped be the baseline for why there was so much effort invested into ZwitterCo in the first place. And then probably most importantly is I would like this to reach a scale where we’re not just talking about a story.

We’re not just talking about the idea that one day industries are gonna be off the water grid, that they’re gonna have their own independent, resilient supply of water that you know will be safe even in the face of water scarcity and climate change. That, you know, we’re actually seeing impact recognized on a scale where it shows up on NASA satellites and where it features in water policy.

You achieve those things and I, could not care less whether it’s labeled at unit unicorn at the end of the day.

One potential path: emulating Andrew Benedek

Antoine Walter: You mentioned jokingly, the beach. Now I have to crack the secret. You’re not really on the beach. I had on that microphone Andrew Benedek a while ago, and he explained with different timeframes than yours cuz it was a different era. So he had to walk in the desert for much longer I think. But he really built up Zenon from nobody believes in Membranes to the point where MBRs were in the middle of the market.

And he sold off Zenon to, GE. And he went to the beach for six months and then he got tired of being on the beach and found being retired and he came back and the rest is history because now he’s leading Anaergia and to the same level of size that, and he is over 70. So I guess when you’re made of that bread, of that wood or whatever you’re made of usually there’s a stronger driver than just ego or numbers.

So I, I like your three cardinal directions right now. How many people are working at ZwitterCo today?

Alex Rappaport: How many employees do we have? 54.

What’s on the horizon for ZwitterCo in the next five years?

Antoine Walter: How many do you think you will be in five years?

Alex Rappaport: Well, there’s a lot of fun decisions that are gonna help, you know, baseline that answer as we grow level of international expansion level of additional product capabilities that we think about in our insourcing and outsourcing strategy.

You’re probably measuring well into the hundreds at this point, but, Again, it’s all about the destiny of what the technology can do and what the industry needs.

I think we are certainly attentive to. We want to continue growing in a way that is really collaborative with the industry. So some of the things that can really drive headcount up are when you are starting to build service depots around the world and engineering offices, and you’re doing more of that project management or program management, and I think.

You know, in certain applications or certain industries, maybe there will be more of that you see at ZwitterCo. But you know, where we are at the heart of new technology development and the facilities that we required to do so, I think is really harmonious with the way that a lot of the rest of the industry exists to tell then take that technology and apply it all over the world in different applications.

What will tell Alex that he’s succeeded by 2028?

Antoine Walter: So let me hand you over my crystal ball. So you’re in 2028. You have a, town hall meeting with those hundreds of people now working for ZwitterCo and you have a PowerPoint, hopefully not a PowerPoint, you have

Alex Rappaport: We’re all in. We’re all in VR at this point.

Antoine Walter: Yeah. And you’re just sharing the good news with your team of what you’ve achieved and how you’ve had an impact.

What is on the first slide of that VR or hologram?

Alex Rappaport: There’s certainly a counter of just millions of gallons a day reused. There’s a counter of number of other sustainable initiatives. That have been accelerated because of the availability of the tools you provide. Things like plant-based proteins, renewable, natural gas, green chemicals, all of these other spaces that need their water best managed in order to help them reach the heights that they’re trying to reach.

The impact goes far beyond just financial metrics

There would be something about the kinds of new fertilizers, new feed stocks, new products, the amount of value created that would’ve otherwise just been waste lost. And there would probably be some way to, you know, we’re talking 2028. Let’s get really ambitious here. I’d like to be able to relate this back to percentage of overall aquifer no longer lost because of the amount of industrial adoption of.

of reuse tools and of the kinds of interconnected systems that help us better manage and predict how climate patterns and weather patterns are gonna induce scarcity in different places. And so there’s more and more incentive for folks to think about trimming or constraining their water consumption to best manage on a watershed level or on a regional level, what’s going on.

Antoine Walter: Well, that’s the future I’d like to see. So I wish you all the best on that route. I think you are well prepared to to take it on. Thank you. Thanks a lot for the openness and the discussion, and everything you shared in that deep dive. To round it off, I propose you to switch to the last section, which is the rapid fire questions.

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Rapid fire questions:

Antoine Walter: So in that last section, I try to keep the questions short and your duties is to keep the answers short as well. My first one is, what is the most exciting project you’ve been working on and why?

Alex Rappaport: We have a poultry reuse project that is getting not just as terrific partner into the mix, bringing what we believe will be the most coste effective model to get you all the way to slaughterhouse reuse that has ever been seen in this industry. But we’re also bringing into that project a lot of support and investment from the regulators that’ll be involved in the permitting process.

And we are. Not just the enthusiasm from the customer and from the partner and from our team, but we’re seeing the regulators also saying, this is exactly what we need people working on and this is the direction we need to take our reuse initiatives.

Antoine Walter: Can you name one thing that you’ve learned The hard way?

Alex Rappaport: Only one. I come back to that point on value chain. It’s really important early in venture development to have some hypothesis about who you’re trying to be when you grow up. I’ll admit there are, you know, in, in several prior chapters times that we try to do more of the complete solution development or integration ourselves and knowing how tough it can be to solve process challenges in wastewater. It has been really fruitful to find the kind of mind sharing collaboration with partners who have the other half of that equation. That doesn’t necessarily make sense for us as a component supplier, in value chain.

Antoine Walter: Is there something you’re doing today that you will not be doing in 10

Alex Rappaport: I’m sure most of what I’m doing today, I won’t be doing it 10 years, and that’s just a truth of the constant. Deconstruction and reconstruction of your role as a company goes through different chapters. Obviously I will always have a, a strong hand and love and care about. People and our culture and how we operate as a company.

I’ll always have my investor facing and financing partner relationships. I will always have the strategic leadership of company direction and of the executive team. Hopefully I’ll be on more and more of these podcasts as the the spokesperson to the world. But I mean, we are already seeing different levels of middle management show up or thinking about different dynamics.

Interdepartmental processes and as we grow and as sort of the foundation comes up from beneath us, I will by necessity be less and less involved in some of those ground floor operations.

Antoine Walter: Aside from Zwitterionic membranes, what’s the trend to watch out for in the water sector?

Alex Rappaport: I mentioned it just a moment ago, the idea of this watershed level management I’m, I have a lot of inspiration from folks that are working on things like a third party marketplace for water. How do you value, how do you audit? The trail of a single drop of water so that as we start working on city level planning or regional level planning, we could think about the instrumentation, the modeling, the financial marketplace and incentive structures needed to help us work together on this challenge of water management.

I think there’s a lot of work happening in marketplace design. I know there’s good and bad in the way that carbon credits have been implemented, but you could sort of imagine similar concept and that’s gonna be necessary to make sure that there are drivers in place to get people to financially motivated to take some of these decisions.

And to think about different, pros and cons on water conservation.

Antoine Walter: last one, would you have someone to recommend me that I should definitely invite as soon as possible on that microphone.

Alex Rappaport: I was looking through the list of past participants and I was curious, have you guys met with Tom Ferguson from Burnt Island Ventures?

Antoine Walter: He promised that I could catch him at the next Blue Tech Forum.

Alex Rappaport: Oh, you have to. You have to.

Antoine Walter: promised that the last BlueTech forum that I would be able to catch him, but he’s the MC, so he’s very busy. But this time it’s on both our agendas.

Alex Rappaport: If you think I talk fast, track the words per minute that comes outta Tom Ferguson really impressive. I mean, Tom’s just he’s a lightning rod in this industry. He’s so well connected and has so much to bring. I’d also recommend when the time is right. The financing partners at DC VC who held ZwitterCo you know, achieved what we’ve achieved, have a really thoughtful thesis about the role they can play in helping to shape the future of the water industry.

And they’ve published quite a bit on the journey that they’re taking. And I’d be more than happy to make that connection if you wanna talk to, a slightly different player in this space.

Antoine Walter: That would be fascinating. So if you have a recommendation, I’ll follow that. So thanks a lot again I mean it it was great to have that conversation with you. You mentioned how you might be doing more of those podcasts in the future as an advocacy level or as a water voice. Well, that microphone is open whenever you want to come back, so I’d be happy to document the next stages of your journey.

Alex Rappaport: Excellent. I appreciate that.

Antoine Walter: So thanks a lot and talk to you soon.

Alex Rappaport: Terrific. All right. Take care. Have a good one. Cheers everyone.

Other Episodes:

FREDsense: Revolutionizing Water Quality Monitoring with Biosensor Innovation

By Antoine Walter | 7 May 2025

Swirltex: Revolutionizing Wastewater Treatment with Bubbly Innovation

By Antoine Walter | 30 April 2025

Blue Foot Membranes: The Next Evolution in Water Filtration

By Antoine Walter | 16 April 2025

Echo River Capital: Pioneering the Future of Water Innovation

By Antoine Walter | 3 April 2025

1001 Fontaines: Engineering Sustainable Water Access Through Social Entrepreneurship

By Antoine Walter | 22 March 2025

Amazon’s Water Footprint: Tech Giant’s Quest for Water Sustainability

By Antoine Walter | 19 March 2025

Turing: The AI Revolution Quenching the Water Industry’s Thirst for Innovation

By Antoine Walter | 26 February 2025

Altillion: Pioneering Digital Intelligence for Water Asset Management

By Antoine Walter | 6 February 2025

Flocean: Pioneering Ocean-Based Water Solutions

By Antoine Walter | 15 January 2025

Botanical Water Technologies: Harvesting Liquid Gold from Plants

By Antoine Walter | 4 December 2024

The post Zwitterions’ Super Powers Could Solve Wastewater Membranes Number One Problem appeared first on (don't) Waste Water.

with Björn Otto, Founder, and Managing Director of Interius Solutions. 

Interius Solutions supports Water Technology Companies with outsourced marketing solutions and a very special touch – it’s marketing done by water professionals that understand water technologies. 

What we covered:

How Marketing is much more than just PowerPoints and what to do about it

How management is to blame when Marketing doesn’t get the place and the attention it deserves in the Water Industry

How it might be difficult to find Zebras out in the market (a mix of engineers and marketers) and how you shall breed your own ones

ProTip: How water professionals shall invest in themselves and learn new skills – why not marketing?

How marketing shall be able to pitch the company anytime and in any circumstances

How most companies simply don’t know how and where the end-customers use their product and how to gather that knowledge

How water companies can build their own market studies in two simple steps

How to get a fast and effective dive into a new topic by immersing yourself in your customer’s world (even if you don’t understand a single word at first)

How the Trade Show scene will evolve in the next years and why large ones (IFAT, WEFTEC, AQUATECH) are here to stay

How marketing is about being attractive to the right profiles: the Bar analogy

8 Pro Tips on how to improve your water company’s marketing TODAY

The attitude problem on trade shows, helping water companies to develop their marketing hands-on, inspiring voices in the Water Industry, best practices to emulate… and much more!

… and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨  

Resources:

Check Interius Solutions’ Website

Send your warmest regards to Björn on LinkedIn

is on Linkedin

Antoine Walter on LinkedIn

Teasers:

How much do you invest in yourself? Recruit the right people!

How to craft the perfect market study? Talk to your customers!

Don’t we have an attitude problem on Trade Shows?

Water C-Suite, here’s a Pro Tip when it comes to Marketing:

How shall you react to your marketing department’s crazy Ideas?

Full Transcript:

These are computer-generated, so expect some typos

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Antoine Walter: Hi Björn, welcome to the show!

Björn Otto: Hi, Antoine!

Antoine Walter: On one end. It’s been a. Because you’ve been on that show two years ago. Yeah. On the other end, if people have tuned in to one of the water shows, they do know that we’ve recorded lots of pieces together, but this one is different. I’m not here to bring any contradiction to you.

I’m here to raise questions and to start with, there is something which drastically changed compared to the last time that we recorded together, which is at third time we were working for h and e, and today you’re working for a company called Interius Solutions. What is Interius Solutions doing?

Introducing: Interius Solutions

Björn Otto: First of all, thank you very much, Antoine, having me here on your podcast.

Thanks for the invite. After two years, really a lot of things have really changed Over the last two years. I formed the company and I had always in my head, you know, that our water tech companies, they need some more support in terms of marketing because I was always struggling. I was struggling due to the time I was in the position having the market team around me and have agencies around me, and I was always struggling to finding right partners who really understand.

The water industry and as World Tech, even my team, my marketing team, it turned out that sometimes you really couldn’t separate an from an uf and that makes me crazy. And one day, really, I had the idea, one day I will form a company to help our water tech companies in terms of marketing. And that’s exactly what we do here at Interior Solutions.

We are a marketing, consulting and execution company for water technology companies. We helping really water technology companies being visible, making their technology visible to the right people. I’m from the water industry since, since many years. Most of the technologies I know, I know the market, I know the players, not all of them for sure, but at least most of them.

And I know how it is, especially if you’re a startup coming to this world, to our water world, not having any clue what is going on, what is an integrator, what is an apc, even that kind of questions we are answering. And then we just help them bringing that. Product, that technology to the right. Uh, stakeholder.

That’s what we do.

What’s wrong with the Water Industry’s Marketing?

Antoine Walter: The last time we recorded, you mentioned this story of people considering Amazon to be the competitor of the water industry because they also sell water filters. And when I listen to you right now, it sounds like that hasn’t really changed. Let me start by being maybe provocative a bit.

Pardon me if it’s over the limits. Why do water companies do marketing So wrong?

Björn Otto: From my perspective, and that’s exactly what I’ve figured out over the last years, that there are people in charge who have only a little knowledge about the water technology they’re working for, the water company they’re working for.

So what I have figured out really is that most of the people in marketing, they’re just coming from another company which has nothing to do with water, but they did marketing over there, or they’re coming directly from university and having just the marketing knowledge, but they don’t have any water and technology knowledge.

You’re not training your marketing team enough

That is one thing, but the other thing is we are not training them enough. I remember my times, I started after university with Chemviron carbon. It’s an activated carbon company based in Belgium. So I started there as cigarettes engineer and the first thing they did is they took me, put me into an apartment in Belgium for two months and I had to learn everything about activated carbon from the theory.

Up to the practice. I was loading activator com. I was looking how the reactivation is. I had to learn this, this relief before they sent me to the clients. And that’s exactly what I miss in our industry because we are putting people in place, which are maybe great in marketing, but don’t bring the knowledge with, from the industry and from the technology.

And the question really is why do we not train them? In the way I was trained, for instance, and bigger companies do this for the salespeople I heard recently from a, a software startup. If someone wants to start a marketing, he has to spend at least three months in customer service before they let him go to marketing.

That they understand really what the customer really wants. And then they jump into marketing and then they bring the marketing knowledge and then they have the knowledge from the technology or from, from whatever you do. And then they can bring this to the paper. That is much easier as we do it today,

Does Marketing really need to understand the Technology?

Antoine Walter: but I’m still not sure I understand the problem.

I see what you say and I fully agree with you that the onboarding process is second to none for the marketing people within this industry, at least from what I saw. But what’s the problem with that? Do they really need to understand the water industry?

Björn Otto: Can you sell a product if you have no clue about the product?

Antoine Walter: Is marketing’s role to sell?

Björn Otto: Isn’t it part of part of the sales process? It’s always that you start the conversation to bring your technology into the head of the customer until you transfer the lead to the sales department and the sales department is just converting what you have prepared. How can you qualify a lead which might be interested in your technology to a level that you give it to the sales?

Isn’t that exactly where the clinch or the clash between sales and marketing and how industry comes from? Sales are saying marketing has no clue about our technology and marketing is saying sales is doing wrong with all the leads we gave them. And the issue who really is more on the marketing side, as on the sales side.

I’ve worked on both ads and the marketing is giving the sales leads, which are not qualified, where they got a signal, but this signal is not qualify. That this person or this company does really have the intention to take the T to implement the tag and has the capabilities to use the tag for the application.

And that’s where the sales come into place and saying, Hey, there’s no intention and I will not take the leads I get from marketing. Marketing has to move first and then maybe we can bring this together

The ever lasting clash between sales and marketing

Antoine Walter: a little bit more. Isn’t that a clash? Which happens in every single industry that sales and marketing are accusing each other of being responsible for not succeeding.

I mean, sales will say marketing didn’t qualify the leads and marketing will sales, sales didn’t follow the leads. Usually when you win, they are lots of feathers of the victory. When you lose, there are lots of people accusing others. So is it specific to the water industry?

Björn Otto: Well, actually I’m just from the water industry.

I haven’t seen any other industry, so no points. But let’s say I, I’ll give you an example. If there’s a fair trade show, From which budget is that paid? Mostly from marketing. Marketing is saying, I want to go to AgTech, which is this November. So marketing has to pay the bill and then they are sending all the salespeople to, but if the salespeople are not convinced about the show, it will not be a successful show.

Who will be blamed about the Successsful show? First of all, marketing. Because marketing has picked this show and maybe they just picked the wrong, I will never say that ATech is wrong, but it’s just an example. So if they pick the wrong show at the wrong conference and sales have to go there, and then it is not successful, the blame is on the marketing.

Call to Action: Marketing Professionals, GO OUT and meet your customers!

What I encourage, I really want to encourage the marketing. Hey, go out there. Stay the one week effort all day. We’re the salespeople. Half the talk up to the knowledge where you can say, okay, now I’m, maybe I’m missing something. I’m transferring you to an expert, or take an expert risk. And the other example is clearly, Hey guys, go out to the customers.

Try to sell your product. If you are marketing and you want to market something and you have never tried, never ever tried to sell a membrane, a pipe, a bowel valve, or whatever, if you have never tried this, then you have never heard the hurdles you have to overcome. And then you can make the life easier for the seeds if you know the hurdles he has to overcome.

And then you know everything the lead will say against you. And then you can have a preparation in terms of marketing that it is easier to qualify the lead. But if you’re just sitting in your office and thinking all day long, is that in a row or is that an auto ultrafiltration membrane? I don’t know.

Then you will never get this level. And then you will ever have this clash.

Antoine Walter: There’s a lot to unpack in what you just said. I’m putting trade show in the fridge. We’ll come back to that because that is an interesting topic. There’s another one, which I’ll take later. There’s a last element which I’d like to, to grab your brain on.

On that microphone. I had guests like Greg Newbloom from Membrion, Megan Glover from 120 Water, and I have many more examples of very successful entrepreneurs, which were coming from totally outside of the industry. They had no clue about the industry and there’s this thing they didn’t know it was impossible, so they did it.

Wouldn’t it be the same for marketing, like you come from, I don’t know, Proctor and Gamble, you’ve spent your life doing B2C and you learn some tactics and you come into the industry in the water industry, and maybe with your experience of b2c, Proctor and Gamble, you can transfer that into B2B water industry.

Is that fully impossible?

Marketing expertise can come from outside, but needs to be complimented with water understanding

Björn Otto: I’m not saying it is impossible. For instance, one of my clients is an APC contractor since five years, seven years in the market, and they made. Couple of millions over this time, and I asked him, okay, so far there was no marketing at all. Why did you want to hire us? And he said clearly, Hey, I don’t want to run out of my luck.

Up to a certain point, he’s clearly saying, Hey, we need some support to keep that level, to increase that level and to ensure that we are not falling back. There’s never, ever a guarantee with or without marketing that you are successful or not successful. Both ways are possible, but sometimes it is just easier, especially if you have someone who can tell you from the strategic perspective.

Marketing is not PowerPoint!

And marketing is not PowerPoint. I think we are pretty clear on that. But marketing is also not just social media or immuno nurturing or whatever. Marketing is also strategic, especially if it comes to which direction are we going. Is that the right market? Is that the right product? For the right market?

Who’s the first contact? Who should talk to customers or potential customers for your new product before you launch that? It’s marketing. From my perspective, and that’s what’s missing in the industry. Mostly what happened is you developed something like in the eighties, you made a product a little bit better.

That’s the best example we we can find. Quite often you made the product better and then you jump into the market and say, Hey, I have a new product, but the market is not ready for you and it’s not waiting for you, so why not? Upfront really to clients and that’s clearly a job of marketing. They have to talk and to, to clients.

They have to find some potential leads first and then they hand over that. But the first contact if you want to go into a new application, should be marketing. They have to figure that out. And then everything works. Then you send the seal. Cause the seas, they should know all the techniques to really get the product from the shelf to the customer.

Why Marketing only focuses on 8% of its Duties

Antoine Walter: I like to grab your brain on the concept, which I’ve read from Louis Grenier and I know we discussed Louis Grenier together in the past, and I love Luis Grenier and you don’t share that opinions. So I’d be interested in having your opinion on that. Luk thinks that the marketing people nowadays focus on 8% of their job and that’s, this is the reason why they’re not successful.

And his reason for that is that they are three party in the marketing job. A bit like what you just explained, the Jack Nous, what’s going on, what’s the problem in the market finding out. Understanding the market, then the strategy, where should we be going, where should we not be going? And then the tactics, once you’ve decided that, where do we go?

And then inside the tactics, you have the famous four Ps, which you find in in management schools. So product, price, placement, promotion, and usually marketing spends a lot of time on promotion. So the job of marketing is promotion. So promotion is one of the four P, meaning 25% of the four P. So 25% of the tactics.

The tactics are one third of the entire game. So 25% of one third makes 8%. So that’s it. Rational to say, marketing spends far too long on that and not enough from the rest. Mm-hmm. Would you share that opinion?

Management is to blame for this imbalance!

Björn Otto: A hundred percent. But I’m always want to blame here the management, because the management has to take the marketing because they have to have the capabilities, and then you have to use the capabilities if you just throw them the next PowerPoint presentation for the next board meeting and say, Hey, Change it.

We need it. Any new style, then you shouldn’t wonder why they are just using 8% of the capacity. But if you really bring them on board, they should have the highest knowledge about our clients. And if you bring this knowledge on the table upfront, and then we have it, we have strategy, we have the management, we have all the decisions up to the tactics, up to promotion and communication.

But you have to start early. And most companies I met are using just the tactics. How can we be visible? But the strategy element, For yourself. The CEO was doing this with the cfo, F, or just the board is saying, cool, this is Li let’s jump into the LI game. Or this is the semiconductor industry in Germany.

There are a couple of in companies coming. Let’s jump into that game without really having a fundamental action plan and a strategy and an evaluation. Is that really possible for us? Do we have the manpower? Do we have the technology? Things like that. That’s all on marketing, don’t get me wrong. That’s marketing, but it is used to Salem.

And why is that? Again, you cannot send someone for finding out a process water treatment in the semiconductor industry if this person has no clue what the water industry, about the technologies, about all other technologies, and that is a missing point. We are using people from marketing, we just have a marketing brain, is these kind of, as you said, these kind of promotion brain.

They’re maybe good in promotion, they can write a good copy, they can create a good visual or whatever, but all the work upfront, which is much more important than that, is missing. And it is not used because most of the marketers, they don’t have this knowledge and that’s why it’s not used. So I want.

Really to see a shift, take your engineers and train them in marketing and keep them with their a water knowledge with their engineering hat. You told me once, two years ago, you told me a zebra and because I have an engineering hat and I have a marketing hat and I want to encourage the companies, use people.

If you can’t find them, it’s pretty hard. Believe me, if you can’t find them, train them. You have engineers. Train them to the point that they’re marketing. Same you should do, by the way, for sales, all the sales leaders, they should be the go-to person in terms of all sales techniques, so they should be trained on sales as well.

So we send our r and d all over the world that they get trained, but we don’t do it with, for instance, marketing. And that is a missing link here. But I fully agree with the study with 8%. I never heard about that.

Antoine Walter: So you agree with Louis Grenier, I’m happy because he’s French and I know that you have sometimes a hard time to agree with the French.

Björn Otto: I have only a hard time to agree with you sometimes!

The story of the Marketing Director with a PhD

Antoine Walter: What you said made me think of Saltworks. Ben Sparrow, the CEO of Saltworks, was my guest on year ago. And by the time this episode airs, there should be another one with him airing shortly before. And the reason why I connected to that is that the person in charge of marketing at Saltworks is a guy called Pierce Maguire.

And he has a PhD in what? In, uh, engineering. Okay. So he knows. The ins and outs of the technical part, and just as somehow we realized that he was more attracted to the marketing element of it. It’s the first time ever I’ve met a responsible for marketing, which has a PhD and I don’t have many other examples maybe outside of you, of an engineer in that marketing role.

Why that? Why in an industry? 80% of the people being an engineer. Why don’t we see more people in marketing?

This is why we should breed our own marketing Zebras!

Björn Otto: I think just today we have the example that someone said he had an engineering study and after that he decided, okay, I want to go into on the commercial side, first of all, you need to offer this to your people.

If you have a team of engineers, see it’s engineers and so on. Process engineers, why not going around and figuring out maybe there’s one or two person who are very active on social media or they are doing other things as well. Why not asking them, Hey, wouldn’t that be interesting for you if you would jump a little bit into that role to commercialize our product?

There are engineers who want clearly to sit on the table non-visible, and they want just to have process design for a plan somewhere, and they want to get this done. Food. And that’s good. And there are others, for instance, like me who don’t want to, who don’t want to be, to sit in the office all day long over these, you know, calculations and things like that.

For the process to get this done. I want to bring this to the people, especially if you, if you look into the sales department, sometimes you find some, some golden nuggets, which maybe wants to transfer, but offer that, train them, bring them to the position, and then they bring everything with, they have knowledge about market, they have knowledge about the technology.

More important, they have the knowledge about your customers. Come on. So train them, find a person, ask an open question. Is there someone who wants to jump into the marketing and tell them it’s not about a problem presentation, it’s about all the other things. And then why not? Today?

Marketing is never part of Top Management. Why so?

Antoine Walter: You’re a ceo Wow. Of your, of your own company, but you’re a ceo.

Yeah. Your last job before that you had the title of cmo. Did you Correct. Were you part of the board as the cmo? Now, do you know any example within the industry of a cmo, which I mean, would it be a standard that the CMO is part of the board? So c. Chief marketing

Björn Otto: officer in our industry. I don’t know really, but I read an example from Infineon, for instance.

Clearly there’s a CMO and clearly he’s covering all the a hundred percent you’re saying? Not alone. He has a big team, but he’s clearly on the board if it comes to the, you know, crucial decisions. He’s part of that because everybody wants to gather his knowledge because he knows the customers. He is creating the strategy, he’s creating the go-to-market strategy, and then he’s trickles down to the team.

Antoine Walter: My question is really, if you look at the typical extremely successful startups, usually you have the founder, maybe the founding team, one of them. It’s gonna be the chief growth officer or whatever trendy name, which when you think of it, is the chief marketing officer. And they will always have marketing.

Like one of the pillars, sometimes even before the product. You have some people who market the idea and the challenge and their prototype long before having a product. So it is integral to that management team In the water industry, often the marketing leader will report maybe with the dotted lamb to the ceo, but he’s not part of the management team.

Or he will report to the sales director. Exactly. And then there’s a clear imbalance between sales and marketing. Does that mean that we have it structurally wrong?

Empower your marketing people!

Björn Otto: Maybe not wrong, but maybe we should open to test this out, whether the works or not. If you have a strong marketing guy who does have the knowledge, bring them in the leadership team to gather the knowledge and to develop something.

But again, you have to have the right people. If you just have someone who’s just, you know, the one of the four piece, that doesn’t make any sense. You need to have a strong person. You need to have a strong person who knows exactly as I said. Market technology and customers if you have one of these, and to Yes.

Also these strategic elements. The background of marketing, which is not PowerPoint. I can’t repeat myself as often as possible. If you have this, bring them in the leadership, ask them, put them together, keep them at least on the same level as a sales director. As a sales directors, quite often in our industry, use on that level, but the marketing, not because of lack of competence for marketing an issue.

You’d been the marketing, not the management. Well, Both. First of all, as management, you have to figure out, you have to install in this position someone who has the capability. And if you have someone who has not all the capabilities, train them other way around. If you want to be in that position as an engineer, hey, jump up, increase yourself, raise your hand, and try to go into position.

Water Marketers, Pro Tip: Invest in Yourself

This position, they are both ends, right? But bring the capabilities. One of the questions you, you always have, if you go to, let’s say, an interview for corporate or for one of the questions the applicant mostly have is, what kind of training do I get? How often do you train me Is any kind of training program?

I try you, you said I’m ceo, I, I will never use this kind of title because I’m a very small company and CEO means for me something different. But let’s. Management director, at least from a legal perspective. And we want to hire people. And if I get the same question, I always ask back how many hours you spent yourself in training yourself, reading books, taking courses on your own pocket?

What is the most common answer? Zero. I know you. You know me. So I spend hundreds of hours on books, on courses, on videos to become better. And these are the persons you have to reach out. These are the persons you have to look for and then bring them to the. And then you will have a game change in your company.

Starting from the Customer: the Inspiration from Zappos

Antoine Walter: You present that element of the training. You are known, at least to me, to be a very black and white person. So I will ask you a very difficult exercise, which is to have definite answers to broad open questions. I dunno if you read that book. It’s a book from Tony Hsieh, he was the founder of Zappos. No.

And his book is called Delivering Happiness. Mm-hmm. And he explains the process he put in place at at Zappos, and the process was, regardless of the job you’re gonna take, and it might be the most senior management roles, you would have to start by two weeks at least in customer relationship. Mm-hmm. Like taking the calls of the customers, like really in the, in the call center.

Yeah. So to him, that was the single best place to understand what Zappos was about. You mentioned that a new marketing person would have to understand the product, so I guess. Being hands-on, on the product. You mentioned your, your activity, carbon experience. You also mentioned that they would have to jump on the call and sales visits with sales guys to meet the customer.

Those are two things, the customer and the product. If you have a single one, what’s the single most important

Björn Otto: one? Customer. Customer. Clearly. Clearly you have to understand what a customer really wants as a marketer. You don’t have to understand the technology in that depth. S e r and D person, that’s not necessary.

But he should be able to go into a room with a client and you should be able to pitch what your company is doing. If you are not able to do so, you’re on the wrong position or I blame the management. You haven’t trained your marketing enough. It’s on both end. I know clearly that there are many marketers out there in our water industry who doesn’t like what I’m saying.

I get a lot of feedback, positive feedback if I say things like this from management, from sales, but marketing feels a little bit in the defense some. Are forced to reach out to me to figure out what kind of service I’m offering. And directly after a minute, if I realize that, I mean they will not see the say this directly in the way that they were forced to reach out to me.

But I realize that, that they are somehow forced. Someone said, Hey, this is a cougar. Reach out to him. Figure out, there will never be any business, any relationship, because they don’t want to be in the position. They feel really, damn, there’s someone saying something against my position. Maybe he’s right, maybe he’s wrong.

But all others around me are saying he’s right. So that puts me a little bit in the spotlight and a little bit into the dark light. And they don’t want to be that, and it’s not my intention to do so, but I really want to encourage both. Step out, bring the knowledge risk, step out from the 8%, go to the level that you can teach a board about strategic decisions on application, on market, on geographic, whatever it is.

And don’t focus just on, you know, social media, Facebook or whatever.

What is the #1 Customer you shall connect with?

Antoine Walter: I’m coming back to this story of the customer to connect to the customer. The water industry is a difficult beast because is it, I fear. So it’s, you have this, this food chain. If you are the product supplier, you sell to an integrator. If you’re an integrator, you sell to an oem, the ems, to nepc.

The EPC to a general contractor. The general contractor under the watch of a consultant, maybe to the end customer. Let’s say you are an OEM or integrator. You, you sit in that middle, low part of the food chain and you want to understand your customer. Who are you visiting? Both. So what do you mean by

Björn Otto: both?

If you are in the middle of the food chain, you need to understand, let’s say if you sell to an apc, You need to understand what the EPC is doing. You need to understand what is this EPC looking for, that they will consider my attack into the next project. But also you need to understand if the EPC goes, for instance, B A S F or Tesla or whoever is the end customer, you need to understand what is the process over there?

What are they treating? Are they treating process water? Is it groundwater to process water? Is it wastewater and they want to reuse it? What is that? You need to have, bring this knowledge with? That’s what I’m saying. You need to understand the market client. Yes. If the EPC is your client, if you are always going to EPC or EP company with your tech, you need to.

Understand how you can reach that. What are the triggers that he will consider my technology for the next project? You need to have an overhaul understanding from the market. The journey doesn’t end if you know that your product is somewhere installed on a wastewater treatment plan. Somewhere at Novartis in Switzerland, you should at least know that maybe there is a market for your product, but you haven’t considered.

Do you understand how and where your product is used?

Maybe there is a market for the chemical industry where you fit. Maybe you go in a vertical way, and that’s why I’m saying you have to understand, sure, how you can reach by marketing activities to your client if it is C E P C or whoever it is. But you need to understand the entire process. You need to understand everything up to the end customer.

What is he doing with that? How long does it last? How often do you have to exchange that? Because it also is interesting if you wanna have a service business, things like that, even then you can have a kind of marketing strategy to nurture them or whatever, right? That is the point. So you need to.

Holistic. I don’t like the word holistic, but in principle it is a kind of holistic approach to see the entire market, the water industry. Complete industry and not only focus on, okay, what is my customer doing? Okay, I’m giving them the product and then I’m out. So forget that that doesn’t work, then you are not that person we described.

Then you’re back to the 8%, maybe to 25%, but you’re not to the other

How to build your own market studies

Antoine Walter: elements. Doesn’t that sound like a 20 century approach? I mean, nowadays you can just buy a market study.

Björn Otto: The best market study you can have is grab your phone, take the next flight, go to the customer and talk to them. Go to a fair trade show where your customers are and just talk to them.

Do a round trip, go to a conference where customers from you are, and ask them directly what is it, what you want to figure out, what is the trend for the market? And then you have realistic numbers and maybe then you can go to company, which will sell you kind of these market reports. Be very careful with that to get a complete picture.

But if you just go out and take the cheapest market report on, I don’t know, take an example for mbr, you will never, ever get the information which are real. And true to set up a strategy that doesn’t make any sense, go out and ask your clients, and that is, again, that is marketing job. If you saying, well, that could be an interesting application, maybe we should go there.

Send your marketing team out there to figure that out. And if you just put 5,000 on the table to get a market study to figure out whether you should go or not, that is the wrong decision. Put the 5,000 somewhere else. Put it in all the flight and hotel expenses that your market team can go there to these places and let them torque.

That is much more effective than just buy a report.

Is there a risk to overcrowd your customers?

Antoine Walter: If I don’t take the other angle, let’s say it’s a water company who goes by the book you just described, which sounds very clever, to really go and meet the customers and understand where they leave, what’s their daily struggles, how you can help and everything.

So marketing goes out and meet the customers. I hope sales goes. And meets the customer. Maybe there’s global business development or local business development and they go out and they meet the customers. Maybe you have product managers and they go out and they meet the customers. By the way, we’re recording that in Istanbul, which you might be hearing right now.

That makes a lot of different stakeholders who go out and meet the customers. Isn’t there a point in time where it’s too much interactions of too many different people within the same company? Definitely.

Björn Otto: Let’s say what you described is, for instance, an approach you have at gf. I know that because you, we talked about this, but let’s say all small and medium size, they don’t have this marketing team which goes out.

They don’t have this business development team, which can target, they don’t have the product management team. Sometimes they have sales, which are more process engineers as sales. So I think we are talking more about these companies. If you have all of these together, If you have the people and the team on board who can go out with different hats, then you just have to define the order and what is the purpose, what do they have to find out?

Then you can send, for instance, marketing first to gather the first information. If that is interesting, and you get the right signal, send out the BD team and then you can send out, there’s really interest. Maybe you can send out the product team or associate to turn that, to gather the first information.

You should send out the marketing team that took me the first point of

What’s the best channel to connect with your market?

Antoine Walter: contact. Now you’ve listed many different channels, so you could go to a trade show, you can join a sales call, you can go to conferences, you can go visit sites. I mean, I’m not repeating all the ones you gave us. I’m back with my black and white question.

If you have to pick one, or actually if you have to start with one because that’s where people would have something very actionable at the end of that conversation. Where should

Björn Otto: they start? If you are a very young company, especially startup, and you don’t have any context at all, I would clearly go to conferences.

I would go to conferences and I would use the time, especially between the speeches, the keynotes, and I would try to talk as many as people as possible. I did this years ago. I went to a food conference. I had no clue about what they had topics on stage. I never heard about. There was, you know, a cake factory, a beverage company, a chocolate factory, and they talked about production things.

I never heard about that, and you know, it was, it was not my topic. But what I did is I tried to talk as many as people in the breaks about a topic I’m interested in. How do you see this? How do you see the market? How is the development? What would you do if, what is your biggest pain? Things like that. And they are open to talk to you.

I mean, it’s a, it is a talk during a coffee and that’s where you gather the first information, whether that is the right direction. And then you can collect couple of emails or phone numbers, and then you can have a second step. Maybe you have a deeper conversation. Let’s say if you really start from zero, that would be my first sec.

More mature water companies: dig your CRM!

If you’re a little bit more advanced and if you have a CRM system, hopefully in place, then you have a list. I would pick the telephone list. I would start from the top to the, to to the bottom, and the high potentials. I would go and visit clearly.

Antoine Walter: So you would start. By visiting the

Björn Otto: best customers? Not the best.

I am the high potentials in terms of which can give me the highest value of information I’m looking for. It doesn’t need to be my best customer. Maybe it’s a very small customer for me, but he has a vertical for something different, which I might be interesting. And then I go to him, maybe it’s a small customer for me, but maybe it can be a big one or he has the information I’m just looking for.

So

Antoine Walter: number one was conference

Björn Otto: number two. If you, if you have nothing, if you really start from zero, clearly I would go to conference, but not a conference above water. I would go to conference where my clients are. This food conference was, was interesting. As I said, I was sitting there. I couldn’t follow the, the keynotes because it was absolutely not, not my topic, but I tried to get the people.

During the break, and then we had the conversation and then we followed up during dinner and the day after. And then I called them and then I got the information I wanted to

Antoine Walter: have. So if you start from scratch, you go to a conference from one of your potential verticals, maybe food and beverage, maybe, whatever.

Yeah. So not to a Global Water Summit or a Blue Tech forum.

Björn Otto: Now they, they are the same people, uh, as me. So that doesn’t make any

Antoine Walter: sense. Okay. And so if you are more advanced, like you’re taking over a position in a company which exists and which has a proven database, you start with a CRM and you take the most promising leads.

What’s the role of Trade Shows in the water marketing ecosystem?

Yeah. Okay. I cannot just, just not notice that you didn’t mention trade show. And I do know because we had that conversation in front of camera well ago, I’m not a big believer in trade shows. And you do think that they are still a very, very actual thing, which brings a lot of value. So what is the role and position of trade show within that ecosystem?

For the water industry?

Björn Otto: Yes. It is still a place where people come together and can talk. About projects, about technology, about news of the industry. It is still a place coming together. What we will see in future, there are, there are two aspects here I want to mention. What we will see in future is we will have less trade shows.

Clearly. All the small ones, which are not so lucrative, especially after Covid, they will disappear. But the big ones left. Tech afa, tech Effa, these are really the big ones. They will stay, they will stay and they will stay important. We need a place to talk, even if it is on supplier to supplier level, doesn’t mean necessary all, all the time that we have a talk to a lead or to a client, but even our existing clients are running around there and we can have another talk about how’s it going?

If you can hear, really have. A place where you can meet all your clients, where you can meet suppliers, where you can meet partners, and that is still important. We are humans. We want to look into the other’s eyes, and the camera is good up to a certain level, but at a certain point we need to meet and we need to have coffee together because that helps so much the relationship.

It is still business between humans. This is H2H, humans to humans. Even if you are b2b, b2c, or whatever, however you want to call that we are talking to humans. That is the one

Do you really need to have a booth?

Antoine Walter: aspect. But none of the elements you mentioned. Command for having a booth, you can meet your customers by being asking the trade show.

And

Björn Otto: what I said, the was the first element. Okay? The second is, and that will change dramatically, or let’s say you have to change. If you are a company and you want to present your technology, you have to think in a different way to use a fair trade show, as in the past, in the past was you booked some space, you had two walls, one machine on your, on your, on your booth.

Five sets, people, uh, sitting in the back playing on their mobile phones. So that is the normal case. I’m over picturing this, you see in

Antoine Walter: the past, is it still

Björn Otto: the case? It is still the case. I recently, I’ve been to do to my last air trade, and even though I saw that what you have to do today, I mean, we are living in a digital world.

Everything is digital. Even our industry, even the b2b. So give them a reason to meet. I’m always saying to my clients, look, it’s the same as you go into the bar and you want to meet the other sex. Whether it’s a male or female, it doesn’t murder, so you need to be attractive enough that they recognize you, that you are there.

It’s the same if you go to F Show. If you go there and you have a boost and you want to present your technology and sure that the people know that you are there, give them a. Two, stop by and having a clear message this one should take with, and then as final point, create content, content, content out of that.

You have one week. That is the longest, I think, per show we have, ASFA is really, one week is pretty long. You have the team over there, create content, have meetings, have meetings with your clients, suppliers, put videographers on the booth, create events out of that. This is what you have to do if you just go there and have your machines and five salespeople, you will not be successful anymore in the next years because this is how we did it in the past.

But the time has changed first. I don’t

The single mistake Water Companies do on Tradeshows

Antoine Walter: like that idea because that means much more competition for me. No, I’m joking. It sounds, sounds really like, like, like the good way to, to address it. I’m just wondering again, I’m sorry, I’m pushing you only with black and white. What is this one single mistake you see companies doing again and again on trade shows, which really, which you find horrible like it’s.

That thing, which makes you sick. If I can

Björn Otto: only pick one, that’s, that’s a hard one. What makes me really sick is if I see people on the booze working, watching the mobile phone are distracted by other things and not taking care about the people who are running around. That makes me, if I see that I want to go on the booze, I want to shake this person, someone spent thousands of euros for this booze to bring the technology to here, to bring you here, and you are sitting over there and you are playing on your mobile, what sense does this make?

Nonsense. So that is, for me, the biggest thing I see quite too often. All others are, let’s say that you are just boring. You don’t tell the people that you are there, you, you’re not attractive enough. Back to my bar example at EF ot, they’re coming thousands of people every day and you have competition with all the other boosters.

How many boosts and series. Talks you can have over this one day in these eight hours. I dunno, pick a number. 10, 15, whatever that is. So that means there are 15 talks. I can have two, I dunno, 3000 exhibitors. How do you ensure that you are on my list? And most people don’t think about that. They just say, Hey, we go to Yfa and the people will stop by, but this will never happen.

Give me a reason because there are others I can stop by and maybe they give me a reason and then I go there. That is the other mistake I

Be Different: the Trade Show best practice to emulate

Antoine Walter: quite often see. That was the negative side. Let’s look at the positive side. You’ve been at most of the big trade shows. You recently went to smaller ones. Mm-hmm. Out of the water industry, can you pick three very good practices that people could steal and replicate straightaway in a very short fashion?

Like that one is great. That one is great. That one is great for trade shows. Yeah. Things you’ve seen where you. That is really a good one. Um, doesn’t that silence already say a lot about the lack of

Björn Otto: good practices? What attracts me most is really if your booth is in a different design and your behavior as people on the booth is different.

To all the boring other ones. So that is the first thing. Again, they are, I think, 3000 exhibits, 3000 boosters above water, or I fat, please don’t name me on. On the number from the magnitude. Yeah, it can’t be wrong. So you have to ensure that you stand out. I left my bar example. If someone comes into a bar, you have to ensure that you get recognized if that is your target group.

And it’s the same with a boost. You have to ensure if someone comes to the show, they cannot. Whatever you do, they cannot ignore you. You can do this with funny things. I had to talk once with a professional Triad Light, and he said one of his sponsors was a machine company and he booked him to be on the Fair Trade Show, and then he took his bike was a 8,000 eurobike, and he had just this bike and the bus, and sometimes he was driving with his bike on the floor.

And everybody, I mean, we are engineers. In the end, I’m always saying we are stupid engineers because I can say that I’m an engineer. We want to see things like that bring things. I have seen the DeLorean, I have seen a very old motorbike from the forties. Well, one of my projects, I had the, the story of the founder, so I said the first picture of the, of the founder was he was sitting on a motorbike in the thirties and he went to the first customer, let’s take this bike and put it because we are engineers.

We want to see, we want to talk, and then we have a story to talk about. So

Antoine Walter: a a pattern interruption Yeah. That you, you break Yeah, a bit. The walls of Booth and. It’s something which makes you stop and look at the booth. Yeah. But then you need to have the messaging. Right. Exactly. How do you convey a message in such a crowded environment?

It makes me think sometimes, you know of Times Square in New York, there are so many ads everywhere. Why should you focus on one when there

Björn Otto: are thousand? You know? You know what I tell you? A secret, for instance, EFA is every second year. The Aquatech is every second year. So that means after the last, you have two years time to prepare your clients.

To tell your clients that you are again there and give them a reason to come. So that doesn’t mean that you have to have this message only during the one week at the Yfa Munich. You can have this message in different ways. And then we are back a little bit to promotion, how you can promote this and if they see all the time, similar message and give me a reason to come.

And then I’m coming to the show. And then I, as you said, you break the pattern because something is different. And then I’m watching and you’re telling me the story which you tease at me upfront over the last two months. And I’m curious about to hear that that is one thing that is how you it because.

You don’t have to concentrate just on the couple of days how long the trade show is. You can’t prepare that. And then also there’s an element after the show. Don’t forget that the show doesn’t end, that someone stopped at your booth and said, Hey, what a good technology. Tell me about that. It doesn’t stop at that point.

It goes further. And this you have also to consider as

Why you shall maybe not focus on Blue Oceans

Antoine Walter: marketer. So before we close that deep dive, I want to take you to a last field, which is maybe a bit more philosophic. There is this theory of you should go in terms of strategy to a blue ocean. Mm-hmm. Which is opposed to a red ocean. The beauty of a blue ocean is that you have less competition and you have a broad perspective and a great market, which you can tap into.

The downside of that approach, if you’re in the water industry is that as Paul O’Callaghan shared on that microphone a while ago, it takes very long for a new tech, a new solution to take off in that market. We are speaking of. Decades. So if you’re in a blue ocean and creating a new category, open a new section of the market, you are facing an ocean that’s fully flat.

There’s no wave, there’s no wind. So it might be a blue ocean, but you are alone and it’s not sure you can move. On the other hand, the red ocean has this drawback of ships everywhere and a lot of competition, but you’re absolutely sure that there is a market and if you deliver better than the others, because you have the right marketing people in place and they understand the ins and outs of the market, they understand the customer and your product is legend and you know how to nail your go to market route, then maybe that is also a competitive advantage.

And you are building kind of a blue ocean category within the red ocean. Absolutely. Aren’t you concerned when some of the young companies you’re dealing with say, look, we don’t have competition, we. Very new. We open a new category. Don’t you want them like beware The blue ocean can be dangerous. Who am

Björn Otto: I to want someone, if they define the strategy for themself, if they ask me about my opinion, then clearly, but let’s say up to the point that I’m jumping in and helping them, they are sometime left.

They develop something and they have a clear, strong signal that they want to go that direction. Principle, I don’t judge that at the moment. What I do judge, is more for the existing customers who are since years in the red ocean and since years, having losses over losses. Over losses or not profit. Call it this way.

And then you should think about, okay, doesn’t it make sense to change the strategy? If a startup wants to jump into a new business, into a new category, let ’em try. Sometimes you bring things with and an opinion. And a behavior is we have never seen before, and that’s good for our industry. I would rather that judge that for existing clients.

And there are so many examples if I have a strategy session with my clients. And we go over that. I’m giving them some examples, and I think I published this once. For instance, in the activated carbon world, there are tons of activated carbon suppliers. Most of them, they are somewhere in Belgium, but we have also some German ones which try to fight against the big players, but mostly they fail.

Build your little Blue Ocean in the middle of a Red Ocean

But there’s also another company he’s in the, which is in the ka, it’s called Luca. Luca is a very small company, not, it’s actually not a small, it’s a company with a long lasting history and they have a special product. Made out of activated curb. For instance, they have developed years ago, they have developed a, an activated curb with a so face, much higher, much better kinetics, just better product as all the others had, and they opened in own category.

The point there was they had just a small market share, but therefore they had a very, very high price and a very high profit. That was the interesting fact, and I’m always taking this example with that. They opened some kind of new category also with other activated carbon products. They didn’t jump into the drinking water or they didn’t jump into.

Where all the Belgian companies are, they developed something really special activated carbon and forecloses for military applications or something like that. So they jumped really in the niche for sure. They know that the market share is pretty low, but the profit can be even higher. And if you check the numbers, because they all public companies, you can see the numbers.

I show that in my strategy session. You can see what you see, how this, how this is growing. And then you take a couple of examples from German companies, for instance, which are just in the activity carbon business. And then you see they’re struggling all the time and things like that. It’s also, I know membrane companies.

Who are really focused on a special application and they don’t want to fight against, you know, Kubota against Zvi against all the other well known. They, they keep in their niche for their niche application, but therefore they are clearly the market leader and they have a high price. And I really encourage the people which are struggling with numbers to look, maybe you shouldn’t fight all the time against all the big ones, established ones, because your product is just 5%, 10% different as the others.

But it’s not enough that you convince with that the client, because the other company is well known and maybe he has a better price, so it’s not enough. Maybe you should step back, have another look, and then you go into a direction they are not in, and then you can define your. Kind of blue ocean. Blue ocean red is always black and white.

It’s clearly black and white. There are many shades between, and that’s what I’m saying. Saying to to my customers, Hey, we have to fight a niche where you can jump in, where you don’t have to fight against the big ones. And that is interesting. It doesn’t need to be a completely blue ocean, but at least make it a little bit less sharky, you know, with less sharks.

Call it this way. And you have

Antoine Walter: like a playbook as to how to identify that section of the ocean. Yes. But that’s the secret. I guess people would’ve to contact you if they want to. To tap into that, to close that deep dive, I’d like you to come back to look at the full journey. You’ve given many different pieces of advice, but a journey starts somewhere.

There’s a beginning of the road. So from the people listening to that, from the different profiles they may have, what would. The single action they have to take. Let’s start with a first type of profile for the CSU decision makers, which are listening to this. What is the first action they, they can take if they want to up their game when it comes to marketing?

And don’t answer me. Call me. I can help you. No, no, no. Because that is a given. No, no, no. They should call you and and you will help them. But what is the simple action they can take?

The single action the C-Suite shall take to up their Water Marketing Game

Björn Otto: Take marketing serious. That is the most important thing. Take them really as a strategic partner. Bring them to the. Level and ensure that they have the knowledge to deliver everything from strategic tactic, market knowledge, all the thingss, train them to the level that you have someone who can talk to you if you are the ceo, if you are the bird, which can talk to you on eye level and give you clearly advice for the next thingss.

I encourage them to take that serious, to train the people in a way that they are able to deliver what you’re looking for. That you don’t have to do this your own, or to outsource that. That doesn’t make any sense. Have the capability insights

Antoine Walter: for the finance and investor, people listening to us, do they have to interact with marketing and what should they do or act on the marketing

Björn Otto: level, the finance people, the investors there?

Any advice I can give to them? Um, I don’t know.

The #1 action investors shall take to better the Marketing of the companies they invest in

Antoine Walter: Let me elaborate a bit on it. I’m thinking I’m an investor. Mm-hmm. And, uh, I’d like to put some stakes in a company, which just gave a good pitch. Yeah. My line of thought would be something like if they don’t understand marketing right, they probably. Misjudge whether the markets or the persona or the customer or the leads.

And if they don’t nail that, then how serious is the rest of whatever they

Björn Otto: propose? I think pretty important for an investor is that they understand really the go-to market strategy for the product and there should p people be involved in that who really have access to the clients. If it just come from the C F O and from the CEO and there as a team behind, talk to the team who develop this strategy because it’s never just a C level strategy.

They not working on this alone. And if you investor try to ensure that this strategy is correct and is. Based on fundamentals, on serious numbers that someone has really talked to the clients that what is in the pipeline is really serious. By the way, it could be, we could spend another hour on, on pipelines, but if you’re an investor look into that, does they have a team?

And I’m, again, I’m not about the promotion part, really about the strategic part that the marketing or at at least there is a person who’s taking care about the strategic aspect and it’s not the ceo. The CEO has to run a company and he has to have a vision and he has to have total different things and total different playbook.

That must be someone who’s having these kind of develop these kind of go-to-market strategies and they have to ensure that this market and application they want to go into are correct. That there is a market that they don’t fall into the trap and say after year, oh well we figured out, well there is not really a market, sorry for that.

The two actions to take as Sales Management to better your company’s Marketing

Antoine Walter: So for the C level, take marketing seriously, look at them at eye level, train them if needed, but take them as sparing partner. Yeah. For the investors, Ensure that the go-to market is based on the right assumptions and that there is a product market fit and that there is a market to look after. Last, personal.

The salespeople listening to that, what is the first action they should take? The

Björn Otto: salespeople? Uh, I think there are two actions. Let me give them two actions. Okay. Fir first is if marketing comes to you with new ideas, try it. Don’t be so defensive and say, haha, we did this doesn’t work. Maybe there’s a reason why the marketer or the marketing person or the marketing team wants to test something new.

And the other thing is, if you want to jump into that game, go to your boss and say, Hey, I want to go into that game. I want to train myself. I have this knowledge, I have the passion for that. It’s not about PowerPoint, it’s really about marketing the company and everyth. Belongs to that. If you have a passion for that, go to your boss, train yourself.

There’s so much stuff out there. Come with knowledge. Be a good exchange. Partner for the marketing team to grow with the marketing team. Take a leadership position, maybe marketing if possible. I want to encourage these salespeople to think about more from the marketing perspective, not only from the sales perspective.

Antoine Walter: You were speaking of passion. I think whenever you speak about Marketing, one can feel the passion that you have for that field. So it was a pleasure to have that renewed deep dive into marketing. Maybe you can come back in two years or maybe before that. I would love to, as we discuss about this pipeline topic, I think it would be a good additional hour.

I have to improvise some rapid for questions to close with because we already had my first list.

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Rapid fire questions:

Antoine Walter: What is the craziest. Water attack you’ve ever seen? Ooh,

Björn Otto: that is a tough question. The craziest water attack for osmosis. I left the concept of of forward osmosis and it’s one of the craziest things from the technical perspective to understand that. But also from the market and application perspective, there are a lot of question marks still in my head, and hopefully we will see this more, but I think there’s a potential, but it’s a tough one for ho osmosis.

What’s this? One of the craziest, I think there are many, but let’s say I have to pick one. So yeah. French car or German car. I can’t imagine that you are asking me this question. Uh, clearly a German

Antoine Walter: car. I wanted to give you a simple one. So you, you mentioned that you were reading a lot of books. Oh yeah.

And following a lot of courses. If you had to recommend one book and one content resource for water professionals,

Björn Otto: what would it be? From the book perspective, now I have to find the name. It’s APO from ClickFunnels. I read many books, Arnold Fran, for instance, the biography. It’s pretty amazing, especially if it comes to his 10 rules.

But this is not the book I I really want to put on the table here. One is really Russell Branson, which is the founder of ClickFunnels, and he wrote expert secret.com secrets and another one. And that was the first time that I read a book. I read it to the end, I closed the book and I was saying to myself, I got it.

This never happened with any other book, but there was really, I got it. And there was one of the books which encouraged me and, you know, helped me to form the company, to find myself, to find my voice in the industry. And I would really recommend cost, I think 10 euros on, on Amazon. Get this, I think you can also get this free in a, in a, in a, in a kind of PDF version.

But this was so helpful for me at least. Really that’s the

Antoine Walter: book recommendation. Now the content, content for what you, you mentioned how you, you’re following courses, uh, leave it really open whatever content source, which is really inspiring for very specifically the water industry. I mean,

Björn Otto: the one source I really follow is, is clearly linked.

And there I have a couple of people I follow and look

Antoine Walter: what they’re doing. Let’s be more specific than LinkedIn. Who are those persons?

Björn Otto: Now, you get me in trap a little bit. I mean, obviously I have to say one of the person is you and, and, and your podcast.

Antoine Walter: He, he had to, it’s, it’s mandatory. If you want to be on the podcast, you have to be very positive about me.

I, I’m this kind of

Björn Otto: person, you know, also the, the CEO of Acceptance, Al he’s doing a lot of things and which really made me think of couple of content pieces. But one person who really inspired me over the last six months was Patrick Decker, the CEO of Xylem. Not because of his move to take over a wfa really about his, what he’s posting in a such a humble way.

I will never forget the post last year during We Tech, he posted on his personal profile just some three lines of text. I will be next week, Tuesday from, I don’t know. Two to five at the booth at Tex, that’s asylum bus at beta. Come to me, say hello. Talk to me. I, I felt really that it was his intention that if you have an interest going to him to talk to him, to get his mind, get his few, even if you get just five minutes.

But he mean that in a humble and serious way. And I saw a couple of posts like this over the last time from him sometimes. Just recommending music. I mean, he’s the CEO of one of the biggest water companies we have, and he makes it on a really personal level. So if you really want to have, I don’t want to use the word role model even if I use it right now, but go over these two CEOs.

Take the piece maybe you want to have, and, and to find your voice. My favorite

part

Antoine Walter: of Patrick Decker. So obviously the one way sees that, hey, that awesome interview with, uh, with Ottowa on the Water podcast, za, you should listen to it. So I really love his posting since that, no, so I got

Björn Otto: the money now back, right, because I give you the

Antoine Walter: bridge, the joke, joke aside.

Uh, I, I share your recommendation. I’m really amazed by what he ISS posting. And I, I really like the fact that the CEO of now with the acquisition, the second largest water company, shares music recommendation and explaining why he likes that music. That makes

Björn Otto: a personal connection. Exactly. And that’s the point he’s the CEO of, but he comes.

To us call it this way. And he wants to talk to us, to you and me and to all other water professionals. And it looks like, and it feels like that he’s one of us. If he invites me, come over to talk to me. Actually, I was not at We Tech. Hopefully he will do this again on a show where he will be and I will be, so then I will definitely reach out and will see whether they mean that seriously.

But I’m a hundred percent sure that was a serious invitation. Much shorter. Aquatech or Effa. More and more AFA tech, more and more AFA Tech. I like the technologies and Aquatech is really technology driven. While iffa is really focused, really on installations, on process, on, on bigger things, on the, from the bigger scale.

I’ve fall in love with really the architect favorite movie top. I left Tok. Tok or the new Top Gun? Both, definitely one of, one of the movies in Germany. It’s called, uh, will Smiths. I don’t know the English title. Maybe you can help me out here. Oh, I know it

Antoine Walter: in French. I’m not sure it helps us because now we have it in Germany

Björn Otto: and in French.

But it is exactly how he was his son. He lived on the street and he growed up. It’s a, it is a, it is a real story. And he became a investment banker and he said one thing to his, his, I get some goosebumps if I think about that because I’m saying this to my boys as well, but if someone says to you, you can’t do it, he’s wrong.

You can do whatever you want. And he has proven that. And that’s really one of the concepts I tell my boys, whatever it. You can become everything.

Antoine Walter: And if your son says, I want to become a water entrepreneur, we say, no, don’t do that. Not that industry, don’t do that. Or would you encourage him?

Björn Otto: Well, if they want to be, you know, of offshore, if they want to be an an

Antoine Walter: entrepreneur, not an entrepreneur, a water

Björn Otto: entrepreneur, even if it is water entre for sure, I would encourage them.

You have. To consider one thing, and that’s normally one of the questions you are asking.

Antoine Walter: Let’s make it proper way. What is the thing you learned the hard

Björn Otto: way? Really the hardest way over the last two years for me was it is not hard to find clients and to find money. It is hard to find people who has the same passion and has the ambition to work with you for these clients, which gives you money.

Finding people in our industry with knowledge, the passion, and the strive to come to the next level for your clients. That is a hard way. I really learned, I was thinking other way around that is harder finding, finding customers, but it’s not, it’s totally the other, other way. And that is really, I’m struggling still today, so shout out if, if you, if you are interested, reach out to me.

Uh, we are always looking forward to, to hire new people. I was going to ask if

Antoine Walter: you were actively recruiting, but you Absolutely. Directly always. And I guess if someone listens up to the rapid fire question, you can guess that’s, they can. At least connect to what you’re sharing. Yeah. My closing question is very simple.

Will you have someone to recommend me that I have to invite on that

Björn Otto: microphone? I mean, last time I, I recommend you someone and you didn’t invite him, so I mean, clearly. I, I, there’s just one person I really want to have on your microphone. We came with, his name is Patrick Decker. So Patrick, if you hear this,

Antoine Walter: but I already had Patrick Dick on that

Björn Otto: microphone.

Yeah. But it was not really this interview, this kind of format. True. And I want really to have him on this format. Okay. I would really listen. So I do you the favor I take this name.

Antoine Walter: I, I have to say I agree with him, Patrick, so, well, thanks, Burd. It’s been a repeated pleasure to have you on that microphone.

I’m serious. We can have that update whenever you want. Again, it’s always good to discuss the depth of marketing with you. I feel like we’ve scratched the surface again, like every time we discuss marketing with you. But if people want to follow that, what’s the best place to, to get in contact with you?

Is it LinkedIn?

Björn Otto: Yeah. It is LinkedIn. The day you find everything from me, from from the company, reach out to me. Send me a message. Not only Hi, say hi and maybe a short message that will, that would help. Yeah, clearly.

Antoine Walter: Thanks a lot. Thank you.

Other Episodes:

FREDsense: Revolutionizing Water Quality Monitoring with Biosensor Innovation

By Antoine Walter | 7 May 2025

Swirltex: Revolutionizing Wastewater Treatment with Bubbly Innovation

By Antoine Walter | 30 April 2025

Blue Foot Membranes: The Next Evolution in Water Filtration

By Antoine Walter | 16 April 2025

Echo River Capital: Pioneering the Future of Water Innovation

By Antoine Walter | 3 April 2025

1001 Fontaines: Engineering Sustainable Water Access Through Social Entrepreneurship

By Antoine Walter | 22 March 2025

Amazon’s Water Footprint: Tech Giant’s Quest for Water Sustainability

By Antoine Walter | 19 March 2025

Turing: The AI Revolution Quenching the Water Industry’s Thirst for Innovation

By Antoine Walter | 26 February 2025

Altillion: Pioneering Digital Intelligence for Water Asset Management

By Antoine Walter | 6 February 2025

Flocean: Pioneering Ocean-Based Water Solutions

By Antoine Walter | 15 January 2025

Botanical Water Technologies: Harvesting Liquid Gold from Plants

By Antoine Walter | 4 December 2024

The post Could Neglecting 92% of Your Tasks be Costing You Money? Water Marketers Beware! appeared first on (don't) Waste Water.

Paul also runs the Water Entrepreneur, an incredibly good water podcast that is one of my personal favorites and which also turns out to be a family business as Paul will elaborate on later on in the conversation.

What we covered:

How leading the project that infamously popularized the term “toilet to tap” made Paul famous and what his job was in San Diego

How Paul led a research center that tested equipment, gave a brutally honest feedback and assessment and how he rapidly got praised for that

How becoming a consultant engineer, one of his first duties was to translate what utilities said so that his colleagues could understand it

How the water sector used to be extremely conservative and somewhat trapped in the 19th century and how things drastically changed over the last decade

How the startup founder is almost as important as the technology and the market the company aims for, why, and what to do now that you’re aware of that

How some inventors believe in their technology despite the fundamental laws of physics and how to overcome their harassing demands

Defining a set of rules to check and assess technology in the most effective manner and how despite all precautions taken to make it a science, there is still some subjectivity in it

How the more disruptive your technology is, the more people will want to compare it to things they know and understand to better assess the value you’re delivering

How you need to think of data collection from the onset when piloting and how there are a set of best practices that support your efforts in this endeavor

How expertise can be tricky: the more expertise someone has, the less likely that person is to look at something new because they think they already know everything

0⃣ Startups having zero experience in the water business, getting paid as a utility and having to figure out what to do with the money, how founders have to be prepared to be replaced when the company grows, being an open book, being smarter than everybody else, seeing the future… and much more!

… and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨  

Resources:

Send your warmest regards to Paul on LinkedIn  

Check out the Water Entrepreneur Podcast’s Website 

is on Linkedin

Antoine Walter on LinkedIn

Full Transcript:

These are computer-generated, so expect some typos

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Antoine Walter: Hi Paul. Welcome to the show.

Paul Gagliardo: Hi Antwan. Thanks for having me.

Antoine Walter: I have to thank you for having you because I’m really happy to have you today to explore a bit with you, your word, which led you at some point to become a fellow podcaster. But that’s a story which I like to take for the end because before that I like to understand your path and to understand you a bit better.

And that starts with my tradition on that microphone, which is to open with the postcard. So what can you tell me about Anita, which I would ignore by now?

Paul Gagliardo: So Encinas is a little coastal town just north of San Diego. Probably our biggest claim to fame is there’s a surf beach called Swamis. and it was memorialized in a Beach Boy song. I forget the name of the song right now, but it talks about all the surf spots all the way from Northern California down to San Diego. And Encinitas is mentioned, and I live about half a kilometer from Swami.

 So that’s considered my home beach even though I don’t surf. But I sit up the top, it is about a hundred foot cliff overlooks the beach and you sit up top on the bench and you watch all the surfers and you talk about the surf and you know, it’s very nice.

Antoine Walter: I was gonna ask you if you’re surfing, you answered the question before, cause I had Ari Goldfarb on that microphone, the CEO and founder of Kando, and he’s a surfer, so I thought maybe that’s a link you have to him.

Paul Gagliardo: I’m a runner, so I run, have, run every day for the past 42 years. I think my legs are a little bit wearing out now, but yeah, I grew up in New York, so in New York there’s not a lot of swimmers and there’s not a lot of surfing. I, I do out to San Diego in 1978 and never looked back, but I still have kept my New Yorker roots.

I.

Antoine Walter: So talking of San Diego, that’s where your professional career in the water industry starts, and that’s also the first of the three legs in your journey, if I can picture it that way. You’ve been with a utility, you’ve been with a big water company, and now you are really active in the startup ecosystem. I read a lot of stuff about what you did in San Diego, and there’s so much I didn’t know which one to pick, so I won’t do it myself. I will let you pick what is the most prominent, or if there are more than one of your story with San Diego.

Paul Gagliardo: So I’d have to say what really I’ll say made me famous was back in the mid nineties, early nineties, San Diego was working on a project to make sewage into drinking water.  and back at that point in time, I mean, now there are a few projects around the world that have been completed, but at that point in time that was not a very popular thing to even think about.

So my job though, was as the researcher I ran a research center that tested all the equipment to document that you could safely treat wastewater and make it into sewage. There was a I think it was one of the newspapers coined the term toilet to tap.

So,

Antoine Walter: infamous one,

Paul Gagliardo: Very famous and it’s stuck.

And that from a PR perspective, that was a little bit hard to overcome. But anyway.

So what we did a lot of research work back then and testing different kinds of equipment treatment equipment, monitoring equipment. And I felt because we were spending public money, cuz I worked for a city that the data should be open source.

And so for about five or six years, I would say every other month I gave A presentation at some conference talking about the data that we literally had just collected maybe a month before. So we were publishing data on a regular basis much more frequently than a normal engineering company would do, or anybody doing a long-term study.

You know, we were giving people literally month to month update, Hey, this worked, this didn’t work. And I got to be an entertaining speaker, let’s put it that way. And so that I built that reputation over those five or six years. You know, not only as a water person or persona but in the technology world, people knew that I was testing equipment.

They knew I had a research center, and so people would contact me and say, Hey, can you test this piece of equipment from me? And I said, sure. You know, and, and so we had about, Four different locations. We could test wastewater, seawater, brackish water. We had all different things we could test. And so we would bring equipment in.

I was actually able to generate I guess I can say it now since I don’t work for them anymore, but profit for the city. So we would charge people to test their equipment and I would start getting checks in and I’d go to the auditor and say, Hey, I got this check for, you know, a hundred thousand dollars.

And they’re like, it doesn’t go that we pay money, we don’t get money. It’s like, well, what am I supposed to do with it? So we had to come up with a whole different accounting scheme to be able to move the money. To be honest, I don’t even know where it went. But so yeah, we were able to generate a kind of a little cottage industry because of the work we were doing, the fact that we were publishing a lot and the fact that people would continuously.

Reach out to us because they knew I was an honest broker that if something worked, I would say, yes, it worked. If something didn’t work, say, look, this don’t work. I made some friends, I made some enemies. But, that was fine. It kinda all worked out the end.

So that was, really, I mean, I did other things. I did two big watershed plans. One was a cross-border watershed plan between Mexico and the United States and the Tijuana River Valley. So the, you know, that was quite an interesting project. I was able to work on a lot of different things, but the research work really led me to where I am today because that essentially primed me for the job at American Water as innovation director.

And now in the role I have consulting with other startups,

Antoine Walter: I’d like to understand that part as well. But what you’re explaining here makes me think of what I discussed with Paul O’Callaghan on that microphone when we discussed the dynamics of water innovation. And he was explaining that you need to find the right individuals within a utility and that those are often the ones speaking at conferences.

So I guess you are that exact description. I mean, you’re this one person of these utility people, which. Are the ones will help you to develop the tech and to get it to market if it’s not snake oil assuming it’s legend. So I guess his definition was right. You can track your kind of profiles in, in conferences, but I’d like to dive a bit deeper in that in a minute.

But I’d like to understand how you transition from a utility. So public works to the devil, which is the private.

Paul Gagliardo: so I had worked for the city for 25 years. It felt it was time to do something different. So I’m actually gonna add a fourth leg to the stool. So I went to work for a a multinational engineering company. So that was my first stop after the city. being on the other side of the coin from the city project manager trying to, sell, Our services to the same people that I was once one of.

And so that was kind of the next step. And it was interesting. The first project I worked on was a there was perchlorate contamination in the Inland Empire in the groundwater just east of la. And Lockheed Martin was responsible for cleaning it up. And there was about maybe seven or eight cities that they were talking to.

they brought me on through the consulting company because I could translate for Lockheed Martin what it was that the city, utility people were saying and what they would accept. So we’d go into a meeting, we’d sit in a meeting for two hours. We’d walk out to the parking lot.

I could still visualize this. And the Lockheed Martin guy would say to me, did they say? What do they want? I said, look, this is what they want. And they’re like, really? It’s like, yeah, you offer ’em this, you’re, they’ll be happy. And so that was my role. I was a translator. So I was able to use my bureaucratic knowledge and provide insight to the engineering side of the house so that they could kind of craft the, offering that they would provide these utilities to, you know, make them whole, fix their problem.

Antoine Walter: if it needs a translator, does that really mean that those two words speak different language?

Paul Gagliardo: yes. Oh, absolutely. So that was something I was thinking about when I looked at your questions. It’s all about perspective. and I’ll use this example, say you have arsenic and groundwater, a utility, a project manager at the utility, their role is. , I need to build a system that will meet the regulatory requirements under budget in a certain amount of time.

That’s it. On the engineering side, they have to convince the utility to hire them to be able, because they know what they’re doing. But their ultimate goal, they sell hours. They need to put their people to work because they need to get a 75% utilization rate of all their employees. And so they need to sell hours, but they’ve also gotta convince the utility that they know what to do.

They’ve done it before they can do it again. And then you look at the startup side. Say the startup has a new technology that maybe the engineering company doesn’t really know about, maybe the utility doesn’t know about. So the startup then has to convince both the utility and the engineer to take a risk on their technology that it’s going to provide.

better value at minimal or no risk, either reputational risk to the engineer or operational risk to the utility. So everybody’s perspective on the same issue is different. I think that’s really important to understand and that’s how one of the ways I help startups is to help them understand the voice of the customer.

this is what the utilities goal is. If you pitch it this way they won’t care. You know, you have to pitch it in this manner, then it will talk to them, and you at least you have a chance. So it’s all about perspective,

Antoine Walter: Transitioning to those perspective, into this word of startups. You’ve called your podcast a water entrepreneur, which is the same time broad and very specific. I’ve had

Paul Gagliardo: on

Antoine Walter: of them on that microphone, and I had a hard time to define like a typical portrait. Would you have a definition of this water entre?

Paul Gagliardo: So when I started it was all about founders. And their, I call it their origin story. Why did you decide to start a new company? Why did you pick the water business? How did you pick the technology? all those kinds of things. And as it began to go through those stories there, they were still very compelling, but it became clear to me that the word entrepreneur could be different things.

And so I started talking to some regulatory people and you know, because they have. A same, similar kind of role because they have to set the rules of the game for everybody to follow. And so they have to be a aware of new technologies as every anybody else. I would start talking to utility people because as you talked about, I called them innovation champions, the people that would try new things.

And so I viewed them as entrepreneurs. So yes, in the beginning it was quite a narrow definition. It has since broadened out. I’ve talked to people who are focused on mentoring engineers leading into the water business. I’ve talked to executive recruiters about how that works, but you know, so everything tangential.

 I’m gonna be talking to a branding company, you know, talk about how you brand a water company, but any kind of company. it’s all about how you get noticed and how you can go from nothing and nobody, to a multi-billion dollar company that every startup wants to be, and every venture capitalist wants to invest in.

Antoine Walter: So that’s a very interesting take because to my knowledge, there is no startup company in the water world, which ever became a unicorn. So nobody ever reached that billion. Do you think

You’ve met the ones which will eventually break that glass ceiling?

Paul Gagliardo: Probably not because you’ve got these big holding companies like Xylem or. You know, Suez or Viola back in the day, US filter. What typically will happen is, there’ll be some private equity money or venture capital money come in. The company will grow to, 20, 30, 40, 50 million revenue.

And then the VC will look to exit. And what’s the best way to exit one is to i p o, but most of the time you’re gonna sell to a holding company. That’s typically what happens. So you see these big conglomerates, and then at some point in time, just like us filter, they’ll begin to divest. You know, they’ll get to a big place and then the, it’ll be too unwieldy and then they’ll start selling off.

Hasn’t quite happened to Z yet, but a few more years, a few more acquisitions. And I think that they will get to that point where they either need to spin something off. Or divest in a certain position, maybe focus more on certain kinds of business. business model gets a little unwieldy, although I, think Xylem does a good job because they do let the individual companies kind of run themselves.

They don’t try to pull ’em into, yeah, they’re more decentralized instead of centralized. So I think that will help them in the long run. But I still think at some point in time you will see this divestiture in some way, shape, or form. So, yeah, I don’t see water companies becoming unicorns.

I, I haven’t seen the one big thing that will be so, disruptive, like, you know, a new reverse osmosis membrane that. only takes, a 10th of the energy that normal RO takes, and all of a sudden you can make drinking water from sea water, very easily and at low cost.

And it solves all the water problems, that’s something that a lot of people are trying to do. But you know, obviously haven’t seen it yet. So, there’s a couple of products that I would love to see come to market, but nobody’s cracked the nut yet.

Antoine Walter: I don’t want to take you to a full sidetrack, but when you see companies like 374 Water or NX Filtration, which have these kind of differentiated takes, which might become. Extremely big, or which might also burst, they’ve been hovering between these 500, 700 million mark, so not unicorn, but the closest we’ve been in a decade, probably in the water industry.

So disruption seems to still be a possibility, even though not very probable.

Paul Gagliardo: It certainly is, and one of the interesting things about the water business up until a few years ago, it was really mired in, the 19th century. It wasn’t, digitized. it was very conservative business. And in the last five or 10 years, things have changed quite a bit What’s interesting about it is that there’s a lot of room to innovate. And I’ll give you one example, and, I’m old enough to have remembered Watergate and the Watergate hearings and the United States were, the whole idea was to follow the money. So if you look at water utilities spend more capital money on fixing and replacing pipe than they spend on anything else.

hundreds of millions, billions of dollars a year. And 90 or 95% of the cost of replacing a pipe is digging up the street. So if you could, so, one, there’s a lot of money there. You know, you talk about unicorns. There’s a total accessible market’s huge. If you could find a way. to fix the pipes from the inside, send a little swimming drone into the pipe.

It swims around, it sees the leak, it stops it, squirts the, super glue into the hole, and it goes on its merry way. All of a sudden, you have a solution that it is avoiding or replacing huge amounts of cost utilities would otherwise have to spend. so there are opportunities. The other thing that comes up are, new like p ffa s now, you know, that’s the new big bogeyman as far as a contaminant goes.

So somebody who can come up with a very cost effective way of treating that particular chemical will make a lot of money. People have done that over the last few years in the lead service line replacement. Programs cause of Flint, Michigan. So now there are new rules about that. So now people have to do stuff.

You have these regulatory mandates, it generates a lot of value. So the next big thing that’s gonna come up from a contaminant perspective is going to be microplastics. So that’s my prediction for the next place that you will see a lot of innovation in, because people are beginning to be worried about that.

They’re seeing microplastics everywhere. Someone will determine that it’s hazardous or, you know, toxic. countries will start forming regulations. People will have to do things about it. People will generate monitoring systems and treatment systems or whatever it happens to be. And that’ll be the next, big area where lots of money will be spent.

but a lot of these things are driven by regulatory mandates.

Antoine Walter: Again I, I should ask Paula Royalty for every time I mention his work on the dynamics of what innovation, but that’s what he defines as this crisis-driven innovation, which goes twice faster than the value-driven one.

Paul Gagliardo: Yep.

Antoine Walter: You mentioned how to follow the money, and you’ve talked about venture as well, I’ve seen many opinions on that.

People complaining that the venture funds aren’t that interested in, in water. You see the number arising, because I think last year was that the record with 650 million invested by venture capital into the Waterfield, now there’s an outlier because maybe 20% of that amount is invested into source.

And source was also the biggest investment from VC in 2020. So if you remove source from the water sector, it already changes a bit, the picture. So one way to, to look at that is to say it’s growing. and what you see also with funds like Burnt Town and Ventures like Mazare coming with that VC card and saying, we can do something in that field.

The other way to look at it is to say the VC pool worldwide is so wide that when you do the maths, it’s zero point 14% of the venture capital money, which flows into water on which side of the health, empty or health food glass are you, how do you look at that?

Paul Gagliardo: gonna take a step back. When you look at the world of VCs, when they form themselves, they make a very clear decision about the niche that they’re in. , we’re gonna be early stage, we’re gonna be late stage, we’re gonna be growth stage. We wanna invest this much money, we wanna invest that much money.

We have this kind of timeframe horizon. So there’s about, I don’t know, six or eight different, criteria. So when I try to match up my VC friends with my startup friends I have to say, okay, where are you, startup in the grand scheme of things and which of the VC funds match up with what you’re interested in?

So right away you may have, the pool may go from a hundred to five that match up with a particular company that you’re looking at. And then maybe popularity contest isn’t the right way to say it, but I feel like the startup founder. Is almost as important as the technology and the market that they’re looking at.

So a VC could look at a, technology and say, yeah, that’s great. We love it, we love the market. We think there’s a lot of value there. Eh, we don’t really care for, the person who’s running the company and it’s over. It’s just over at that point in time. So to get back to your question though, I feel like the VCs have come a long way from expanding their time horizons for exits, which is good.

Expectation of return on investment has been tempered somewhat, so that’s good. There’s still a huge amount of money on the sidelines. And I have seen folks that have terrific products. and their expectation or their valuation is out of range from the VC’s valuation. So I think it’s the matchup between the startup or the water company itself and the VCs to what their expectations are.

So say you have a water company that is focused on machine learning and AI for whatever purpose, you know, are they gonna value themselves as a water company or as an IT company? And of course the startup is gonna think of themselves in a higher valuation perspective, whereas the VC’s not.

And so it’s really a matter of matching up the folks. I think you know, burnt Island is doing a really nice job with investing in. really good quality companies at reasonable valuations. And you look at an organization like Imagine H two O where they run a lot of companies through their accelerator and they really help them understand the entirety of the business because that’s one thing that when I talk to startups, most of them have zero experience in the water business.

And not that the water business is so complicated, but it has its quirks and if you don’t understand the quirks you can’t get outta your own way and they can’t get to where they want to get to. And so, what imagine H two O does is really informs the companies about what they need to know and to take it full circle.

that’s what I look at my podcast as doing in some way, shape, or form, is to have the founders tell their stories, explain what they knew or they didn’t know how they got to, where they got to, what mistakes they made what things they did right. And almost provide a virtual mentoring platform for people who were looking to get in the business.

Kind of expand on what imagine H two O does through their accelerator in a more conversational manner.

Antoine Walter: Talking of your podcasts in your inception episode, so the one where you describe what you aim to do, you are talking about your experience receiving startup pitches, and you also explain how you’ve got, I think I’m saying snake all, but you’re saying purpose, motion.

Paul Gagliardo: Motion machine. Yep.

Antoine Walter: So this type of of pitches, I had that discussion with Reinhard Hübner, on that microphone who explained how he got once a pitch from a company which was leveraging the pump cavitation to do some stuff, which was really beyond the laws of thermodynamics.

So what’s the worst you’ve ever encountered it?

Paul Gagliardo: So I’ll tell you that story and I’ll, I’ll I’ll tell you two stories. So one was very similar to that. This guy came to me and he had a kind of an air compressor based system, and he argued that he could take the air pressure on the exit side and use that to repressurize the air on the input side.

And it’s like, well, that doesn’t work that way. like you said it doesn’t meet the secondary thermodynamics. It’s impossible. It, that’s a perpetual motion machine. . And what was interesting about him, and I use the words that sometimes you have to tell people their baby’s ugly.

You know, their system just , can’t work. And that’s what I told this guy. He called my boss and my boss’s boss, and he is like, you know, why can’t you understand what’s going on? And it was almost, you know, kind of humorous that he just believed in his heart of hearts that he had invented something that could do something impossible.

And I’ll give you another example where this company came to me and said, we have kind of trained certain bacteria to do a certain kind of treatment. And we’ve encapsulated ’em, them in like, You know, think of Mad Max and Thunderdome, you know, so you’ve got this cage and the microbes are in the cage so they can’t get out.

The water flows over ’em and the microbes do this great treatment. I said, great. Well boy, that sounds really interesting. I said, why don’t you give us some of your product but also just give us the cage cuz we wanna see if it’s the cage that’s doing something rather than the bacteria. And we tested ’em, you know, kind of side by side.

And what we found was, the cage without the bacteria did a better job of treatment than the cage with the bacteria

Antoine Walter: So it’s kind of an M bbr, R

Paul Gagliardo: Yeah. So, you know, sometimes it takes a little work to figure out that things don’t make any sense. And other times it’s very obvious. When I was at American Water, because I had so many people, I had probably two or three people a day cold calling me about ideas. , I said, look, I’m gonna give you 15 minutes.

You gimme your pitch. I said, 90% of the people I talk to, I’ll never talk to you again. I just wanna make sure you understand that, it’s not that your idea is necessarily bad or good, it’s just it doesn’t, sing to me, I don’t see, the way forward. Whether it, I don’t think it’ll ever work or there’s no application, whatever it happens to be, you know, that was my way of kind of thinning out the crowd.

 We had a stage gate process and. I was kind of the first filter on that stage gate process. And there were some things I missed. I mean, as a judge and imagine H two O I would vote against things that became, winners and great sellers and it was like, oh, okay, I missed that one and I would love things that never went anywhere.

everybody has their perspective, right? And there’s things you think of that make sense, but I’ll get back to that. There are some founders that can sell ICE to Eskimos. They just can just sell anything, whether it makes sense or not. And unfortunately, those people tend to be the most successful.

And you know, whereas somebody may have a great product, and I, you know, there’s one guy I’m working with now, he’s got a terrific product, but he just can’t get out of his own way. He just. Can’t figure it out. And it’s too bad. And hopefully he will become successful at some point in time.

But it’s like I said, you need everything. You need the market, you need the product and the founder and then the team together. You need all those things to make it work,

Antoine Walter: so that’s the Martin Guilde where you have everything. Now we feel realistic. There’s a few of the people which have really everything. If you were skipping one of these dimensions because you could outsource it or figure out someone who can help you with that, which one is the least important?

Paul Gagliardo: So I would say the thing that is replaced the most when a funding partner comes in is literally the founder. and one of the things I talk about in the podcast is that, , as a company grows, the founder’s role has to change. they may be a technology person and they have to become a business person.

They have to become an HR person, they have to become a salesperson, and maybe they’re not so good at that. a lot of times the founders are very technical and once they get their investment, you will see the venture capital say, okay, we’re gonna move you to the side. You’re not the CEO O anymore, you’re the CTO O and we’re gonna put a business person in as the c e O.

And so that’s, I think, the thing that really is almost the easiest to replace. The second thing I would say is sometimes people have products that work, but they’re not focused on the right market. And so by having some help to pivot from one, either customer base, or one solution to another that really helps out making a company successful.

Or sometimes they’re trying to be all things to all people. They’re trying to do too many things and you gotta thin ’em down. It’s like, okay, focus on these two things, get your beach head, get your, foot on the sand and then go from there. So I think those are the two things.

The founders they’re fabulous, interesting people. A lot of times they have to move to the side before they think they have to. And then this other idea of pivoting from the standpoint of what market should I be focusing on, you know, municipal versus industrial, there’s a lot of either ORs that people can look at.

I think that those two things are. The biggest alterations that I see being made early stage, almost pre-revenue certainly pre profit in companies that allow them to kind of get through that valley of death, get through that point where, okay, we’re on some trajectory where we’re becoming profitable, we have a sustainable business model.

And we can start to think about a growth cycle,

Antoine Walter: these are some of the topics I heard you discussing with your guests on your podcast. And I sometimes had the impression listening to your excellent podcast, that it was like a public free consulting that you were giving. And so I’m trying to figure out what happens now behind the scene. Because you also work with, imagine age two, you have your own consultancy where you’re helping startups to get to market and to probably apply the advices you just shared.

So is it very similar to what you share publicly or is there like a secret source happening behind the scenes, which would be fully different?

Paul Gagliardo: No, I think it’s, I’m an open book. I’ll give away just about everything. You know, I know, or my experience, the value for me or for the companies I work for comes in applying those things to their specific situation. And so you could talk generally about, okay, you gotta do this, you gotta do that.

But I’ll give you an example. If somebody comes up with a new technology that does something that, You know, nothing else does or does it in a totally different manner. Customers want a comparison. They wanna say, well, how does this compare to what I do now? And so one of the things you have to do, I think, is to develop kind of benchmark performance metrics.

 and that’s not so straightforward, but that you can then compare this new thing to the old thing and say, look, if you look at it from in this way, this metric makes sense over here, and the same metric makes sense to these guys. And now you can start to compare things head to head because otherwise you’re comparing apples to oranges.

And if you have a performance metric that says one thing over here, and the units on the performance metric are totally different on the other side. It’s hard for an innovation champion to take the chance. Whereas if you can compare them head to head, then you can say, look, if we put our system in, we can collect this data and then we can compare it to what you’ve done before and we can show you, yes, it was better, the value proposition was better, the performance was better, or no it wasn’t.

And then after that, you get the utility or the customer to allow you to publish that work. So you get that out in the industry so people can look at it independently and make their own value judgment about, yes, this worked, or no, you know, I don’t view those two metrics as being equivalent, you know, whatever it happens to be.

And then also that’s an evolution. Those performance metrics for my clients have changed over time, depending on the data we’ve collected. Depending on the other data out in the so yeah, , I talk generally about what I do and what I think will help companies out. But and my wife will hate this when she hears it, but I think I’m smarter than everybody else and I think I can see the future. So I look at my crystal ball and I say, okay, this is where we need to go. And my clients the ones that stick with me, you know, kind of follow that trail. And I feel like I’ve been successful helping out a number of companies become successful.

And then it’s also a matter of training them, to think this way. I mean, they have a lot of other things to think about. But when I can. Pull this kind of historic knowledge or background knowledge and deliver it to them and get them to understand the thought process behind it. then they can become, because I feel my role has a sunset date with the companies I work with.

And at some point in time they, they’re not gonna eat me anymore. And that’s fine. It’s great. And cause I like working with the earlier stage folks, getting them somewhere getting them to that growth stage. And just like, I said before about people’s baby being ugly, some babies are, cute.

And then they grow up and then you have to let ’em go. I’m gonna use the kid analogy, right? The parent analogy,

Antoine Walter: You mentioned how you like to work with early stage companies, if I’m right. You’ve been with Imagine H two since the inception of Imagine H two. I had Scott Bryan on that microphone, and he was the first employee. So I guess you’ve been in the same founding rounds of Imagine H2O Do you have a metric of how many companies you’ve been supporting since you’ve been within that e?

Paul Gagliardo: I am an original judge on their accelerators so I see about a hundred, 120 companies a year that come through the Imagine H two O process that I’m part of a judge on. I get involved with some of them from a mentoring perspective. Some of them become my clients.

But my role really has been focused on that. Kind of selection process, becoming them, becoming a member of the accelerator cohort for that particular year. One of the things I find interesting is every year there seems to be a trend of technology solutions. So right after Flint came out, there was a whole lot solutions relative to lead.

when they had there was a lot of algae blooms in the Great Lakes. The next year there was a lot of algae solutions you know, PFA s solutions as we talked about recently. it’s interesting you talked about the, you know, kind of crisis management. The founders are interesting.

Sometimes they see a problem and they look for a solution, or they already have a solution. and they try to apply it to whatever problem is coming up. And so, you know, it’s kind of two different ways of coming at it, but my role really has been evaluating the company’s more from a technology perspective and less from a business perspective.

That’s more my expertise. And then you know, working with them in some way, shape or form. When I was at American Water, we pulled a lot of them through into the American water ecosystem to try to see if there was a application within that enterprise for that particular solutions.

I would run my own innovation conferences where I would have 20 or 30 companies come in and the audience would just be American Water folks. Um, We did that two or three times. . And so that was a good way to, you know, for folks to be introduced to these companies. I’m a volunteer judge from Imagin, H two O, that’s my role is just to be, a smarty pants kind of guy that asks what I think are hard questions to see if we can elicit responses from these startup companies that give us some level of insight into whether or not they will be successful.

Again, whether it’s technology, whether it’s personality we look at all those things and the judging panel on imagination was great cuz it’s so varied. It might even be too big. but it’s so varied that you get so many different again, perspectives on these companies I think that’s why Imagination Source are successful is they’ve got this group of judges that can look at a topic from so many different, places that you can really hone in on, yes, these guys will be successful, or the chances of them being successful or high as opposed to this one.

And being able to rank the companies. when I first started American Water in 2009, I was involved in I think four accelerator entities. Imagine H two O was the only one that’s still standing, so I gotta give them kudos.

Antoine Walter: Interestingly on your path. Within American Water, which you just mentioned, there’s one achievement, which sounds almost impossible to me. So I’d really like to get your secret to that because you created a culture of innovation, and I’ve always been told that if there’s one thing which is incredibly difficult to do, it’s to create a culture or to change a culture.

So how do you do that?

Paul Gagliardo: That was probably, that was more difficult than finding good new technologies to introduce into the company. So in American Water you have the corporate entity, and then each of the states is in essence a franchise. And so they have their own organizational structure. So you may have 13 or 14 states.

You have some non-regulated businesses, and then you have corporate. So you almost have say 15, 16 companies in their organizational structures that you have to deal with. And the silos were very vertical. Nobody kind of went horizontal at all. so that was the. activity that I worked on was trying to build horizontal connections between and among these companies so that, if I could find the right person at New Jersey American, and the right person at California, American, and the right person in corporate we could get those people together in some way, shape or form to have kind of a common discussion about common issues.

And a lot of times those folks weren’t talking to each other anyway. so one, we bring ’em together, we kind of talk about things in general, what are you looking for? What’s your pain point? Hey, you know, I’m here to help you. I will go look for things. Resolve your issues save you money, what, whatever the issue happened to be.

So by building those horizontal bridges across those vertical silos, that was the first step. And then it was very important that my first big initiative had to be successful. So it took about a year or so before I kind of hit on something that would be an enterprise-wide success story would save corporate a lot of money.

And was something that just kind of made sense intuitively. And so I was able to, and I could talk quickly about it, but American Water bought. Because of the regulations, 50 million a year of water meters. And we had one vendor, literally one vendor. And so I overheard the supply chain folks talking about that and I said, how do we know we’re getting the best price?

And they shortly their shoulders. And I said, well, why don’t we buy somebody else’s meters? It’s like, well, because we have this back hauling system that only this meter can only talk to this software. And I was like, okay. So what I figured out was if I could come up with a middleware piece of software that would allow every meter to talk to any software that would solve the problem, and then I could buy anybody’s meter we could competitively bid meters out.

and luckily they were in the process of a new procurement cycle on meters, which was like a year and a half away. So I was able to weave myself into that and work with the meter teams in all the states. Work with the meter manufacturers and I found the software provider startup that I got partners up with one of the meter manufacturers and they were able to put in a bid and I was able to define the procurement documents to allow for a non-traditional submittal, cuz that was really important cuz if you didn’t allow for that, then something that was different could not be accepted.

So there’s a lot of legwork to do on a lot of different levels. Long story short that particular group won the bid. We were able to lower our meter cost. by 17% over a five year period, we saved about, 40, 50 million and, just made sure that we were getting the right price for the meters.

so that impacted every state impacted corporate and showed that was it. And because that was such a, then all of a sudden it’s like, hey, people would come to me from internally in the company and say, Hey, I need one of these. And it’s like, okay, I’ll look for one of those. so then they started coming to me as opposed to me coming to them.

And once you get people, you know, coming to you for things, you’ve won the battle, they trust you, now you become that honest broker. So it was important to, to build those horizontal connections in the organization. and then also that first project had to be a winner. And luckily for me it was.

 it took a few years. was not an easy process. But I think that it’s a lesson that can be, duplicated in other organizations for sure.

Antoine Walter: It’s an interesting blueprint for the ones which want to replicate. You’ve shared so far a lot of value. There is actually a good way to get more value from you, which is to subscribe to your podcast and I told you off record and I can tell it’s on record. Again. You are absolutely my favorite water podcast and no disregard to all the other ones because I’m really an avid listener to all of them, but I really enjoyed how. Your take is a bit different in how you are part of every single conversation and how there’s three that exchange you have with your various guests. Which leads me to that closing question for this deep dive, which is why did you start a podcast in the first place?

Paul Gagliardo: I guess I get bored easy. So, you know, coming through the pandemic both of my daughters were home and I had to build a studio for them because one was in veterinary school and so she was taking class from home and the other one was teaching from home. And so they all needed space, so we built a little studio on the backyard.

 and then they, both moved back out. And so I had the studio and I thought, I really had this interest in, I, I love the stories that all the startup folks would tell me. They were just so fascinating. And when I looked around at other podcasts, nobody was telling stories from that perspective.

And I thought to myself, well, I got time. I’m kind of semi-retired. I still have, you know, plenty of consulting opportunities and those kinds of things. But I work from home. I have the studio, how hard can it be to do a podcast? It was a lot harder than I thought.

But I was able to get a couple of sponsors and, just go from there. so really it was this evolution that I guess I’ve found myself in ever since I started working. , whereas about every five years, I feel like I need to reinvent myself. And I’ll go from like at the city I was working in public works, then I worked in ran the landfills, then I went to the wastewater business and the water business.

And then I went to consulting company. Then I worked for a startup and you know, I went through a private utility consultant and it just, I feel like I needed to learn something new. And I have, you know, late twenties age daughters. So all I was hearing about was podcasts and TikTok and this and that.

And I was like, I need a piece of this, you know, I need to kind of up my game a little bit. And so interesting. I’m gonna shout out to my daughters. One of them is my producer which is great. And the other one, the veterinarian. She’s also know, quite good at music. And so she composed the theme music.

And so it’s, just being able to work, with my kids learn new things. I mean, video editing, audio editing, it’s tricky. It’s, you know, you gotta learn a whole new skillset. so yeah, it’s just something new and different, where I’ll be in five years, to be honest, I have absolutely no idea because probably what I’ll be interested in five years doesn’t exist today.

something will just, kind of tweak my fancy and I was like, you know, I’m gonna go in that direction. But yeah, always, I just like to always keep learning. I think that was a big part of it. And because I had this background and experience with all these companies, , and I’ve been in the water business for so long, I could tell their story or help them tell their story from a technical perspective and from a, just a personal perspective.

And and that’s very gratifying to me. I love talking to the folks. They’re all lovely people. And I just get a kick at chatting with ‘

Antoine Walter: I dunno if you’ve ever discussed with John Robinson from Mere Ventures, and I hope I’m not cracking too much of a secret by sharing this because we recorded that, but then. He postponed his project. So we said, you know what, it was a cool discussion, but the recording will keep it for both of us.

But I guess I’m not giving too much of details here, but he said clearly a bit what you were saying about this. Nobody is in the kitchen with the entrepreneur and telling their stories. And that’s really, I think that was his speech. I want to be in the kitchen with them and discussing their matters.

And I know he’s been postponing his project, but he still has the project. So maybe at some point there’s an interesting link to do here, you from the support and consulting to those people. He, from the VC perspective, but it sounded like. There was a void. You identified the void. You were faster to move than him but it’s a really interesting perspective and I can tell you that from a listener perspective, that I really enjoy each episode you’ve been putting out so far.

I think you’re by 26 or 27

Paul Gagliardo: I think 26 was this week. I’ve got I’ve got three or four in the can matter of fact, in an hour I’m doing another interview. So, same kind of schedule you’re on do the taping, do the editing, and, get it in the queue. So we have a symbiotic relationship that way.

We both, I think, understand how this business goes. And and I really appreciate the opportunity to chat with you. It’s tell my side of the story. It’s great. It’s kind of fun.

Antoine Walter: Well, actually I have a tradition on that microphone , to close each conversation, which is the rapid for

Paul Gagliardo: Okay.

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Rapid fire questions:

Antoine Walter: So in that last section, I’m aiming for short questions, which lead to short answers, but you’ll notice that I’m the one which is always digressing and going , on a tangents.

I hope I can behave. My first question is, what is the most exciting project you’ve been working on and.

Paul Gagliardo: So I think I mentioned it, that Sewage to Drinking water project, that, that made me famous and I will always kind of come back to that. It’s a few years ago, but still that’s the one that I have the most fond memories of.

Antoine Walter: Can you name one thing that you’ve learned the hard way?

Paul Gagliardo: Yes, I think that when you try to move the needle or tell people to or talk to people about something new there’s something I would call kind of expert bias. . Whereas the more expertise someone has , in an area, the less likely they are to look at something new because they think they know everything.

And so what I think was the hard thing for me to learn or to get over was, how do you, whether it’s breaking through to somebody who’s an expert in something and try to teach ’em something new, whether it’s talking to a customer, potential customer, that doesn’t seem to have any interest in what you’re talking about at all.

So I guess dealing with failure maybe is the best way to put it. And I would always joke that when things would happen, I’d fail. It’s like my head would get cut off, like in men in black and they’d stick me in the corner and my head would grow back and then I’d work on something else. And the bottom line is my head always grew back.

I always had something new. , but learning from those failures, really incorporating those lessons from the failures to me has made me more successful in the long run.

Antoine Walter: mentioned your five year cycles, so that one might be a stretch for you. Is there something you’re doing today in your job that you won’t be doing in 10 years that’s twice your horizon

Paul Gagliardo: You know, I may actually be retired by then. Although my dad never retired, he always kept working. What won’t I be doing? There, there’s probably a lot. I just don’t know what that is. Like I mentioned before I’m never sure where I’m gonna be or what the next big thing is for me. , you know, I could see going back and working for a company again, you know, as a chief technology officer or something like that.

I could see myself doing that. I could also see myself, you know, sitting on a a Caribbean island and, you know, drinking my ties and doing nothing. So, yeah, I’m not sure what I won’t be doing. But probably all I can say is I probably won’t be doing this. I’ll be doing something else.

Antoine Walter: That’s a good one actually. It makes me think of, I, I was blessed to have Andrew Benedek on that microphone one year ago, roughly, and I think he got retired for six months and then he got, he got bored. And so usually when you have that drive and that entrepreneurial spirits, um, the, my eyes are fine, but they can get boring pretty fast.

But you, you, you’ll discover what’s the trend to watch out for in the water?

Paul Gagliardo: So I think we talked a little bit about this, but from this perspective of new contaminants like p ffa, s and microplastics, I think you’ll see more of those kinds of things cropping up. I also think that at some point in time, and there’s a number of companies who are beginning to develop what I would call pipe drones you know, swimming drones that you can literally put inside a water pipe or a sewer pipe and be able to do inspections and hopefully do some remediation while they’re in there.

I see that as as a very big thing. I also like the area of of remote sensing, whether that’s by satellite or drone or airplane. You see a lot of that work being done, whether it’s in agriculture, whether it’s in water whether it’s in dam stability. I mean, there, there’s so many applications of this remote sensing concept that and because it’s non-destructive, because it’s, you know, you don’t need a lot of manpower, covers a big area.

You can collect a lot of information in a fairly short period of time. And then it’s a matter of analyzing that data and making it into some kind of actionable knowledge. So I think the remote sensing game is going to be very big. A particular, I mentioned reverse osmosis, some membranes, and I firmly believe that the big breakthrough will come in when somebody can develop an aquaporin based membrane which is kind of biomimicry.

But but that is the mechanism that allows water to move through a cell wall. And so it’s very low osmotic pressure, so it’s not even osmotic pressure it’s just very low pressure. And so there’s, I know a couple of my friends are working in that area. And you know, hopefully somebody will crack that particular nut.

I love things like self-healing concrete. I’m sorry, I can go on and on about Newton. No. So, an aqua Poon is a is a protein that allows water to move through the cell wall. So it’s a matter of how can you line these things up and build a, an actual commercial grade membrane from those organic materials.

They’re, they haven’t got yet. They are working in that area. So there’s other, you know, they’ve used the name of the material and for the name of their company, so it’s like a Xerox machine, right? But nobody’s cracked the nut yet. Nobody’s, the big issue is lining ’em up like little soldiers so you can get a high flu rate, and that’s what nobody’s been able to do yet.

So once somebody figures that out, that will really change the the water business, the water treatment business, and the, and I guess another thing is that whole idea of biomimicry you know, is I think it’s a fascinating thing. If you could take some, something in nature and a, and kind of manufacture, you know, all these people are these you know, biomedical robots and things, you know, I think that’s a fascinating area that has a lot of potential

Antoine Walter: you’re opening me so many avenues for sidetracking. I have really to control myself and you have to be back on that microphone at some point because I want to explore those.

Last question would have someone to recommend me that I should definitely invite as soon as possible on that micro.

Paul Gagliardo: Let’s see who would be a good person to talk to? You know, there’s some interesting people that have been involved in the business. I don’t know if they’re available anymore, but for example, a guy by the name of Rhodes Trussel, I don’t know if you have heard of him. But he was a consultant that worked for me back in the nineties and has, was one of the big pioneers in technology development.

 And his, now his son is in the business as well, Shane Trussel. But if you can get somebody from Trussel Tech on the show, I think they would have some very interesting things to say about technology. And cuz they work much more in the technology field, designing systems and they, you know, much more technology focused kind of discussion.

I, I think those guys would be good to talk to. But yeah, if I had, you know, one person to think about that that would be it.

Antoine Walter: Well, thanks a lot for the recommendation, Paul. It’s been a pleasure to, to spend a bit of more than an hour with you to today. I, I don’t want to prevent you from preparing your upcoming interview, so I won’t take you longer. If you want to connect with you, I guess they can look at your podcast, the War Entrepreneur, where is the best way to contact?

Paul Gagliardo: So, we’ve got a website the water entrepreneur.org. We have an email that anybody can contact me the water entrepreneur gmail.com. And our podcasts are on Spotify and Apple. Those are the best place to find it. Same name, the Water Entrepreneur, one word, no caps. And yeah, I, you know, feel free, anybody, feel free to reach out to me.

I love talking to folks. That’s that’s my favorite thing to do.

Antoine Walter: as always, the links to all of that are in the show notes. So check it out. I stand my point. Um, I really, I’m even, to be honest, I was wondering if your podcast had existed before mine. Would I have started a podcast? Not sure. So I’ll tell you, you’re really my favorite. So thanks a lot, Paul. It was a pleasure to, to speak with you and as I said, there’s so much matter for a sequel whenever you want.

That microphone is open.

Paul Gagliardo: thank you so much.

Other Episodes:

FREDsense: Revolutionizing Water Quality Monitoring with Biosensor Innovation

By Antoine Walter | 7 May 2025

Swirltex: Revolutionizing Wastewater Treatment with Bubbly Innovation

By Antoine Walter | 30 April 2025

Blue Foot Membranes: The Next Evolution in Water Filtration

By Antoine Walter | 16 April 2025

Echo River Capital: Pioneering the Future of Water Innovation

By Antoine Walter | 3 April 2025

1001 Fontaines: Engineering Sustainable Water Access Through Social Entrepreneurship

By Antoine Walter | 22 March 2025

Amazon’s Water Footprint: Tech Giant’s Quest for Water Sustainability

By Antoine Walter | 19 March 2025

Turing: The AI Revolution Quenching the Water Industry’s Thirst for Innovation

By Antoine Walter | 26 February 2025

Altillion: Pioneering Digital Intelligence for Water Asset Management

By Antoine Walter | 6 February 2025

Flocean: Pioneering Ocean-Based Water Solutions

By Antoine Walter | 15 January 2025

Botanical Water Technologies: Harvesting Liquid Gold from Plants

By Antoine Walter | 4 December 2024

The post How to Frustrate 90% of Start-Up Founders in 15 Minutes in their Best Interest appeared first on (don't) Waste Water.

At Negotiation with Goliath, Ben trains sustainability professionals and entrepreneurs to get decision-makers on their side and make your goals their goals.

What we covered:

How Sustainability professionals are pushing for change and how the greatest hurdles standing in the way of that change are overwhelmingly powerful individuals and organizations that are change resistant

How defining people as “evil” is a major mistake that hinders your chances to convince them, why, and what to do instead

1⃣ The one feature that drives human survival more powerfully than any other one and how you can leverage it for the better

How reality is a construct and not an absolute and objective thing and how you need to understand that to succeed in negotiating

How being goal driven instead of objective is sadly a much more powerful survival feature and how you need to know that to drive sustainability forward

How the best way to kill a negotiation is to enter with a sense of moral superiority, why and what to do instead

How you need to be driven to a clear and well defined strategic goal to succeed in negotiation and how you shall never lose sight of your strategy

Teaching negotiation, realizing being on the wrong side, having an impact, human psychology, human evolution… and much more!

… and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨  

Resources:

Send your warmest regards to Ben on LinkedIn 

Check out Negotiating with Goliath’s Website 

is on Linkedin

Antoine Walter on LinkedIn

Full Transcript:

These are computer-generated, so expect some typos

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Antoine Walter: Hi Ben. Welcome to the show.

Ben Kimura Gross: Hi, an thank you for having me.

Antoine Walter: I’m really excited to have that conversation with you because you are touching on the topic, which we have never discussed on that microphone. I was really impressed by your writing skills. So now I’m looking forward to discover your talking skills . thank you and we’ll dig into that in just a minute. But all that starts with a good tradition I have on that microphone, which is to ask you to send me a postcard.

And actually your postcard today comes from Tokyo. So what can you tell me about Tokyo, which I would ignore by.

Ben Kimura Gross: Well, as you probably know, Tokyo is a, has a greater metropolitan area of like 36 million people. So it’s huge. and then you have to imagine all of these 36 million people are wearing masks all the time, everywhere they go.

Now, that’s something that surprised me, cuz in Berlin people are like, eh, whatever, you know. But I’ve seen people walking down the streets at night wearing masks where there’s like 10 meters around them. Nobody. I’ve seen a guy sitting in a car on his own, all alone wearing a mask. Like it’s a total grace, I think, by now.

Antoine Walter: you mentioned Berlin and Tokyo, and if I’m right you’re traveling a bit between those two cities. So where you feel at home? Is it in both cities?

Ben Kimura Gross: I would have to say both. . Yeah, I grew up in Berlin’s, my hometown, kind of.

But I spent a very significant and important part of my life in Tokyo. and I now have family in Tokyo, so that’s also home . you know, I feel so guilty every time I fly. It’s horrible , and I try to do less of it. That’s why it makes sense for me to, be spending like, this time we’re in Tokyo for two.

Antoine Walter: you are somehow going into the topic in the sense that you have a strong involvement with Greentech and sustainability, but with very different angle compared to whatever we’ve been discussing so far on that microphone maybe to start with, I’d like to understand from you what is the of

Ben Kimura Gross: conversations. Okay, so first of all, one of the basic tenets of Aikido is to never meet aggression with aggression, Your counterpart might be more powerful than you are, and I think that’s the case in lots of, you know, let’s say you’re a green tech startup and you’re talking to somebody in the power production industry or something like that.

So, , you are facing stronger counterparts. And how do you meet that overwhelming physical power How do you meet that calmly with smarts and superior techniques? That’s aikido. In conversations, it means compassion. It means knowing exactly how to ask questions that steer people’s thinking in the direction you want them to go, and it means being absolutely clear on your strategic goals.

Unwaveringly Clear.

Antoine Walter: a good summary. , I’m wondering how you came up. The concept in the sense, you mentioned Greentech, you mentioned negotiation. I think those will be key words for our conversation today. And I’m wondering what made you think first you need to do something in that sphere and second, that is really one of the skill which Greentech entrepreneurs shall redevelop.

Ben Kimura Gross: I’ll start with the first part, right? How did I even get into this sphere, right? Which is I’ve been training, you know, as a communications trainer. I’ve been working for over 10 years. Working a lot for I’d say pharma, it some news media, corporations in the government. And the reason I switched away from those clients is because I had the bullet pulled from my eyes, you know, I always thought I was doing my bit in sustainability.

Not only you’re driving a car not using plastic bags. All those little things that people think are quite important and they’re, they are important, And I thought that was enough. But the moment I started looking into what my friends were doing , my friends in Green Tech who I’ve been talking to more and more over, let’s say the last 18 months.

And the more I started looking into COP 26 reporting and then the I PCC reports coming out around that time I was just like, know, this is overwhelming. I gotta do more. Those little things that we all do, it’s not enough. know, if we all wanna make it through this, we all have to do more about how and that’s really what got me into the whole sustainability field is people in green tech making me aware that I need to take a more active part and really saying, I don’t wanna say pointing a gun at my chest, but that’s what we’re saying in German , you know? But asking very direct questions like, you know, do you really want to work for a news media organization that publicly aggressing against Greater Thunberg? Or do you want to work for people pushing for change that’s gonna.

ensure the continued wellbeing of human societies. What’s it gonna be, And that pushed a button and that kind of got me to realize I can’t just keep going the way I’m going. I need to refocus.

Antoine Walter: you felt that need to refocus.

Yeah. So that explains the switch to the green tech side of things. Mm-hmm. . . But what I’d like to understand is what made you think that what they were missing the most and where you could help the better was with this perion and negotiation skills?

Ben Kimura Gross: people in sustainability are pushing for change, right? . And one of the greatest hurdles standing in the way of change is overwhelmingly powerful individuals and organizations that are change resistant. Let’s just call ’em that. I sometimes I like to call ’em Goliath, right?

And that’s why I call my whole thing negotiating with Goliath. And when I got more involved in, you know, trying to understand what people in sustainability and green tech were doing I was really shocked when I understood that this balance of negotiating power between the sustainability sector on the one side and the Goliaths on the other, Don’t get me wrong, there are some amazingly capable negotiators in green tech and sustainability, and I know some of them, and I totally respect them. But what you have to understand is that the negotiating power of the Goliath has decades of experience, hundreds of millions of dollars of investment built into it.

So on average, your typical green tech startup is not on equal footing with that. looking at this power disbalance, that’s where the iqo moves come in.

Antoine Walter: Actually, the reason why I was really excited to have the discussion with you and the reason why that topic matters a lot, I think, is that from the 130 guests I had so far on that microphone, I would say , 75% of them mention how we are living in a conservative industry. We don’t evolve as fast as the world is evolving and we always have. A hard time to put a finger on why change is so slow. Mm-hmm. . And I . thought that’s, you are bringing here a new angle, which is maybe , we’re not convincing enough and maybe we don’t use the right skillsets to be convincing enough. So what I’d like to, to get from you is to get some start of directions as to how to.

Better at negotiating, at persuading or interlocutors to do the right move and to probably find win-wins on the way. Mm-hmm. , not , that you can do a masterclass in such a short time, but maybe To start a fire. You, it’s a bit of lightning at the beginning to to start to realize.

you mentioned how you’ve seen. Good negotiators in that scene of Greentech. And I was wondering to be very blunt, if you have seen also very terrible and very bad negotiators.

Ben Kimura Gross: not just in Greentech, I mean, in every kind of field and even in extremely successful companies right?

Or other kinds of organizations there are always amazingly good negotiators and there’s horrible negoti. There are negotiators who achieve great results because of the power of the company behind them, even though they themselves aren’t really good negotiators.

Antoine Walter: and how is that different from sales skills?

Ben Kimura Gross: in sales you’re trying to convince somebody to buy something, and then also often you’re dealing with bargaining, right? And these are two very small components of negotiating skills. . that’s like a sub skill.

Antoine Walter: what more do you have in negotiations?

Ben Kimura Gross: It’s such a broad field, you know? But I’ll just give you a few one type of skill that I’d say is also closely linked to. Conflict resolution is to overcome the hurdles that you face as you’re trying to cooperate.

these may be just because you see the world in different ways or you have different sets of interests that you need to somehow align. overcoming hurdles to cooperation is a huge part of negotiation, I think. Then building coalitions, Stakeholder management.

getting people to even understand the nature of a problem, which has been a real biggie in climate change issues, right? Because scientists think that they can help people and even the powerful people running huge organizations or large corporations scientists have been thinking that they can get people to see this problem.

By talking about facts and figures, and of course they can’t, it’s not the way it works.

Antoine Walter: And is there a, a difference between negotiation and manipulation?

Ben Kimura Gross: Absolutely. Absolutely. First I think we should take apart this word manipulation, right? Because it gets a bad rap, even though, we’re all trying to achieve goals.

We’re all trying to convince people to do the things that we think are important and stuff like that. And most human beings go through their day manipulating, not negatively, not evenly or something like that. But that’s just part of who we are. We influence each other. This’s part of how human societies work, And so, Is there a difference between negotiating and manipulating? I’d say that the core of negotiating is that you’ve got two people who’ve got a common goal, and sometimes yes, there’s more parties involved, right? There’s multi-party negotiations, but let’s just focus on two people. You’ve got two people who’ve got a shared goal that they want to achieve, and in order to achieve it, they need to cooperate.

And they’re trying to define how they’re going to cooperate to achieve that common shared goal. If you don’t have a shared goal, you don’t need to negotiate.

Antoine Walter: how do you figure out if you have a shared goal?

Ben Kimura Gross: shared goals come through desires. for example having a wonderful relationship with my wife, And building that wonderful relationship. That’s a shared goal, based on a desire to just live a good life, But shared goals can also come through external forces. obviously at COP 27, There are shared goals there. for example, let’s just take my home country, Germany, Not because Germany says, oh, you know what? We’ve been blowing so much carbon into the air way more than Fiji, and we should support Fiji in facing the increased amounts of climate disasters that they’re facing right now because the carbon that we’ve been blowing into the.

I don’t think that any nation wants to hand out money, but There’s an international pressure building and there’s even societal pressure building from within Germany amongst the people who are aware of the problems that Germany’s actions and the CO2 that is blown into the air are causing.

Sometimes common goals come about because we have to go somewhere so you have to be able to deal

Antoine Walter: with that. So is it safe to assume that if you are in Greentech and sustainability, there will always be a shared goal unless you’re really negotiating with the devil or someone who wants to destroy the planet on purpose.

Ben Kimura Gross: Can I just pick up on this, you know, devil or wants to destroy the planet on purpose? Sure. Because I think that’s such a big topic, that some counterparts are really tough and you would think that maybe they’re bent on destruction. They don’t.

And then you ask yourself, well, but wait, why are they so self-destructive? Because they must see that they are also destroying their own life habitats alongside with the habitat for millions and, billions of people as well as the animals, plants, all life on earth, et cetera, right?

Can’t they see how extremely destructive that is? Can’t they see what they’re doing? And are they like evil? and, I’m not into the good and evil thing, Because it doesn’t help us. Because if you start defining people as evil, then you’ve now taken away any opportunity you had of changing them. You have to Engage with them forcefully once you define people as being evil, you have to destroy them.

So if you turn that around, if you want to negotiate with somebody and you want to, for example, believe that you can change their mind, then you can’t go around defining them as evil. You can’t do that. But what do you do right? . And this is where I find the topic, and I know this is, very scientific and some people, you know, they’re like, ah, don’t get into that deep science stuff.

You know, I have to be careful, right? But where I find the topic of behavioral physiology really important. the things that we can say about the nature of how our bodies and brains and nervous systems and our perceptive apparatuses, like sight and hearing, et cetera. How all that is built and what that does to influence our behavior, how we see the world, how we make important decisions, et cetera.

And of course how it influences the behavior of the people in the oil and gas. For example, Who you might think, oh my God, they’re just hellbent on destruction. But I would argue they’re not. And to understand why they actually see the world in a way that they presume is constructive and helpful and you’re finding it really difficult to negotiate or to actually get them to see your reality as a sustainability.

why that’s happening, if you wanna understand that. I don’t know how much time we got, this might be a little bit of a detour, but to understand that you have to get into the topic of extinction, I’m not talking about the doomist kind of, we’re all gonna die extinction, I’m talking extinction as a natural process.

As a natural process, Extinction is basically about the power of one species or maybe even a subgroup of species to survive. And by surviving and by getting very good at surviving, they drive other groups into extinction. . And so that’s just a natural process. It happens all the time. It’s happening right now.

And as humans, we’re also part of the animal kingdom. So, we’re part of this competition for survival. And lots of people, when I start talking about this, they said, yeah, okay, Darwin I know about this survival of the fittest, right? What’s new? And what’s new is that there’s thousands different kinds of fitness features, which most of them, most people don’t know.

And there’s one fitness feature that drives human behavior that’s only recently really come to light. And it’s crazy because this could be the one feature that drives survival more powerfully than any other fitness feature. And. It’s certainly the fitness feature that’s driving the behavior of, that oil and gas ceo, right?

Let’s imagine some person who’s behaving completely irrationally and you’re thinking, oh my God, this guy’s hellbent on destruction. to understand this fitness feature that drives this guy’s behavior. Makes every discussion and every negotiation, every attempt you have make at, persuading this oil and gas ceo.

It makes every attempt at persuading him to come on board like smacking your face against a brick.

what’s the feature? Running at a brick wall. Full speed. Unprotected. Trying to break it down with the tip of your nose. And so, exactly right. Now you’re going, okay what’s this feature? Right? Alright. Have you ever heard of the Australian Jewel Beetle? No. . Okay. Sorry, but you know, to understand the feature, you need to understand this weird thing that the Australian Jewel Beetle does.

Okay. Which it’s in the Outback, right? And it finds itself a beer bottle and it starts humping it as if it was gonna make some babies. Now, why would the Australian jewel beetle hump a beer bottle? So weird, right? And the truth is that there’s a certain kind of beer bottle that has like a pattern and in the right kinda light with the right kind of reflection, it looks like the rump of a female Australian jewel wheel.

And so the male Australian jewel wheel can’t tell the difference. And now you think, oh, that’s stupid. I mean, they look nothing alike. But the truth is, the Australian jewel beetle doesn’t see reality as it is. It sees reality through the lens of looking for certain kinds of patterns. So just looking for certain kinds of patterns of light.

Patterns of color. That’s all it knows. So it’s reality perception is really limited. And Donald Huffman a really amazing researcher explained in his TED Talk, I think it’s about five years. About the nature that we as humans perceive reality. In fact, all organisms perceive reality we all perceive reality through the lens of certain kinds of patterns that we understand to either help us or hinder us in achieving our goals.

So reality, perception and our whole construct in our brains of how the world works and all that kind of stuff is goal. I understand that this gets a bit abstract, right? But what does this lead to? in everybody’s mind. Reality is a construct. It’s not a reflection of the way things are.

It’s a construct. And the other sad thing about it is, That we, we just have to deal with, right? And that scientists who are trying to convince, for example, people in the oil and gas industry like Peter and other, you know, amazing people who are pushing for this change. That’s really necessary.

We have to understand the behavioral realities of what’s going on there, which is,

organisms that are goal driven, In their behavior and their perception in every single experiment that’s ever been done drive to extinction the organisms that see reality as it’s because reality is too complex.

So, this explains why CEOs who don’t see reality as it is in all its complexity, but who look like they’re wearing shutters, they’re very success. Because they’re at the top of the fitness game. And I think we have to accept this. We have to accept this because this is a reality of human perception.

I don’t want to accept it. Right. It’s not fun to say like, oh my God, so many people don’t see the world the way it is, and they’re powerful and and they’re maybe diluted and they’re definitely wearing shutters, But we have to accept. if we wanna move forward,

Antoine Walter: that’s a bit the root of the psychological bias. If we were to be free of psychological bias, we would have a hard time to process all that amount of information out there. And so the psychological bias is a way our brain have put together to help us mm-hmm. ,, mitigate and navigate a word which is very complex.

So this reality which you define as being too complex to be understood.

Ben Kimura Gross: And the sad thing, and I think this is real point, is that who wins,

right? so how do you deal with that? How do you deal with this huge disadvantage that we’ve got? that’s biased against the scientist, really. I think the only way to deal with that is to say, okay, let’s accept the way that human perception works. Let’s accept that evolution is a powerful thing.

It’s been created in this way, you know, for millions or maybe even billions of years. Let’s accept that cognition is goal driven and not reality driven. the very way that people perceive reality is

limited in its ability to see reality. for what it is, and it’s ultimately super strong goal driven. If you accept that, then you start handling negotiations in a different way. You start handling that seeming evil destructive person in a completely different way because now you’re not looking at a moral wrong, you’re looking at a natural phenomenon of evolution.

Antoine Walter: All you say makes a ton of sense. I’m wondering where to start with that because , you’ve explained how. You cannot win the argument with facts and figures, which makes sense if you’re now appealing to emotions and patterns and bias. And you’ve mentioned how this moral high grounds doesn’t help either, because then you’re not looking at your counterpart as someone, which you have to understand and to accept his reality and to try to then find a common ground with its within that reality, or to open him , to a new reality.

But , if now I’m one of these. Green tech, sustainable entrepreneurs. And I’d like to change the word for good. What is the very first step I have to undergo? Where would you advise to start compassion?

Ben Kimura Gross: Yeah. Because that’s the antidote to write your anger. It’s the antidote to try to take the moral high ground and about the moral high ground issue.

You actually read my ebook, right? Yes. So do you remember that story about the moral high ground? what is the thing that moral high ground does to your face when you take the moral high ground?

Antoine Walter: You look with disdain. Yeah.

Ben Kimura Gross: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So, actually the facial express.

That people who see others as morally corrupt, the facial expression that appears on their face is the same facial expression as with physical disgust. This has to do with how our brains are wired and how moral disgusted and physical disgust are closely linked. so you know that feeling when you, walked around in the garden when you were a kid with your barefoot and right, and you step on something weird like maybe a slug.

That feeling. when you experience moral disgust towards the person you’re talking to, what’s showing on your face is that same kind of expression as if you stepped on this slug, And now imagine somebody looking at you like that.

How does that make you.

Antoine Walter: Obviously bad .

Ben Kimura Gross: Horrible. In fact, it’s so horrible that people who look at each other, right, who have in a conversation a certain percentage of these kinds of facial expressions that show disgusted 95% of the time, that leads to irreparable damage to the relationship, meaning they don’t want to have anything to do.

if you wanna kill a negotiation, walk in with a sense of moral superiority, do that, and you’ll kill the negotiation because human beings do not function on that purely logical level. We just don’t, the emotional triggers created by, Showing that disgust on your face are just so strong.

Antoine Walter: mentioned it a killer, and in your ebook you have seven of those stories. And mm-hmm. , if I remember right, in the one you’re mentioning, the solution is that the person. It doesn’t correct what she was doing. She just gets a chance to have a new start in a different place, and she does it all better the second time, but mm-hmm. would that mean that really it’s a killer if you enter and you once have this superiority on your face, then it’s done. If you don’t get a chance to restart new somewhere else, then that battle is lost forever.

Ben Kimura Gross: It’s really difficult to fix that one once. Gone down that route, it’s really difficult to fix and sometimes in some situations there are external factors which push you, that you have to deal with that person and then you can try to fix your relationship.

But again, you have to realize at that point you’re not even talking about trying to have a good negotiation. You have to go back to fixing the relationship. and people underestimate how much it is a killer.

Antoine Walter: You mentioned compassion to be the place to start with, which resonates with personally the story are preferred among your seven stories, which I could rely the most on, which is explaining how listening is the first and best skill. Best is now my personal interpretation, but to me that starts with listening because that’s the way you understand someone. So that would be, , my favorite one among the seven. I was wondering if you have favorite one as well, or one which you would deem to be more efficient

Ben Kimura Gross: is actually my favorite two.

Listening is, I’d say the number one skill that is underestimated. And at which people don’t perform very well, especially in negotiations where you go in with a certain set of attitudes, certain set of goals, et cetera, et cetera. You wanna push your points, and if that’s your attitude, then you’re not gonna get the best out of the

Antoine Walter: negotiation.

It’s a tough one though, because I remember discussing that with Lea Im Obersteg on that microphone and she demonstrated how listening can be tough in the sense that if you finish your sentence and straight after your sentence, I already have a question that means I have not listened and processed to the end of what you were saying.

And so she demonstrated that by saying, if I really want to process what you’re saying, I need to stop and wait for at least two seconds and then come back with the next thing. But we as Zoomin have really hard time with these two seconds of silence, where in fact mm-hmm. it is listening, but it is also.

very uncomfortable. I could see that as a hard to apply tool. , if you want to put it in practice. .

Ben Kimura Gross: Yeah. I think also the same goes in negotiations, right? I think in negotiations there’s times when you have to have fast pacing and there’s times where silence can actually help you slow down the pace.

And I’d say that, if your counterpart kind of depends on working with you on some level, silence can be totally fine.

I mean, you can even use silence to great effect in situations where you ask a critical question and then you just shut up and you wait for them to answer it.

Antoine Walter: That’s your fair story. How to reverse the pressure. By just mirror something you interlocutory is saying, and then just stop talking. Yeah. And wait for him to come back. .

Ben Kimura Gross: Yeah. Yeah. The one where somebody’s offered a very unfair deal, but the person who’s offering the deal is saying I’m just trying to be fair here.

Right. And then what do you say? Well, the best thing you can say is, hang, hang there. Yeah. Just let it hang there. You know, if they resist and they just leave the silence hanging there and you know, they kind of out silence you then you can still always take one further step and say, Got the feeling you were really convinced that this is a really fair deal.

So I’m sure you got the facts and figures to back it up, or I’m sure you can explain that to me how it’s fair, and again, it’s so important to not ask that in a kind of aggressive way.

Antoine Walter: you mentioned at the very beginning of that conversation how all of that. Sounds like Aikido is something which I never practiced. Aikido. I had one of my music teacher who was a Nike instructors. That’s what I know about Aikido. . So I’m gonna say things which are more stupid than me, so, please don’t be offended, but I would see that as something you have to practice and repeat repeats.

 Until you create the patterns we were discussing before. When I read your ebook and when I see your full argumentation. Every time at the end of the story, I was like, oh yes, that makes a lot of sense, and that sounds like really the sensitive way to do it. But then if I’m honest and I’m putting myself in the shoes of the person at the beginning of the story, I would never behave that way because it wouldn’t cross my mind or I wouldn’t.

Elaborate enough or be clever enough in the instant to come up with the right tactics. how much do you have to train and practice so that you always come back with, if not the best, at least a good line?

Ben Kimura Gross: first of all, I’d say that the thing that people need to train most is not actually coming back with good lines. , that’s kind of the last bit, I think the thing that people need to train most is, first of all, the listening skills. Another really important thing that people have to train as compassion,

not to be triggered into saying things that go against their own strategy, because a good negotiator will. Manipulate you into behaviors that actually

generate good results for them, but results that aren’t beneficial to you. some of the most important reflexes you have to learn to control is the reflexes that are already built in. And then with regard to being able to come. with a good line or something. I always say the best lines are probably not lines, they’re questions.

It’s good to have the patience to, endure the silence. And even if it means, like, for example, you’re thinking on what to say next, to create those pauses that allow you to figure out what to say. That’s also a little trick. I have one negotiated friend who, everybody was like, like this guy must have like a really small bladder, What’s wrong with him? He’s always going to the toilet. He’s going to the toilet for a very simple reason because he’s like, oh my God, what do I say next? , you should take a break. I mean, you can’t do that all the time, right? But if you get into really difficult situation, also just to have that natural reflex say like, okay, wait.

I need a strategic moment here and people do that. People whatever they pretend to take some kind of important business call that just cannot be avoided. Or other things like that.

Antoine Walter: But that means you have to be kind of coldblooded. reading an analytic position and to try to overcome your own emotions.

If I now put myself in the shoes of a green tech entrepreneur or a sustainability activist, and I want my interlocutor to change something, to change a behavior. to do what I would estimate to be the right thing. , then that is part of my identity, that is part of what I’m fighting every day about, so.

, I could imagine it’s being hard to really go down to my analytic brain and to think, let’s try to understand that other person to have compassion. I hear what you explain makes a lot of sense. . . Yeah. But it’s hard to commence to my emotions.

Ben Kimura Gross: , so this is also another really interesting point.

Okay. Because, sorry. But we are going back to the behavioral physiology stuff. , there’s a huge misunderstanding about what emotions are. First of. . Most people have this dichotomy in their head, right? They say, okay, there’s logical on the one side, and then there’s emotions on the other side You know, like you said, analytic brain and the emotional brain. And these two are

Antoine Walter: opponents, right brain, left brain. If I want to trigger everybody by saying something stupid I can say that .

Ben Kimura Gross: And honestly, it’s just not true. There’s no logical thinking that’s independent of emotion. Even logical thinking is driven by emotion.

emotions are like the high speed decision makers that help us figure out where to go, what to move towards, who to interact with, what to avoid, all that kind of stuff. So emotions are really smart and emotions are not the antagonist. Emotions aren’t like the bad component of your behavior in a negoti.

They can be really helpful. So the question isn’t overcoming your emotions. The question is

how to replace negative and angry or fearful emotions with positive ones. And that’s also something you can train. There’s things like compassion training or there’s things like rebalancing, Actually, the rebalancing takes me to another part of a misunderstanding about emotions that we have.

let’s say, I call you a complete whatever, right? Something really horrible, and you go, ah, and you experience an emotion, What’s that emotion? Anger. Okay, so let’s say you experience anger and then when you experience anger, maybe something happens physically too, right?

Antoine Walter: I guess I’m frowning. I’m getting red.

Ben Kimura Gross: And anything else in your posture maybe or,

Antoine Walter: I’m getting more aggressive probably.

Ben Kimura Gross: Something in your posture, right? Changes. The thing is, it’s different for everybody, right? Some people, their head moves forward, or some people scrunch their shoulders, some people puff out their chest.

Whatever it is, is a physical change. And now we think, because maybe that’s the way we were raised, or something like that. That first we experience the emotion of anger and then something changes in our physiology in our body. But actually it’s the other way around. and it happens so fast that you can’t really tell which way around it is.

But if you ask brain researchers, it’s the other way around. The first thing that’s happening is that your shoulders or your, something around the back of your neck tightens up and you frown and. Your heartbeat might increase, Your pulse rate. And then there’s this part of your brain called the anterior insular cortex, which is looking at all that information of what’s happening inside your body, muscle tension, blood pressure, et cetera, and it’s taking that information and it’s sending it to another part of the brain that says, aha, these changes in posture, blood pressure, et cetera, equal anger.

I’m gonna tell this person to now consciously experience anger. So the physical change comes first and then the emotion. That’s the reality. Which brings us to the point of you’re in a negotiation, right? And somebody says something that really gets your goat. Like whatever climate change is, a hoax or something like that.

What’s the first thing you should. try to control your anger or try to kind of rationalize away your anger or try to tell him about this. There was a school of thought for a long time that says, you know, you’ve really upset me because blah, blah, and I’m so angry. No, you need a really quick solution.

You need a solution that will fix the problem in half a second. You know what that solution. Is rebalancing your body because let’s say anger makes your neck go forward. the muscles around your shoulders tighten up. And let’s say your pulse rate go up. Now, you can’t do that much about your pulse rate, maybe through some breathing techniques you can work on that, but you can definitely control the tension in your big skeletal muscles.

You can also control your posture. Now the magical thing is, and it’s so easy, it’s almost stupid, The magical thing is that the moment you reset your posture and you relax your big skeletal muscles, which got tense, and you slow down your breathing, that moment, the anterior insular cortex, which is looking at all that information, is looking at your physical, being and saying what happened?

Wait, I have to tell this guy, he’s not angry anymore. , this is the simplification, right? you have to train it. There’s a lot of impulses going this way and that way there’s continuous amounts of triggers happening from your counterpart so it’s a simplification.

I admit that. But in this simplified way of looking at it, if you can rebalance. Your physical state, your posture, your muscular tension, your breathing, you can change your attitude towards your counterpart and you can overcome the sense of aggression that you might have, or even the sense of disgust you might have, which will kill your negotiation.

to me, that’s magical. that’s part of what I call compassionate conflict, training. That’s really my way of thinking about how to resolve conflict and also how to deal with difficult negotiation counterparts.

Antoine Walter: So now we have two ways to start, or two first steps, which are you just. Put in our list roadmap towards getting a better negotiator, which is this compassion training and this rebalancing of the body. You know, everything in life goes better with three. So would you have a third one?

Ben Kimura Gross: Yeah. And this is more on the cognitive level.

I think you need to be really clear on your final strategic goals, and you need to have a well laid out. That you keep refocusing during the good negotiation, always with, questioning techniques and other cognitive techniques. Keep refocusing on your strategy. Never lose sight of your strategy.

there’s that difference between tactic and strategy, be tactically flexible and strategic, unwavering.

Antoine Walter: in your ebook I picked up this 15 minutes a day. Is it like the benchmark of how much you should invest in training those strategies, not tactics, or is it more or less would be a good benchmark?

Ben Kimura Gross: It really depends on what skills you already have, For example, some people have , all the skills in terms of strategy, all the cognitive stuff and then they don’t need to train that, And it depends on what kinds of hurdles or problems you’re. Well, what you’re good at and what you’re not good at.

So it’s very individual. But I would say that within a timeframe of about six weeks, even if you’ve got no experience at all in negotiating you. You need a mixture, right? You need some on block learning, which is about theory and some role playing and training, but you also need those little nudges every day, But you don’t need two hours every day, So I’d say ideally, if you’ve got two hours, twice a week plus Five minutes every morning, you can make major changes in six weeks.

Antoine Walter: And how do you support those people their road to getting better negotiator? Is it through coaching? Is it through training, form, oral form, face-to-face, online? What’s your approach?

Ben Kimura Gross: before Corona I used to work mainly with small groups of people in a room, Not online or anything like that. And Corona came along and it kind of naturally switched to online. which you can have group sessions with up to 25 people online. I wouldn’t suggest that because negotiating is so personal that you’re probably better off with a group of less than 10 people if it’s online.

It’s gotta be interactive. You can’t learn negotiating from a book and you can’t learn it from reading a whole bunch of PDFs and stuff like that. It’s gotta be interactive. You also have to be put into those situations where you can sense the. I think that’s a large component. I also developed a format which I call embed, which is to give you those small nudges on a daily basis.

That’s a really important component of how I train. And so basically when people join my course they get a daily three minute audio. Some of them are only two minutes, roughly three minutes maybe. And they get that daily audio file, which is just, you know, some stories, some insights and a nudge to do one tiny little thing differently that day.

And if you’ve got that going on every day for six weeks, you know, that’s like major change in reflexes, habits, et cetera.

Antoine Walter: If at that depth of the conversation we’re having today , we have decision makers in the water industry, which are listening to that. Would you advise them to reach out to you or to go into that field on an individual basis? Or is it the kind of stuff which companies.

Should enlist their people on too, because that’s part of the soft skills which will be needed in this climate change adaptation phase. We are facing right now.

Ben Kimura Gross: This is one of the questions that I’m asking myself too, right? Is how do I increase the impact of what I’m doing? And there are a lot of people who are doing similar things to what I do, it’s not really directly about negotiating, but it’s also about making change happen. So there’s a whole bunch of good change facilitators, I’d say, And.

I think depending on the size of the corporation, And if a large corporation says we want to send 200 people to some training then they probably need to find somebody who’s got a little bit more capacity than I have . Or they can start with an automated course that people can take.

That’s an option too. I like having mixed groups of people like somebody who’s, let’s say a policy officer at the EU level plus somebody who’s infrastructure for electric vehicles. maybe even an activist right? Thrown into the mix. , And I’ve trained all these kinds of people and what I see as interesting is when you put them together they create very fascinating roleplaying scenarios and there’s a lot of opening of minds going on.

Antoine Walter: Well, I think that makes for a good summary . For this deep dive , I’ve mentioned your ebook a couple times in our discussion. Of course the links are in the description, so I enjoyed reading it. I guess, that would be the case for anyone downloading that so, just my very humble personal feedback.

I, I liked it. So I guess I would recommend anyone to, to have a read and reading something is never a commitment to too much more than reading it. So it’s already pretty interesting in itself. But if that’s right with you, I’m always running out those conversations with a list of rapid, fair questions and propose you to switch to that last

Ben Kimura Gross: section.

Absolutely. Yeah.

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Rapid fire questions:

Antoine Walter: So here the rule is pretty simple. I try to keep the question short, and you have to try to keep the answers short. I’m never cutting the microphone and usually I’m the one side tracking, so, don’t worry. , my first question is, what is the most exciting project you’ve been working on and why?

Ben Kimura Gross: Oh my God. Okay. This is a rapid fire question. Yes. I have to say an international collaboration to retrain farmers in Columbia. And what many people don’t know, the good news about Columbia is that they just ended a 15 year civil war and they could become one of the bread baskets of the world. . So you know, whether do they need to make this happen?

Well, they gotta retrain 5.5 million farmers who used to grow coca, right, for making cocaine and who now need to be retrained to grow the veggies, fruits, all that kind of stuff. Hope that was short enough.

Antoine Walter: The temptation to go on sidetrack here is very strong, but I have to resist. So, . Okay. Can you name one thing that you’ve learned the hard way?

Negoti. Oh, here, I need to know more. How did you learn the hard way ?

Ben Kimura Gross: I don’t have a natural talent for it at all. I came with all the bad reflexes and I had to train all of them outta myself,

Antoine Walter: which usually makes for good teachers. If I go back to my engineering times engineering school times, usually the ones which were very good at maths were terrible teachers just because to them it was too easy and the one which had struggled with the maths themselves ended up being very much better teachers.

So my 2 cents ,

Ben Kimura Gross: thanks.

Antoine Walter: Is there something you’re doing today in your job that you will not be doing in 10?

Ben Kimura Gross: Online marketing . Oh my God, it’s not my thing. .

Antoine Walter: And still you’re a brilliant copywriter, Interesting. .

Ben Kimura Gross: I mean that’s content creation for me. You know, that’s may, maybe it’s part of online marketing, but Yeah, I’ll be glad when I’ve, you know, kind of resettled into this new sector, right?

Because as you know, I started off in a completely different sector and I come to just switch a year ago. So I’m all new to this, and I have to kind of still create a presence.

Antoine Walter: We have this big un water conference coming up in 2023 and we struggl. As an industry, probably. Because of lack of negotiation skills to put a lot of topics on the agenda. But still, if you had the chance to put one topic on that UN water conference agenda, which is the first in 50 year, what would it be?

Mm-hmm.

Ben Kimura Gross: Could I ask you what you would put on, because like I said, I’m not a water person. Right. But I’d be fascinated to hear what you would put on if it was up to you. ,

Antoine Walter: Clara, come back. . I would’ve a hard time putting just one. When you’re involved with it, when you have to overcome your emotions, and I’m not overcoming , I’m trying to relax my body and to be

Ben Kimura Gross: I’m gonna have to pay attention to that whole topic more cuz I think it’s a really tough one and a fascinating one.

Antoine Walter: , it’s a matter of patterns. We have one pattern in our modern word, which is to open the tap and have water and to flush the toilet and see what it disappear.

And so we don’t look beyond those patterns and still there’s a fascinating reality beyond those patterns. But, , I have to fight my tendencies to sidetrack and let me bring you back with My last question, which is, would you have someone to recommend me? That should definitely invite as soon as possible on that microphone.

Ben Kimura Gross: ?

Yes, absolutely. I’m training or coaching a startup, which is revolutionizing water filtration. , and they’re called Aveor. And the two founders, Ian and Arian, they’re amazing guys. I’m not the expert to say this, right, but from what I understand, from what people around them are saying, they have breakthrough technology on the cusp of, mainstream media implementation.

So I think they would be really amazing to talk.

Antoine Walter: Well, thanks a lot for the recommendation and , I can confirm Bern that I had a really good time over the tower with you, and I think we learned some very interesting insights into an overlooked part of the interaction we have with stakeholders fight is probably not the right word, but in this adaptation we have to, the new challenges our word is facing.

So, so thanks a lot. , I mentioned how the link to your ebook is already in the show notes. If people want to follow up with you and to contact you directly, what’s the best way to speak with you?

Ben Kimura Gross: Just write me an email at ben negotiating hyphen with hyphen goliath.com,

Antoine Walter: and that one is as well now in the show notes.

Well, Ben, it’s been a pleasure. Thanks a lot and talk to you.

Ben Kimura Gross: Thank you too.

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The post How To Win at Negotiating With the Most Powerful Stakeholders? appeared first on (don't) Waste Water.

with Michael Doran, President & Co-Founder of Aclarus Ozone.    

Aclarus Ozone aims to solve complex water problems with advanced ozone technology.

What we covered:

How the key to success is the team as it enables to turn a product into a solution

How when it comes to ozone, people don’t look for a technology but for help – and how you can apply that in your everyday business

How engineering houses and consultants like to repeat what’s proven to work – and how to convince them to embrace new approaches

How there’s much more to understand about ozone than just the generation and the bubbling. It’s all about the application!

How to understand the development stage of your company, avoid to freak out and react accordingly

How different it is to be an agile smaller player compared with established large moguls

How trade organizations can be incestuous (that’s me saying it, not Michael!) and what they bring to the overall industry

How you have to nail your domestic market before spreading yourself too thin in unknown waters

How there are synergies to find between market players to leverage everyone’s strengths

Inheriting clients, aiming for higher agility, learning entrepreneurship the hard way, aiming for impact, Aclarus Ozone’s figures and growth numbers, generational shifts in engineers… and much more!

… and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨  

Resources:

Send your warmest regards to Michael on LinkedIn 

Check out Aclarus Ozone’s website 

is on Linkedin

Antoine Walter on LinkedIn

Infographic

Full Transcript:

These are computer-generated, so expect some typos

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Antoine Walter: Hi Michael. Welcome to the show.

Michael Doran: Hello. Thank you very much for having me.

Antoine Walter: As I cracked a bit a secret before we started , by telling you a bit of my history with your field. I’m looking forward that conversation on ozone, which has been my main occupation for I think six years, but that’s a while ago. And as I told you, there’s some things we maybe didn’t do right at the time, which you did right on almost the other end of earth on the other side of the Atlantic at least that gives me a smooth transition to open with my tradition on that microphone, which is to ask you to send me a postcard. So what can you tell me from the place you’re at, which I would ignore by now?

Michael Doran: All right. Well, I am based in Peterborough, Ontario, and I’m currently sitting in my office at our headquarters here and staring out at a nice snow scape landscape right now. So that’s where we’re at.

Antoine Walter: So you get me jealous by your first answer. That’s not nice But thanks for the postcard. Actually, I will put the link in the show notes because I was really amazed by your website and by the stories. You explain the background story of the company, why you wanted to be in all of that and what’s got you to explore that field.

But there’s something which was marking to me as, let’s say a former ozone professional, is that you started a company when I started working in the ozone business. And if you had asked me at the time, If I wanted to create a company, I would never had dared to do it, and probably not in the ozone field.

So back in 2011, what leads you to creating A clarus Ozone?

Michael Doran: It’s a great question, and my background really I got introduced to ozone itself in an unconventional way. My background was around fisheries, biology. And I spent a lot of time monitoring the decline of the environment and was introduced to and interested in environmental technologies to help prevent that and help to fight against those things.

And the one thing that just stood out to me was the applicability and the viability of ozone. And in fact the oddest thing was in Canada. It really did not seem to be properly utilized, or a relevant solution. It is much more prevalent in Europe. It was also prevalent in the States and in Asia, but in the Canadian landscape, it just was a tool not in the toolbox.

And that’s really where Aclarus ozone has been focused, is to put that tool back in the toolbox for people.

Antoine Walter: So what’s your first move when you create the company? How does it start?

Michael Doran: Oh. It was from the kitchen table. It was one of those scenarios where I was fortunate enough to have some connections into the local Peterborough business world. And we were supported by some local peterborough business investors that believed in the vision of what we wanted to do, and that truly was about providing good drinking water and helping the environment.

And we started Aclarus with the concept of just that. What is it that we could have an impact on and where can we have that impact on? And it truly started in the residential and agricultural sectors. So we were doing More sort of residential ozone water treatment, which was somewhere that really wasn’t being adapted, especially in Canada, trying to deal with complex water scenarios of people in remote locations, and maybe not the strongest operators per se being, you know, cottage owners or homeowners, but being able to provide solutions for really complex water.

Really high organics or bacteria or other different contaminants like that where we were able to really learn and grow from that. So that’s truly where it started. It started from the KISS principle. We wanted to create a system that could be integrated into those types of environments. And from there it just really grew forward.

Antoine Walter: So when you say creating a system, what is exactly the shape and the scope of what you were delivering in the beginning? And did it change over a bit more than a decade.

Michael Doran: Yes. Great. Great question. Initially, I mean, there was even a time where I would hand build ozone generators but the key with ozone is The ability to produce ozone effectively and efficiently and stably, but also how to mix it and how to integrate it into treatment trains. So that truly was the challenge.

The challenge is how do you do ozone dosing on flow at variable flow rates in a very tight spot with people that are less than experts in operation of equipment. And provide stable, high quality water. So it was an interesting technological challenge. So we were building ozone systems, control systems saturation systems that would all work on flow and on demand, and provide a level of contact time for disinfection and post filtration and things like that based on what the water quality needs were.

So it was a really, a unique opportunity and to try and do it in a way that was an acceptable price point, but also acceptable designs for the quality. And then from there, truly the knowledge we learned from that is what really was able to be leveraged into growing the types of applications and then the uniqueness of the applications.

So getting away from just drinking water into specialized wastewaters, cleaning in place systems. A wide range of applications we can definitely talk about. But it did start there initially.

Antoine Walter: But that is I’d like , to emphasis that, because that sounds simple when you explain it that way. But if we break it down, What you just built in a so short time is incredible because the mixing system itself is something which has companies living in that space. The one of them is Mazzei injector.

We had Jim Lauria on the microphone a while ago. You have the control part, which is again, something where a company live in that space company which have been acquired by bigger player. But there was Imalog for a while, which was based in Canada I think as well. You have the ozone generator itself, the combination of those.

And then you say on top of that, we build some process application knowledge. That’s a lot to build in a short period of time. So what’s decided you to go for the broad spectrum and how long did, did it take you be between this moment where you get your investors in your community, business, community up to the time where you have like this package product and you’re ready to go in the market?

Michael Doran: Yes. It took a while. I mean, it, there’s iterations of different ones. I mean, obviously we look to the landscape of what existed throughout the world in different applications. We know the fine folks at Mazzei and Jim and really appreciate their knowledge and leveraging that type of information into being able to provide or understand it.

But it was a challenge. It started off with our first sale and with a fine gentleman here named Ziti. And he believed in what we could do and wanted to give us a chance. And from that moment on, it was just about organic growth. So really it was about six months of R&D and development to get to that.

So it was really accelerated.

Antoine Walter: Oh that’s more than really accelerated. That is. There’s a stretch. Six months. That is incredible.

Michael Doran: Absolutely. Absolutely. And it was a lot of good people came to the table to really help foster that. And that’s the one thing with Aclarus that’s been great is always been the team involved, believes in the vision, and do what needs to be done to really amplify the ability for us to be able to provide solutions to people.

Antoine Walter: So today, if now I do like a jump of 11 years in time. In that system, what would you consider to be like your killing part? Is it the full system? Is it the specific sub-assembly? Specific subpart of the system. What is the thing which is so good that Aclarus can’t been ignored?

Michael Doran: . To be honest I always default back to the team. Like it’s the individual technology is key, but the difference with ozone is it’s not a widget process. The ozone itself is a high touch, high feel. Application, like you really need to understand the scenario, the chemistry, the stoichiometry, the infrastructure, what it is that is the client’s needs, and what it is that would provide the most stable and robust solution.

So understanding and leveraging. Knowledge about other people who make great ozone systems or ozone generators, or people who know mass transfer, but do they know the specific stoichiometry of this client’s needs? So really it’s about optimizing and leveraging all the knowledge that’s out there in the ozone industry, but really understanding how to make it uniquely customizable to people.

It’s not something where we will ever truly be able to just have one SKU and just sell one. It’s really understanding about the application of the systems and the integration for people, and that’s sort of where I always believe that the special sauce is in the understanding of the pain points.

A lot of our clients come to us and, They aren’t looking for ozone, they’re looking for help. And they know that for us, we’ve been in the space and we’ve earned the reputation of being able to deal with advanced and complicated scenarios. And it’s not that they’ve looked for an ozone supplier or an ozone vendor.

You can find those quite readily if you know what you need. But if you don’t know what you need, that’s truly where we come into play.

Antoine Walter: So this ozone application engineering.

So you start with a, with a problem or a challenge if you use , like the less negative term, and you find the suited solution, which brings the expected solution. And it happens to be with ozone, but the heart of it is going from the challenge to the solution.

Michael Doran: Exactly, yes. And that is really where ozone is so widely applicable to so many different applications. And it’s just that the industry in, specifically in Canada, the industry that I’m familiar with, just didn’t have an understanding. They had an understanding that ozone was applicable, but how to apply it.

Was what was lacking. So a lot of engineers and design consultants like to repeat what they’ve done before. And truly, a lot of people have not been exposed to the unlocking the power of ozone in these types of applications. And that’s sort of where we’ve been able to set ourselves aside and really make a name for ourselves on taking that roadblock and barrier to the application of these systems and providing the solution.

We also understand that it is not applicable for everything. So it’s good to know where we fit and understand where we fit. And sometimes it’s great to get to a quick no in a lot of these applications.

But where it is a solution, it is truly the relief of a pain point for our clients and they really appreciate that.

Antoine Walter: Let me be a bit of an ozone nerd for a minute.

Michael Doran: For sure.

Antoine Walter: There are some things in ozone which are pretty funny when you look at it, which is what you said about the, it’s done the way it’s always been done. You have countries which go for a certain type of generators, other which go for a certain type of carrier.

For instance, if you go to France, you would never produce ozone from oxygen. You always do ozone from air because that’s the way it was done. And that’s the way it was done in 1908 in Nice when it was invented. And that’s the way they still do it today. So, What’s the way you do it? Let’s go through the technical specs and then I don’t bother you too long with that.

And we go back to maybe more interesting thing for a wider audience than just the ozone nerd. So how do you produce ozone?

Michael Doran: Great question. So we are using dielectric barrier discharge, so Corona discharge ozone generators, I started off with just ambient air drive, ambient air with some of the generators we were using, but we’ve moved to more of the high efficiency scenarios where we’re using either a pressure swing absorption, oxygen generator from a company like AirSep, one of our partners that we’ve worked a lot with or LOX on certain scenarios.

But a lot of the times we’ll use the oxygen generators because the remoteness of our installations and also, It’s the operational aspect. There are certain systems that we have that people probably don’t look on enough to notice if the oxygen was running out. So, the stability of having an oxygen generator has been very beneficial to us.

And then the ozone generation process we are typically presenting ozone anywhere between 8 to 14% weight to really optimize the dissolution in the water. We’ve. Really paid attention to Mazzei’s notes on gas and liquid ratios and pressurized systems for slipstream injection followed by downstream contact time.

So whether or not we’re doing an upstream system with required contact time for the oxidation of organics or the disinfection of things, or whether we’re doing a downstream system where we’re doing a clean in place for surface sanitation. We can modify our system designs relevantly to the installation and applications really optimize both footprint, power and efficiency of the units.

So that’s truly a level of flexibility that’s different than just, you know, pulling something off the shelf and pro selling a piece of equipment. So that’s truly why we say we, we like to provide solutions.

Antoine Walter: I’m sorry I keep dragging you down to the product, but that’s my last product question. How much kilogram of ozone per Howard do you produce and what would be the typical range where you are playing?

Michael Doran: Typically 30 grams an hour up to three to five kg an hour. So it’s quite a wide spectrum, but truly where we operate is in the unserviced areas of the market. In Canada, there are a lot of great. Companies, the big boys so to speak who are doing very large ozone systems and very large applications, but there’s a lot of small communities or small industrial applications that truly need this solution.

And that’s where we’ve gravitated towards where we have this niche of being able to understand for, you know, a root producer cleaning their vegetables or a dairy farm. A beverage or a bottling company right up to mid-scale municipal wastewater treatment. So having the flexibility of being able to provide that range of ozone production is really beneficial to the markets that we’re able to go after.

Antoine Walter: So talking of these markets, if I hear you right, it seems to go towards this decentralized distributed area. So what is the typical way you do that? Is it that, you look for the challenge you design the right solution, you build and then you disappear? Or is there some elements of operations involved of maintenance of lifetime support?

How do you operate?

Michael Doran: Oh, great question. So for us, we don’t think of it as selling equipment as much as inheriting clients. So we truly are about the long-term lifespan of the solution. So with one of the ones we are incredibly proud of the vertical that we’re involved in here in Canada is dealing with First Nation drinking water systems.

And these are remote indigenous communities that have long been having struggles with their water quality. So it’s something where we are working upfront with the engineers and our partners to design the system. To match the quality of the water, then supply the system through general contractors in the procurement process, and then go up and train repeatedly and provide that ongoing support to make sure that everybody is comfortable in providing their community the safe drinking water that they deserve.

One of the communities it’s called Schul Lake 40, we were working. It was 24 years. They’re on a boil water advisory. So the fact that we are able to be a part of the solution to take them off of that, and then their community just recently won an award in the quality of the water that they’re producing.

So those types of things are really what helped drive our team. We really take pride in those types of activities. So we’ve been able to do over a dozen of those communities so far and look forward to many more.

Antoine Walter: So when you do a First Nation project I hear that you want you build up relationships and to be a partner on the long run. Does that mean that you are turning your offering into a service or is it like , regular maintenance?

Michael Doran: It’s a service and a support scenario, so there’s obviously always opportunities or challenges associated with sometimes with the commissioning and integration of equipment and getting things up and rolling the way that it should be. And then the ongoing support for the community is key.

It really is making people feel comfortable in the operation and knowing that they have a resource at the end of the phone or a resource that can show up and help support. And that’s something that we really, whether it’s in those applications or we do a lot of different industrial or building infrastructure type scenarios, but that is something we pride ourselves on, is always developing that service package and maintenance package for our clients and really answering the question, providing the training, providing support.

Often will send up a laptop or be able to remote into a system be able to do a Zoom or a teams call with somebody real time so we can see what they’re seeing and we can provide that level of support and comfort that we’re gonna resolve Any issues that do occur. And in remote communities, sometimes that really is a big difference for them, is to feel like they are connected.

Antoine Walter: Talking of this connection, you have a system which doesn’t rely on any external supply because you’re generating your own oxygen. So as long as you have electricity. You can be running without the need for a human, I guess. So how much can you automate your system?

Michael Doran: It’s very automated. In fact, we have systems that we can monitor and control on our phone. So it’s really nice to see the way that the internet of things and automation and interconnectivity has allowed us to put eyes on things in real time and really diagnose and monitor what’s happening. So we can measure flow, we can measure the oxidative reduction potential coming out of our system, or the dissolved ozone levels coming out of our system.

As well we always integrate ambient ozone, alarms and sensors to ensure a safe environment for everyone. So it’s truly one of the great advancements in the last 10 years for an ozone system is the integration of things like HMIs and PLCs to really control and monitor that across the internet or in other methods of direct communication, depending on the scenarios.

Antoine Walter: you mentioned this ambient Ozone monitoring, which. Often a way to remind people of how dangerous of a gas ozone is. And if on top of that you listen to all the ones which don’t like ozone that much and tell you that after all you’re taking something and breaking it down in something maybe more problematic… Is it something you hear a lot and what’s your counter argumentation to that?

Michael Doran: Oh, it’s it, absolutely. And one of the things that we really have done is we’re advocates to. Answer those questions directly on ozone itself is an incredibly powerful oxidant. It truly is and it is more aggressive than say things like chlorine gas, but the key is about the use and application of the ozone and the safety that’s associated with that.

So our systems will warn you at a safe eight hour exposure limit. And our systems can alarm and shut down at a safe two hour exposure limit, and we’re able to integrate multiple ambient ozone sensors at different locations to ensure where you’re producing it or where you’re using it is all considered to be in a safe operational environment.

As well, things like the efficiency of mass transfer into the water is so greatly. Enhanced now, so you can use 90 to 95% of the ozone you make and really control and limit your off-gassing through degas devices or negative blowers and run it through an ambient ozone destruct unit. It’s really about understanding those activities and those things that allow for successful installations.

If you just buy an ozone generator and bubble it into a tank, there is a lot of things that can go wrong. But if you understand holistically what the infrastructure and scenario is, a solution is there, and that’s sort of where we really strive to present that to people.

Antoine Walter: you mentioned the bubbling into a tank. You know, that’s another of these discrepancies between geographies. If you come to Europe and you want to put an injector and nozzles, people will look at you like, how crazy are you? And if you get to North America and you say, Hey, I have dome diffusers, people will look at you and say, Hey, I’m not willing to build a jacuzzi.

I want to have a treatment plant. So, Do you think there’s a rational behind all of that, or it’s just about finding The best local technology adapted to local habit?

Michael Doran: It, It’s really interesting because in out part of Ontario or Canada, it, it truly was not following the progression and development that occurred in Europe. And so that we’ve had the luck or the opportunity to utilize what we feel is the best opportunities for efficiency and effectiveness where we don’t have the legacy scenarios as much that we have to overcome that way on transitioning somebody from a method they’re comfortable with because quite frankly, most people just don’t understand which are the options that are out there.

For us too, I think the efficiency on the power costs or the consumption is also relevant. And then obviously the ambient Ozone control is also a big portion of that too. it is, it is different though.

I mean, there are people, there are different ways to apply ozone and there are ways that people are more comfortable with. But we definitely believe in the methods we’ve been doing.

Antoine Walter: You’ve been picking ozone, which is one of the things you can be picking within the water industry. We’ve covered. Now, the ozone part, let’s examine a bit, if you will, the entrepreneurship part of it. It’s amazing to develop a system in six months when the timelines can be decades in that industry.

 I said it, I was working for an ozone company in six months, we were maybe drafting the outline, not coming with a full blown product. So, so that’s amazing. When you look back in time, I think you’ve now passed the 1000 systems, which you have been installing. You said organic before, but is it organic and linear growth or did you see inflection points where all of a sudden things got faster or slowed

Michael Doran: Yes definite inflection points. We were traveling along sort of with minimal growth and just sustaining for quite a while, and then with the pull that we had into different markets and different sized equipment that really us being able to adapt and evolve to those scenarios really led to inflection points in what we’re doing and how we’re doing it.

And it’s about really understanding the different plateaus and the different verticals and then taking the evolution accordingly to those different scenarios. So, just recently we’re getting into. Larger and larger kilogram an hour type systems, which is really changes the dynamic from an entrepreneur standpoint or a business standpoint comparatively to doing single gram an hour ozone systems back in the day.

So it’s really been amplified by the verticals, by the size of the equipment, by the different levels of opportunity. And then even the gravitation towards. Full stainless steel piping systems or NEMA 4X ratings and things like that really drive a lot of it as well. The instrumentation and monitoring of systems can be sometimes as expensive as the actual ozone production as well, so it’s really unique , in a lot of those scenarios too.

Antoine Walter: You mentioned several inflection points. Can you just pick one, and tell us the story of that specific one?.

Michael Doran: Yes. One of them for sure was around the there’s a local town Colberg, which really was focused on getting off chlorine and sulfur dioxide on there. On their system, they were have been evaluating different options such as parasitic acid or things like that to really still provide the great disinfection, but they truly did care about the environment.

They were discharging into a trout stream that led to a public beach, and the people there really cared about reducing the amount of chemicals they were putting into the environment. Through the support of the Green Municipal Fund through the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, they were able to get the support financially for a grant offset that allowed us to retrofit their existing chlorine contact chamber with an ozone system.

And it was one of the first of his kind with the slipstream utilizing the basin effluent to supersaturated ozone and reintroduce it there and the impact on the quality of the effluent, like the reduction in toxicity, the achieving the disinfection, the fact that you could see 10 feet down through it really was just such a huge eye-opener for us because it was being done at anywhere between 12,000 meters cubed to 36,000 meters cubed a day.

So we’re talking about substantial volumes of water for us. I know from some of the big boys that would be, you know, normal or small, but for us it was truly one of those inflection points where we could see the impact both on the environment and for the community.

And the operational costs of our systems were comparable to a chlorine and sulfur dioxide system, which was eye-opening comparatively to the historical views on ozone and the OPEX associated with ozone. So we, we tend to joke around with the operators there that eventually we anticipate the trout to be swimming back upstream into the plant because the water coming out so nice.

Antoine Walter: That’s a good one. You mentioned the big boys. How do you. Swim like those trouts within that competitive ocean, who’s your direct competition? Is it within the ozone guys that you see competition, or do you rather compete against the chlorine suppliers and say, look, there’s an alternative chlorine free, the strongest disinfectant on earth.

And so far and so on.

Michael Doran: for us we’re very fortunate to be part of the International Ozone Association and I’m actually on the industrial committee with representatives from those other organizations. And they’re great people and they do great work. And I think though that we have more agility at times to handle unique scenarios and be able to adapt to those unique scenarios, being more of an lean and agile organization.

So we understand sort of a pathway that is the path of least resistance. I mean, for instance, we know that we are not going to be able to compete against a UV light retrofit. And we also know that certain times chemicals, you’d have to figure out what the life cycle cost versus an opex or CapEx cost would be for the rationale associated with it.

As well we know that we’re not gonna go head to head on, the city of Toronto or something, on that scale and scope that falls on the radar of those other organizations. So it, it is about knowing myself and know where you can make the most difference, and I think that’s something that we are.

Constantly working towards to, to ensure there’s some opportunities that we’ve been presented that we probably chased for too long and spent too much resources on. And in an organization like ours that’s in a growth phase time is a limited resource. So really understanding where you can be impactful is key from a business

Antoine Walter: You mentioned the growth phase, and I’m coming back to that in just a minute, but you also mentioned the International Ozone Association and I. Bring you that question, which I think I brought also to Jim by the time he was on that microphone, because when I used to be an ozone professional, I had a hard time wrapping my head around the International Ozone Association.

It is a place where you sit together with all your competitors, you present at every congress, your new stuff, new technologies, new applications, just for all of them to say, Hey, sounds interesting. Let me copy. So I never could really understand the meaning of that association.

Michael Doran: That’s really it. Like we are very passionate about the underutilization of ozone in the world. We really, truly feel that it plays. A huge part. And I mean, you can see it from the growth in ozone generator sales. It’s actually quite impressive the compound annual growth rate of ozone generator sales in the world right now.

And just in gonna continue to grow. But the organization is really, it’s an interesting one because it’s. People who are passionate about being able to provide solutions. So they do let down their barriers. They do let down the competitive barriers to an extended period of time to share knowledge, to share resources.

Even the journal of ozone Science and Engineering is such a great resource for the applicability of ozone and the different stoichiometries with advanced chemistries and things of that nature. But don’t get me wrong, at the end of the day, I mean, we all. Looking for business and looking for work.

So, the good news is the more of us out there making ozone a readily available tool, the better It really is for everyone. And we also all know that car companies like Ford and G M C can be on the road at the same time as well. So the market share out there is quite large and that’s one thing about the IOA is the resource knowledge sharing.

For us all to be successful for Ozone to be successful is sort of the flagship that helps drive everyone.

Antoine Walter: Flagship is also a key word where I’m coming back later, but let me take the growth question actually. You mentioned that you’re in a growth phase and you have, I guess, further objectives to, to push the envelope. Of your about 1000 thousand systems today. How much are in Canada? How much are abroad? Do you intends to go further abroad?

What’s your vision?

Michael Doran: So we have installations in nine countries, but a lot of them were specific individual one-offs from people that were very interested in the offerings that we had and we were very fortunate and to support them. We are very much focused on being one of the dominant ozone suppliers, if not the dominant ozone solution provider in Canada.

But also we are very interested in the market share in the And externally after that it’s easiest to grow most in geography that you can support. And that is truly, again, part of our business model is the ability to support it. So if the pull was such in an international market that we would develop and adapt our model over there, then we would definitely support that.

But currently it’s In our backyard first, and then growing out from there.

Antoine Walter: How many people are you at Aclarus today?

Michael Doran: 18 today.

Antoine Walter: All in your headquarters or distributed across Canada, north America.

Michael Doran: Across Canada right now. So, currently most of us are based in Peterborough, Ontario, but we do have some satellite offices to be able to support the remote scenarios as well and really leverage our expansion. And as well, we work with some great partners. That are located in different provinces or different areas and are able to support them as well.

So they’ve been able to distribute and provide our solutions and integrate other pieces of their equipment to the solutions, and then we’re able to support them and train them.

Antoine Walter: So you mentioned this ambition. I mean, ambition probably already the case but to further be the big boy in Canada. And that connects to my flagship question, what is the status of the Montreal Wastewater treatment plant using ozone, which is supposed for 15 years to become the biggest in the world?

But I’m not sure if that will ever happen.

Michael Doran: I, to be honest, I am not sure. I it was really funny because when we were talking to some of the representatives on that project and we mentioned, well, we’ve done work with McGill University on how ozone is effective at the removal of contaminants of emerging concern such as illicit drug metabolites.

Or we’ve done two municipal installations on wastewater and they’re like, really? Oh, okay. Cuz they have a very large organization and a very large project and I believe it is proceeding. But I remember hearing about that when we started our company and now the thought that we’ve actually done those types of applications and they haven’t finished theirs yet.

It is something that we take pride in, but we wish them the best and hope it is successful.

Antoine Walter: You hope or you think it’ll really happen one day.

Michael Doran: I do think it will happen one day. I think it just makes so much sense in so many regards and I just am surprised that it is taking as long as it has.

Antoine Walter: That’s just my very personal, stupid mind. But when I was seeing all the debate with the merger between SUEZ and Veolia, I was thinking, what will happen to that project because, All the brain works is now with SUEZ because it was made by the people which are still part of suez, and all the technology part is now with Veolia.

So it’s two different companies which somehow own that contract. So I guess it’s not the end of the fun. And I guess probably, I hope for them it’s the kind of thing they have discussed in due diligence. So that , that one is sorted out.

Michael Doran: I really hope so because I mean, it’s interesting that just the concept of the mergers and acquisitions in the ozone space itself and how disruptive that can be to the support of existing ozone systems or ozone installations and there’s a lot of companies Clearwater Tech or Pacific Ozone that have been.

Amalgamated into larger organizations where we are provided an opportunity to go service and support those systems. And so there’s really an interesting dynamic that’s been going on in this, in the space, and that’s one thing where we really do see the concept of being able to provide the solution and the high touch, high feel versus just a product offering is a differentiator for us.

Antoine Walter: I’m not fully sure now if it’s Veolia or Saur, so I might be saying something more stupid than me which. Quite a stretch, but if I’m right, a time ago, Veolia did own Trailigaz, which was an ozone company, which they sold Wedeco took over at the time. So now it’s Xylem. And so now Veolia has, again, an ozone company.

So it sounds like. Life is a cycle, but those are all M&A happening, I would say at another level than the one you are at. It’s the, this kind of big boys you were mentioning. Nevertheless, when I was preparing for that episode, I found an M&A entry for you. So what is this M&A entry that happened in 2020?

Can you tell me if the entry is right and what it was about and what you wanted to achieve with that?

Michael Doran: We had known some individuals in the marketplace that were part of an organization that was called Water Tap in the Ontario government sort of water technology acceleration program. And they, these individuals Rick Van Sand and Brianis specifically were two industry professionals that knew the water space that formed a capital company.

And when we were in a position. In our own growth cycle. It was them that I reached out to for their advice and for their input, and I was fortunate enough for them to take an interest in getting involved in the company and really the understanding and of the business landscape associated with water and.

The understanding of how to properly create your own identity and processes to drive a water business was something I did not have. I knew technology , but understanding the business side of it was so impactful for our growth and their patients. In the rawness of where we were towards the more evolution of our processes to where we are.

Is something that’s just been so rewarding and I’m so thankful for their involvement in what we do and who we are now as a full team. They’re very high touch, high feel they’re very passionate and believe in the vision, and it’s not your standard. Arms length investors, it’s people who are in here at the boardroom table, at the regular operational desk, and at the Christmas parties.

Like they, they truly are involved in the the culture and the passion of what we are doing.

Antoine Walter: And so with that setup, what is your vision? What are your KPIs over the next, I don’t know, five years, for instance? Where do you want to head?

Michael Doran: We are anticipating and predicting to be able to sustain within 30 to 45% compound annual growth. So we really do want to become 50 to a hundred million dollars in a very short order as far as annual revenues, and be able to be incredibly impactful in the landscape in the water industry in Canada.

Antoine Walter: And with all of that, you still have time to go fishing?

Michael Doran: Not as much as I’d like to at times, but but definitely definitely have an opportunity to do that. It is very handy with some of our remote installations. They’re usually in some beautiful natural environments.

Antoine Walter: And how involved are you with this new uses of ozone like micro pollutant removal? At one time it was 1.4 dioxane, which was the hot kid in town. Nowadays it’s a bit more pfas, but where ozone might reach its limit as well.

Michael Doran: Well, we were fortunate enough to do some early work with McGill University and Trenton University on these illicit drug metabolite removals. So we did piloting both in municipal infrastructure to measure the removal of CECs and endocrine disruptors and things like that, as well as seasonal lagoons in remote communities for lowering their toxicity for the discharge as well.

We understand. The great work that lots of international universities or applications have provided that we know if we are getting one level of treatment, then the conditions are such. We also know we are achieving those other unique ones, even though we aren’t always able to quantify it.

We just do know that those things are occurring because of the times we have been able to monitor, document, and quantify it with.

We’re also working with some different organizations that are developing specialized sensors. So there are people who are currently developing PFAS specific or Biological dissolved organic carbon specific sensors that would be indicative of some of the other contaminants that we would be addressing.

But yeah, so it’s not always directly measurable, but it’s definitely being able to be inferred from the research that’s out there, that we are seeing those other substantial decreases when we’re achieving our solutions.

Antoine Walter: So does that mean that you’re also looking at different types of growth paths where instead of. Having more installations, you could be also beefing up the scope of delivery on your usual type of installations.

Michael Doran: Yes, both that and the applicability of the retrofit on existing infrastructures for municipalities that are seeing changes in their source water. I mean, as climate change affects source waters and as. Awareness associated with contaminants of emerging concern come forward. The ability to retrofit a small footprint ozone system into an existing infrastructure to provide that barrier level protection has been a substantial thing as well as us.

Being able to provide an ozone system or a complete treatment train. And the one thing that we’ve been noticing a lot more lately is the emergence of younger engineers as there’s been a sort of a wave of turnover in the industry where they’re more interested in the applicability of ozone and the applicability of utilizing current infrastructures and optimizing it.

So there is different processes. We’ve seen for even things like trihalomethane formation, potential reduction. So we’re utilizing ozone and biological processes now, and those weren’t typically considered especially on a retrofit scenario. So instead of trying to fit a membrane into a conventional plant, you can actually take a look at involving ozone and AOP processes to limit the THM formation potential during seasonal organic loading.

So it’s really unique applications that we are gravitating towards. And that is something that really energizes me is as a team being able to take a look at these really cutting edge leading edge scenarios and being involved in providing solutions.

Antoine Walter: can fully get why that is fascinating. Now, if I take the flip side of that coin, isn’t it a dangerous place to be as a scale up? Because you might be investing a lot of time and efforts into an application, which ultimately doesn’t become as big as expected.

Michael Doran: Absolutely. And that is going back to understanding the variability of and the strategy. And that’s really where my partners have really helped hone the types of questions we need to be asking ourselves to really feel strong about the strategy or the market applicability. So for instance we. Are very interested in certain aspects of pharmaceutical, but we are not an electrolytic ozone company.

So there’s a difference there in knowing market penetration and market dominance in those types of applications. We would be sort of barking up the wrong tree there in that scenario. But really understanding the questions to ask yourself about total achievable market or pathways to market barriers, risk profiles.

That, that’s really where my business partners have just really opened up a new way of thinking to us about understanding how to be the most successful solution provider in the limited resources we have at times, which is time in people. And then really understanding how to maximize that and.

Maybe we can’t do it today, but maybe we can do it tomorrow. So that’s something that we always keep on the back burner as far as new verticals or new applications we might want to attempt in our product development.

Antoine Walter: When I opened that conversation, I mentioned how I enjoyed the storytelling on your website and how there’s really a backstory. Which, honestly, we can feel throughout what you’ve said so far. So just to close with what I opened with you wanted to cure cancer and and then you didn’t follow that path and you created an ozone company.

And now that you’re working on this endocrine, disruptors and and emerging contaminants, which are suspected to be carcinogenic, do you consider yourself like also closing that loop and somehow solving and curing cancer?.

Michael Doran: So the short answer is yes. I mean, we really do feel that we are having a positive impact on the environment and a positive impact on people’s health. Whether it’s through the removal of contaminants and wastewaters that are going into the hydrological cycle that are compounding back on people or whether it’s providing barrier protection on drinking water systems for people.

We truly do feel and believe that those are things that we are making a difference for, and there are just the thought of the volumes of water that we can treat and we can help eliminate those chemicals that. Cause such pain in people’s lives, both on health and scenarios, and provide them the quality of water that we all deserve.

Antoine Walter: Well, Michael, it was so pleasant to follow your path and to go into this World of ozone and, I mean the canadian kindness is often mentioned as a reference, but you are the awesome definition of that. So thanks a lot for this deep dive.

Michael Doran: Thank you. Really do appreciate the opportunity to put ozone back in this manner.

Antoine Walter: If that’s meant for you. I have a last section, which is called the rapid fire questions.

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Rapid Fire Questions

Antoine Walter: And so in that part I try to keep the questions short. You’re supposed to keep the answers short, and the one which is going on Sidetracks all the time is always me. So my first question there is, what is the most exciting project you’ve been working on and why?

And I guess maybe you hinted to it before.

Michael Doran: Yes, it was the Shore Lake 40 Project, but the First Nation projects for us have been really, truly impactful on so many levels to listen to people talk about the challenges in water and being able to help survive sur surpass the challenges and provide good water. That truly is the, those communities has been some of the most impactful.

Antoine Walter: Can you name one thing that you’ve learned the hard way?

Michael Doran: Yes. They won’t beat a path to your door . So that is definitely one of them. That and also getting to a quick, no, I think those are important aspects in uh, the water industry.

Antoine Walter: Is there something you’re doing today in your job that you will not be doing in 10?

Michael Doran: I hope it’s the level of advocacy we have to do for ozone. I hope that it becomes more understood in its applicability and becomes more commonplace that people are more familiar with the power and integration into infrastructure.

Antoine Walter: I told you about the Sidetracks. What makes you think that it might be changing in the next 10 years when ozone is around for more than a century?

Michael Doran: I think just the sheer growth in the market is one of the fastest growing markets in the disinfection of water treatment space. It’s been much more adopted in North America. And this is all through the lens of being somebody in Canada. So, I mean, I know it’s saturated in the European and Asian markets and things much more, but here I feel that there’s, it’s just an open landscape of opportunity and I think that having more and more installations here, I mean, people can count on one hand.

The level of municipal infrastructure with ozone in Canada. So, now it’s becoming much more prevalent as, and people understand it and I hope that the applicability of it just becomes more well understood.

Antoine Walter: But you still get reactions like, what are you doing at the ozone layer?

Michael Doran: Uh, I do, and I also get, so is it a pate? Is it a liquid? And no, it’s a gas and it needs to be mixed in the water and generated on site and, you know, so it’s it’s that level of familiarity for sure.

Antoine Walter: what is the trend to watch out for in the water sector?

Michael Doran: Yes. I think the growth of ozone is the c e c aspects are also very substantial. The. Requirement of something like the integration of an ozone system into a retrofit to make the plant more compliant or provide better water. I think that truly is it the applicability of ozone in these advanced contaminants.

Emerging concern is one of the trends that I think people should pay attention to.

Antoine Walter: So for the next question, you don’t have to travel that far because it’s this big United Nation conference, which is in New York next year. But, you know, people have been, some have been happy, some have been very peaced at the agenda. So I get you a chance here. You can add something to the agenda or remove something from the agenda.

So what is it that you would be.

Michael Doran: I would be adding just the question about what’s the true value of water? And I think that too often it’s seen as an expense. Too often it’s seen as a cost burden that people skimp out on without understanding the true impact on your society. I mean, the I liken it to the initial concept of when they realized, How harmful lead could be, where, you know, it was really dramatically impacting the entire population.

I, I really see the need for quantifying the health, the socioeconomic impacts of water quality as being a key driver, really understanding the metrics associated with the value of water. I think that is something and the. Then you can really start to justify the water reuse applications, the investment in technology, the investment in infrastructure, because you truly understand the scale and scope the of the impact that water contamination has on people.

Antoine Walter: You have my vote that. If I can comes on the agenda, of course, doesn’t bring you very far, , but you have my vote. It’s the beginning. Last question. Would you have someone to recommend me? That should definitely invite as soon as possible on that microphone.

Michael Doran: I, I do, I actually have three. If you can bear with me for a second. So Chuck Smith is the owner and president of Pinnacle and Guardian Ozone, a very knowledgeable individual in the ozone space. Bob Kennedy is the CTO of New Terra, that they’re just doing some great work internationally with regards to their installations.

And then Mark Lewis is the director of Sales at Delco, which is a company based in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, doing some really impactful things with their technologies as well. So just the right mentality of people in the water space. I find tho those individuals.

Antoine Walter: You brought a pinnacle, which used to be something. I, I think we had posters of them when I was working at Ozonia, like, that’s the enemy.

So that would be interesting.

Michael Doran: yeah, absolutely. We work quite a lot with them and have learned quite a lot from them.

Antoine Walter: Well, I stand my points. Michael, it’s been an awesome pleasure to have that conversation with you. So thanks a lot and I hope to have a follow up with you somewhere down the line where you have achieved and realized your vision and and you have new milestones to share. So thanks a lot.

Michael Doran: I really appreciate it and I look forward to that future conversation for sure.

Other Episodes:

FREDsense: Revolutionizing Water Quality Monitoring with Biosensor Innovation

By Antoine Walter | 7 May 2025

Swirltex: Revolutionizing Wastewater Treatment with Bubbly Innovation

By Antoine Walter | 30 April 2025

Blue Foot Membranes: The Next Evolution in Water Filtration

By Antoine Walter | 16 April 2025

Echo River Capital: Pioneering the Future of Water Innovation

By Antoine Walter | 3 April 2025

1001 Fontaines: Engineering Sustainable Water Access Through Social Entrepreneurship

By Antoine Walter | 22 March 2025

Amazon’s Water Footprint: Tech Giant’s Quest for Water Sustainability

By Antoine Walter | 19 March 2025

Turing: The AI Revolution Quenching the Water Industry’s Thirst for Innovation

By Antoine Walter | 26 February 2025

Altillion: Pioneering Digital Intelligence for Water Asset Management

By Antoine Walter | 6 February 2025

Flocean: Pioneering Ocean-Based Water Solutions

By Antoine Walter | 15 January 2025

Botanical Water Technologies: Harvesting Liquid Gold from Plants

By Antoine Walter | 4 December 2024

The post How to Win in a Competitive & Mature Niche Market: The Astonishing Aclarus Ozone appeared first on (don't) Waste Water.

Hence, LCA is a powerful decision-making tool that helps identify opportunities to reduce environmental impacts, improve efficiency, and promote circularity. Let’s explore it:

with Dubravka Skunca, LCA Representative and Expert for the European Commission, but also an SME Support leader at the European Regional Development Fund, Business Consultant, and Council Representative at various EIT groups.    

Dubravka is also LCA Leader for Green Protein, a European project which aims at a major innovation in the fields of protein production and food loss reduction in the EU by producing high-added value, food-grade functional proteins, and other ingredients out of green field waste.

What we covered:

What Life Cycle Assessment actually is, and what outcomes to expect from it

How Water Footprint is one of the dimensions of Lifecycle Assessment

How there won’t be any water circularity without a global circularity – a topic we had already addressed with Gonzalo Delacámara last week

How sustainability can involve difficult calls to make for decision-makers and how LCA can help make the right decisions

How SMEs can benefit from Lifecycle Assessment not only for their own growth path but also to better interact with large companies

How sustainability is on the roadmap of most CEOs for their companies’ future but also their present

How circularity will have to play an increased role in the agri-food value chain

What to do once you’ve completed your Lifecycle Assessment and which tools and steps come next

How wasted food is also a lot of wasted water, and how new approaches strive to fight that sustainability non-sense

Coaching SMEs, Lecturing at the University, startups as a way to feed major’s innovation, demonstrating impact to a wide audience… and much more!

… and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨  

Resources:

Send your warmest regards to Dubravka on LinkedIn 

is on Linkedin

Antoine Walter on LinkedIn

Infographic

Full Transcript:

These are computer-generated, so expect some typos

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Antoine Walter: Hi Dubravka, welcome to the show.

Dubravka Skunca: Hi Antoine. It’s my pleasure to be here!

Antoine Walter: Actually, I’m curious to get to know a bit better today, your field of expertise and a different way to look at the water challenges we face right now because you’re not coming from a water angle and that is something which is quite appealing to me. I like to start by getting to know you. And that starts with a pretty simple question.

How did you first get interested in research and innovation and partnerships and global challenge?

Dubravka Skunca: That’s an interesting question. So for a long time I have been a professor at university. Research was something that I was doing since I was 22. But when I entered the Green Pertain project, Which was finance, European Commission, horizon 2020. Biobase Industries. Grant I was lifecycle leader in this project.

And this is actually where I got really accustomed and very interested in the global goals. And because our Goal there was to make a protein, to extract it in an environmentally friendly way from sugar beet leaves. And this was really interesting for me. And we had established a demo plant in Netherlands.

So the entire process was really the full research and development and innovation related so this is in 2016 when the project started. And this is the start of my serious career in this area. Let’s say it like that.

Antoine Walter: So for the muggle, which in this case is me can you define life cycle and life cycle assessment, where does it start? Where does it stop? What’s the content of it?

Dubravka Skunca: Basically life cycle assessment. It’s scientific tool and it helps you to measure the impact on the environment of products regarding all the stages of their life cycle. And for example, with the circular economy, you have different options regarding the recycling the reuse of components and so on.

And then with the help of the lifecycle assessment, you can get an exact number, an exact measurement of environmental burden, of your environmental pollution of each of these options. And then you can choose the one that influences the environment the least.

Antoine Walter: You started in 2016 to get interested into these global challenges and that got you to look at water. So water is one of the components in this life cycle assessment.

Dubravka Skunca: Yes, that is correct. Water footprint is one of the environmental impact categories. That lifecycle assessment is measuring with the help of the software. And when you enter all the input and output data of the certain production system you then get all these indicators, quantified.

Water footprint. Global warming potential. I mean CO2 ozone layer depletion, land use and so on. And then you can have a better picture about the possibility, how to do the mitigation optimization strategies to lower the environmental impact

Antoine Walter: you mentioned this Horizon 2020 project, which started in 2016. How long will it still last?

Dubravka Skunca: So it has ended last year at the end of May, 2021. So it lasted almost five years.

Antoine Walter: And so when the project was over, what did you do after that?

Dubravka Skunca: During the entire time when I was on the project at the same time, I was university professor, which I am still. And before the project ended, I have actually started to collaborate with the EIT and especially EIT food. And this is something that I have done and I have supported them in their activities.

And also soon after the project ended in October, 2021 I have become a leading SME support expert for the GO Project, which is helping Swedish SMEs to do the green transition and to implement life cycle assessments, circular economy principles and so on. In their business, it’s also an EU project financed by European Regional Development Fund and Reg.

Antoine Walter: If I’m right now, it’s right from the top of my head. At Project you have 25 SMEs, right?

Dubravka Skunca: Yes. All together 25 SMEs. .

Antoine Walter: What’s the profiles of those companies?

Dubravka Skunca: It’s a really good question. Because these companies are in the area of food. They’re in the different part of the value chain of the food production. And my area of expertise outside of lifecycle assessment is food chains. That’s what my PhD was about.

Antoine Walter: Okay. I’d like to come back to this topic of food in a minute, but you mentioned EIT and actually that’s what brings us somehow to together. We will be sitting in the round table together on the topic of how to go fully water circular by 2050. And I’d like to start with. Opinion as a life cycle expert. Do you think that we are ready to go fully water circle?

Dubravka Skunca: My colleague on the round table, Gonzalo, would be the right address for this question I would not give my prediction because I think he’s the expert for that question.

Antoine Walter: So I can give you my opinion, , which is very clear. It’s to, to me it’s a, no, we are not ready. So the question is how do we get ready? And I think to that extent, what you just said makes a lot of sense. How would you define Water circularity.

Dubravka Skunca: I would basically start not with the water circularity, but with the circularity concept,

On its own. So, in brief I would like to just mention that we have the linear economy, which is craddle to grave approach. We have goods designed for a single lifetime disposed on the landfill after the use.

And this is putting a significant pressure. On the environment, on the one hand, on the other hand, on natural resource extraction. But if we compare linear economy with the circular economy, we can see the circular economy actually promotes a quite different approach. It’s a craddle to craddle approach, and here we are using the waste of one industry as the resource for another circularity is implemented at every stage of the value chain.

And the usage of recycling renewable energy, using products as long as possible is enforced. And then we have one thing with the circular economy principles. So reusing of the components can require additional transport in some cases for the collection of these components. On the other hand, if we are using recycled materials, this would shorten the lifetime of a product and we sometimes have a problem how to choose the best circular strategy.

And this is where the life cycle assessment actually helps. As we’ve spoken before, it provides. with the number and a scientific tool. It measures environmental footprint, all stages of the life cycle of a product. And it can actually do the comparison of different circular economy strategies.

So for example, different types of water use, different types of water treatments in the case of water, for example. And why is this really important for example, for startups SM. In some cases municipalities, because this combination of the lifecycle assessment methodology on the one hand and the circular economy principles on the other provides a good comparison of circular strategies and helps this small player to choose the strategy that is best for them, not only from the environmental aspect but also from.

 Cost cutting aspect because if you use less resources, you will in most of the cases, pay less. So life cycle assessment helps here to indicate hotspots in the production chain of the startups of the SMEs. And what is really important. It can help startups and SMEs to choose the most sustainable suppliers.

And why is this really important? This is really important because it can enable port startups and SMEs to be partners for the large multinational enterprises because these large multinational enterprises are wanting to collaborate only with those small companies, innovative companies which have the entire value chain.

And all of their suppliers in check and where their entire chain is environmentally friendly. So in this case it provides a a significant amount of help to SMEs and startups for choosing the sustainable suppliers, but also. SMEs and startups by using lifecycle assessment in combination with the circular economy, can actually showcase their own consumers, how can they lower their environmental footprint.

In the case of the food production chain, for example, they can showcase on the website or on the. Packaging of the product, how much CO2 or liters of water can be saved. If, for example, the packaging is being recycled. And there is no food waste with the consumer.

And it can be quantified. In liters of water and in kilograms of co2. So that’s very important for the consumers to see. And what I would also like to emphasize at the end that this combination of lifecycle assessment and circular economy can help startups and small and medium enterprises to build environmental profile, which can be part of their business plan.

So when they are pitching their ideas to investors or when they’re trying to get bank loans or when they’re applying for the European projects It’s the thing that they can get help from the most. But there is an also an added value because the research has shown that the group of consumers called millennials , are really attracted to buy products and services from companies that are environmentally aware.

And also on the other hand, millennials are motivated to work for these companies, for these startups, SMEs, and companies in general which are showing this environmental aspect in their business.

Antoine Walter: there’s a lot. You just said which I like to deconstruct it a bit , to try to understand it even better. Let’s start by the end with , this, how to appeal to millennials. Millennials today are a portion of the workforce and are a portion of the stakeholders in our associate, but I guess they’re yet the majority in the decision makers and and among the C- level in big companies. How widespread is it today? This awareness of the importance of circularity and this vision of the cradle to cra or really did the entire cycle of a product and all its component

Dubravka Skunca: There was actually research done by an EMD professor, which was also the conclusions of this research published at the World Economic Forum website. And basically the majority of CEOs are quite aware that their business strategy if not today, will have to be sustainable in the future. 62 uh, percent of executives are considering that it’s necessary for sustainability strategy to be competitive today. And another 22% of them are thinking it’ll be necessary in the future.

So, the data are encouraging. And also if we see the big multinational companies and their websites, it is encouraging that we can see the entire reports about circular economy principles, implementation. Then also life cycle assessment conclusions. And they are getting to implement all these strategies in their business because, their market research has proven that consumers nowadays are really environmentally aware and also what is really important their reputation depends on how much Environmentally friendly they are.

And what do I mean, by this? When I mentioned that they want to collaborate only with SMEs and startups, which are having the sustainable suppliers. So these multinational companies even have the special requirements for the companies they are associating themselves with, that they should portray in their value chain because.

If the opposite happens and if some kind of huge environmental pollution is related to the supplier network or on the other hand child labor or something like this, this entire multinational companies and their stakes in their financial market that they have is going to be actually really impacted by this, which we saw in the.

Last years, how these aspects are really important. So I would say that the answer on your question is that , yes, they are aware and they are working towards achieving the full sustainability across the value chain.

Antoine Walter: Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to push you in a corner. I’d like to get them the level of deployment and when you say that they’re aware and that it will be part of what they will be doing. What I hear also is that they don’t necessarily do it today, so it’s a rollout, I guess. The word doesn’t change in one day.

I’m just trying to figure out from your experience , with, for instance, the tool of life cycle assessment. When you present that to SMEs or , to bigger companies, is it a weird animal to them or do they know the tool and do you have to convince them of how useful it is? What is the level of deployment on this.

Dubravka Skunca: So you have mentioned in the future and not today, so No. Today multinational companies are requiring from the companies they’re associated themselves with to have a sustainable supplier chain. And these are the requirements which are enforced today. But the research that I have mentioned I have mentioned that CEOs are aware that.

If not their companies should have completely sustainable strategy right now. They will need to have it in the future. And this means that the great majority of them actually is doing this already. So, the answer on your question, life cycle assessment. When I speak with the representatives of large multinational companies, they are really aware of it.

And also when I speak with the SMEs, they’re also aware of it and the, regarding the startups, majority of them, yes. But I would like to say that it depends in which part of. We are talking about, so the parts of Europe, which are really environmentally aware and are employing sustainability strategies more than the others.

For example, if we have Sweden they, of course, there’s , great majority of startups, SMEs, large companies, know about lifecycle assessment and has either already implemented it or they will implement it in the future.

Antoine Walter: In the preparations of our round table I’ve seen the mention of this circular water 2050 Horizon which is a reports done by Kwr and they mention how it starts with a fully circular slash renewable and safe use of feed stock. And I’ve seen you talking about future fit food systems and I was wondering if those two concepts are the same, and what would be your definition?

Dubravka Skunca: When regarding my background as a scientist and university professor, my answer on this question should have to be based on the research that I have already undertake, because I do not like, To give subjective predictions or my own opinion in that sense, if it’s not based in my research.

So, regarding the feed I would like to say that the question that you have posed is very interesting and I have done an interesting research regarding the chicken meat. Chain, which actually included 119 farm slaughter houses, processing plants and retailers, and 500 households which had altogether more than 2000 consumers.

And what were the results from the environmental. Part of this research, it was lifecycle assessment. So 619 lifecycle assessment calculations have been done and the results were that actually the feed production at a farm had the highest influence regarding the environmental burden on the farm.

And the farm was leading within environmental burden. In comparison to the other four subsystems. So it had the same environmental pollution as slaughterhouse plus processing plant plus retail plus household altogether per kilogram of chicken meat, of course, because everything is recalculated according to the functional unit, which is kilogram of chicken meat.

In order for all this to be comparable, of course, so I would say that feed production on the farm provides the largest environmental burden and the actions towards this should be undertook in the future. So, that would be actually my answer regarding my own research from this point.

Yeah.

Antoine Walter: I’ve discussed on that microphone with. Claudia Winkler and Alice Schmidt, who wrote a book called The Sustainability Puzzle, and we discussed about systems of systems and how it’s difficult in a system of systems to decide which subsystem you start working on first. And sometimes it’s even not the sensitive way to do it.

Sometimes you go on the system of systems and you work there. When you identify that one of these subsystems is a significant contributor, what’s a possible way to address that? D o you? Address that? Portion of the feedstock value chain, or do you take the whole thing and try to reconsider step by step, everything which is inside?

Dubravka Skunca: Regarding any of the hotspot, so for example, here was the production of feed, but when you find, which is the hotspot with the help of lifecycle assessment analysis, what you do next is that you analyzes the possibilities for optimization for possible mitigation options. How to This aspect and what you do.

Then in lifecycle assessment, you are undertaking sensitivity analysis. Sensitivity analysis means that you are testing different aspects that could possibly provide solution for Lower environmental impact in this area. So you will test different aspects of the problem and then you will see which one is the best.

And this is how like life cycle assessment can actually provide the real help. Usually when life cycle assessment is being undertook, in my experience in the paper that I have published, in the project that I’m doing with the Swedish SMEs and so on, so we go into the subsystem that their environmental burden is the highest, and then we see what can we do to test different solutions for this.

And then if we lower the environmental impact like this, then in all together in the chain, it will be lowered.

Antoine Walter: I have again, a question for the muggle, which is still me. Life cycle assessment, is that a picture like , you do an entire calculation, you run it and then you get a result? Or is it like a living tool which will keep processing in the back and which will update you with new information as soon as something new happens in your process.

Dubravka Skunca: This is a really good and very interesting question. So, I will give you a brief intro into the how lifecycle assessment is being done. And first I will just say to you that yes, you are right. It depends at which point you are doing life cycle assessments. So for example, for the EU projects when.

The project is close to the end, when you have the entire production system at place. Then you do life cycle assessment and see if there any fine tuning can be done. I will tell you what was basically the steps for this chicken meat chain analysis? So first we have established the questionnaire.

Which we have structured and put questions for the people working in the farms, for our houses, processing plants, retails, and then also for the consumers in the households. What was our main reason for these questionnaire to, to give them was to have the, all the inputs and all the outputs from the process.

So, we have gathered data for the inputs, including. The water, the different types of energy, electricity, diesel, lpg, natural gas packaging materials, plastic paper materials, and also outputs, paper waste, bio waste, waste water, which are related to this production and consumption of one kilogram of chicken meat.

We have recalculated, like all this data per our functional unit, one kilogram of chicken meet. And then we entered this information into the software. And when we press calculate the software, then we get The exact numbers for each type of the environmental impact categories and what has helped us significantly regarding the chicken meat chain and the entire lifecycle assessment procedure.

It help us realize that the. Results were of course, quite different between examined farms, solar houses, processing plants, retailers, and the main reason that we have figured out why is because smaller stakeholders had higher environmental burden due to lack of the financial resources.

So this is something that was the practical implementation of lca, which led us to see that actually it’s really important for startups and SMEs to undertake LCA as soon as they can, cuz it can really help them in the future. But yes, life cycle assessment in a way is a dynamic tool.

But you are choosing to do it at one point. In the time. So at that point in the time, you will have the LCA and you will publish the. And also to this point of time, you will actually also make the boundaries of the entire system. You will say in your analysis that for example, you have included all the chemicals using for cleaning processes.

You have also including transport, and plus of course all activities that are taking place in each. Farm slaughterhouse, mid processing plant and retail, and this is how you actually close the system. You say when you have done the analysis at which point of time and then you have the results and then the afterwards you do the sensitivity analysis, which can actually help you with mitigation options, but you are completely right in a year.

Of course the life cycle assessment can be done again, and then probably the results will be different, especially if the stakeholders have implemented some of the mitigation optimization environmental options that we suggested.

Antoine Walter: During your life cycle analysis process, how do you deal with the externalities? Like for instance, water scarcity might be an externality. How does it, or does it even influence your calculation?

Dubravka Skunca: Regarding the usual practice of doing lifecycle assessment with. SMEs, and also large companies and the production plants and so on. So what do you do? Yeah. We are using the water use as an input, so we are checking.

How much water is needed for the production of one kilogram of chicken meat, for example, for all of these subsystems. And we are entering this in the software and then at the end we are seeing water footprint. So in that sense, we are using, but then we have an added value because of the sensitivity analysis, we can test the different water treatment options, and then do the.

Environmental burden comparison between the different water treatments and then choose the most environmentally friendly one. I mean, I also wanted to tell you an interesting effect about the bus water tower in Netherlands, which is one of the most sustainable buildings in Netherlands.

And actually what is interesting here is that doing the treatment of the waste water organically. So they have a pond with particular kind of plants, which purifies the waste water organically. So, this is maybe something that would be more common in the future. So I just wanted to mention that there are different, not only typical industrial ways of water treatment.

Antoine Walter: Yeah, it’s a topic we’ve discussed on that microphone with Denise Engelbrecht from Enso Earth on the living buildings and the living machines, which might be part of the future of the way we deal with water in a more circular fashion and on much shorter circle. So interesting that you mention it.

You’ve been co-authoring. White paper on innovative solutions to cope with water scarcity. What is your involvement in that white paper?

Dubravka Skunca: So my involvement in the white paper was regarding the food waste. And the aspects of the water scarcity and how they are interconnected. It’s actually because the percentage of total fresh water that agriculture is using is actually 70% on the global level according to the World Bank data.

Of course, the considerable lower pressure on water resources will be achieved if we avoid the cultivation of the surplus food, which is. Wasted regarding the European Union 88 million tons of food waste each year are being wasted and it has costs of around 143 million Euros as EU project Fusions has done these calculations and suggested so.

Food waste disconnected with climate change, with the consumption over consumption, food scarcity, but food security, but also water scarcity. And what is also really important is inside of this overall food waste, large part is domestic waste, and it’s contributing to pollution of water resources significant.

And what is also on of the information from our white paper is that about one quarter of all water used in agriculture each year is. Food that is consumed, but ultimately wasted. So one quarter of water is related to this water regarding the food waste and what is also these examples, which I mentioned also in the white paper but also during the water academy.

Which is inside the same project E B D E I T are the examples of startups, which made a huge difference in this area. And this is the audio app and also too Good to Go app. Both of them were founded in 2015 and, for example, all your app. Has over 6 million users and it connects people in local community.

People are providing food for their neighbors in need, and it’s a carbon negative company. They saved over 65 million portions of food across over 60 countries. And it helped fault waters cars significantly. They saved billions of liters of water, and on the other hand we have two to go app which is the user is downloading the app, finding the nearby restaurant, bakery, or hotel, then paying and picking up the food.

And in this way it’s saving it from going to waste and. The two good to go up is also having an additional benefit because with the help of the app, like you are finding the nearest place which you are taking the food from, which is really important because of the transport and related environmental emissions, which are then in this case or lower or insignificant because many people are going by foot to grab this.

And the important part is that too good to go up is finding ways in the future to reduce food waste across the entire chain, which is a really important for the future. So these are examples of the startups which actually have made a significant difference in relation to the food waste.

Water use and faulting waters scarcity is one of the additional benefit.

Antoine Walter: I just like to put , into perspective what you just said these numbers on agriculture being 70 to 80% of the water used worldwide and 25% of that water going wasted. That means that. 20% of the water the, in the world is wasted, and we are having this full conversation about water because of the.

The projection of the O C D E, which was showing how 40% of the water will go missing by 2030 if we want to strike a balance without changing anything in our behavior. So it sounds like an incredible, and sorry for the per low hanging fruit, to have this 20% of water, which is just pure waste today.

And if we eliminate that waste, half of the problem is solved. So I know it’s easier said than done but in terms of putting the big numbers, that’s interesting to see. obvious it sounds to be to be addressing that, that problem. The two apps you mentioned are B2C apps, so it’s really taking the consumer on boat 88 million tons was the amount of food waste you mentioned, right.

Dubravka Skunca: yes, in the European Union, each.

Antoine Walter: Is it households which waste that food? Or is it also, I dunno, supermarket or restaurant or agri food businesses. Where is the chunk of that, that that waste coming from?

Dubravka Skunca: It’s all the numbers that you have mentioned are for all together.

Antoine Walter: But what is the biggest contributor

Dubravka Skunca: it really depends on the country that you are looking at. So I don’t have an exact answer on your question. But households are having the significant percentage here in all of the countries. What is the common denominator? All of the EU countries is a households do hold in each of the country’s significant percentage.

And if we would work on the household part of the chain a lot of aspects could be changed. And Olio for example is working regarding this part of the chain.

Antoine Walter: But so millions of users for OYO and to get together. That’s incredible, really. And it’s an amazing achievement. But if I take the other side of the same coin, it’s still a small percentage of all the users. So how do you bring everybody on board?

Dubravka Skunca: I would say so for example, just to clarify, so Olio is including households, but it’s also including Hotels, restaurants, and so on, if they’re interested in donating food on the other hand too good to go is including businesses who are giving food to consumers. But otherwise, this food would be wasted.

My answer on your question would be that one of the solution. Would be actually in startups because they’re innovative and they are small and which means they’re very flexible. And I think that the solution is in in. Actually employing startups to help big companies with their innovativeness and their flexibility because if you join a big company which is not so flexible, but has the resources and startup, which is innovative, but doesn’t have so much financial resources then you can do a lot in this.

And this is one of the reasons why I think the competition like we are going to have in the main event is really important. And also the small and medium companies and startups floating waters scarcity can truly make a difference. So I would say in the beginning they can start by themselves with their innovative ideas.

In the future, they could possibly. With the larger players, and then we have the entire ecosystem interconnected and some important innovative and environmentally friendly solutions implement.

Antoine Walter: this aspect of bringing the consumer on board is something which let me do a very personal comment here. When you go to a shop like a supermarket in Switzerland, which is the place where I’m working day in, day out, 365 days per year, you see the same fruits and vegetables because consumers are used to have that delivery.

And so that means that in order to have. Fruits and vegetables available all the time, all year long. Not withstanding the rules of seasonality you need to have. Of course kind of a lot of waste because sometimes that food will be traveling much more than it should, reasonably. So that’s one aspect.

And the other aspect is I’ve been reading a very interesting study from Paolo d’Odorico and his team where he was showing that if you take the entire word and you change the location of crops, you know the places, then water can become much more efficient in its use to, to grow crops. Because if you plant the right crop at the right place, Then you’re gonna get much better returns.

And he was showing out in Europe, you could almost multiply four the value of water and up to eight , in Northeast Asia because he was showing out, for instance, rice wouldn’t be a ways to best crop , to grow there. And where I’m heading with that is that as a consumer, if we were going to that very water optimized way to, to choose our crop and the to kind of delivery we get, you can no longer have this ment of the same fruit and vegetables available all the time.

Next to your place, you might just get the ones which are really local to your region and that would make a lot of environmental sense. But you would need to win the adhesion of the people to, and the acceptance to, to go that route. Or you will need to have much more ships, which are taking. Fruits and vegetables across the world all the time, which means then a huge work in terms of life cycle assessment.

So I guess that’s the place where you, you come in again. So do you have an opinion on all of that?

Dubravka Skunca: I have a opinion regarding how can we put consumers in this entire innovative ecosystem. And in a way, what you have just mentioned consumers need to be showcased the difference of their different actions that they could under. Take and this difference should be calculated and this should be actually measurable.

So, people are reacting when they are seeing the exact. Guide the exact manual, how and why they should undertake the certain actions. If you just say to people it is better for the environment not to have all the fruits and vegetables available at all times during the year. Because of the pollution.

That is , one aspect of framing this, but if you say to end consumers the same sentence, but then you provide proof because this amount of CO2 liters of water, possibly connected echo toxicity, human toxicity, and the aspects that could influence human health and then quantify all of these aspects.

Then this advice and manual for consumers would have a different weight because on psychological aspect it’s not important just to tell them that something is better than the. But you need to prove your point and to actually, in the logical way, showcase how the future generation will be impacted with the choice that the current generation is making, the supermarket.

And when you do it in that way and you back it up with the data, the numbers then I think we can see better results.

Antoine Walter: You, You mentioned this main event of. Our round table, so happening before and after our round table. How important is this kind of event in putting these kind of topics at the center of people’s attention to, to break the hollow of, yeah. Ignorance is maybe a big word, but honestly if I take my own case, I would say ignorance.

Dubravka Skunca: . I think that’s really a great way how to raise the interest of the public especially because the pitching events are showcasing the passion SMEs are having towards their sustainably friendly issues in this case. Voting water scarcity.

And I would say that it’s really important. Public and to viewers of the event because it’s going to be an online event to see the pitching and to see how people are really fighting to help lower the environmental burden. I think that will have a positive influence on the broader audience that is going to follow this event.

On the other hand because I was previous. Judge and mentor regarding the similar events in the EIT community. I’m always saying to the startups and SMEs that during their pitch it’s always good to put the numbers regarding the pollution and to do the estimation because in this way, Not only the judges, but also the viewers and the public who are taking the interest in the event and watching it will have a better understanding of the importance of the solution.

 When we have These sentences which are just relating to the lowering the burden, but not exactly how and it’s not measuring this lowering and it’s not measuring the comparison between for example, the certain startup and the competitors. Then we as a viewers can’t actually see the real influence of.

Exact startup. And this is something that I think is really important. So, as I mentioned, the event I think will have a positive effect on the viewers due to passion that they will see from the startups and the environmental results regarding water scarcity. Startups are pledging to achieve.

Antoine Walter: You mentioned how you have been and are still involved in in coaching es and helping them along the way. You mentioned how you’re a university professor, you’ve been working in policy as well, and on various levels of policies and decision makers. I’m wondering what would be. The best place , to have impact is there one?

Should you address all of them? It’s kind of a life cycle assessment again, but of the possible impact you can have.

Dubravka Skunca: Yes that’s a very interesting question. Yes. I would say that the entire ecosystem definitely has to be interconnected. And it’s, uh, sometimes a challenge because if you insert something into. Policy. Then it’s not necessarily that this policy is going to be achieved in all the levels and accepted.

So there are a lot of challenges. And I would say that I. Completely agree as a university professor, that not only on the state of the governments and the policies and on the other hand startups, but also in the level of universities all of this should be implemented. And the entire startup ecosystem should be connected with more universities around Europe because some of the universities.

Do have the startups in their ecosystem, especially in Germany. But in the majority of universities this is not the case. So I think this is the connection between the theory and practice. Should have more focus should be on this. And I agree that the situation is not perfect and all actors in the chain have to do their part and this interconnection.

So not only theory should be. Teach on university and not only, for example, this case studies and study visits should be implemented to universities, but exact support for entrepreneurs at much more universities than the, than they’re currently being involved in this process in the EU should be actually implemented.

Antoine Walter: 2050 is a distant target. And I was having a discussion that microphone with Kunal Shah from Anaergia and he was saying how energy has a rule to not work with people who have targets for 2040 or target for 2050.

They only work with people who have targets for 2023. And then what happened in 2024 and when and so far and so on, who really break it down because you usually eat an elephant piece by piece. By listening to you today, I was wondering if the, best way would be to have to break it down like in a, in concrete steps of an action plan, which ultimately builds towards a longer distance goal, but having intermediate to check if we are heading into the right direction, and to also have facts and figures for the impact. Is that an oversimplification or would that be your way to go?

Dubravka Skunca: Yes, I definitely agree. I would say that actually the checks should be more frequent and that yes, calculations of the exact environmental impact in different strategies should be showcased. And also what I would maybe mention here is, for example, in Denmark, you can’t, as a company just.

That That your product is sustainable. You have to have lifecycle assessment that backs it up. So I definitely agree with you on this one.

Antoine Walter: Which is an incredible way to, to push people to walk the talk. So I didn’t know that, that, that rule in Denmark sounds like a very clever one.

Dubravka Skunca: Yes, definitely.

Antoine Walter: To braca, it’s been a pleasure to spend that, that deep dive with you. And if I wasn’t concerned by wasting too much of your time, I would have many more questions here.

But to round it off, I propose you to switch to the rapid fire questions. So in that last section, I try to keep the question short. You’ll see that I’m, anyways, the one side tracking all the time. But if you go by the rule, you have to have short answers as well, if that’s fine for you,

Dubravka Skunca: Yes!

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Rapid Fire Questions

Antoine Walter: So my first one would be, what is the most exciting project you’ve been working on and why?

Dubravka Skunca: The most exciting ones was the first one green because the entire ways of working in a new project was new for me. And it was something in which I have learned the most because I was just drawn in this big project. Then I had significant role. And this is something that was really important for the learning.

Antoine Walter: Is your presentation tour over about that project, or do people have a chance to see you presenting it again?

Dubravka Skunca: I keep presenting it very heavily . Yes. And there are many information about the project on the website. But yes people are very interested in the project in the green pretend project. And when they want me to speak about it, I. I I’m very glad to, to speak about the project again.

Antoine Walter: Can you name one thing that you’ve learned the hard way?

Dubravka Skunca: The hard way. I haven’t learned anything the hard way. I would just say that regarding research and development in general, it’s a process that it’s not easy. And it takes several years to make a system environmentally friendly. There many challenges in between, and for people who are not in research and development, it’s really hard to know how this experience feels like.

You have to be very psychologically strong to push it out, up, up until the.

Antoine Walter: Is there something you’re doing in your job today that you will not be doing in 10 years?

Dubravka Skunca: I would say that currently I am helping with lifecycle assessment analysis, and in , 10 years, I am sure that lifecycle assessment analysis would be more easier for SMEs and startups to do by themselves.

Antoine Walter: The next one, I’m really curious because you’re somewhat outside of the sector, so what would be. In your opinion, the trend to watch out for in the water sector?

Dubravka Skunca: I have already mentioned this Baam Tower in Netherlands, and I would say that definitely examples like this so treating waste water organically, for example, by the pond with a special kind of plants. This is something that. It’s very interesting and I would say that it’s going to be the trend in the future because Netherlands has the government, which is most sustainable.

And I would say that this is their most sustainable building. So I would say that this trend would be common more in the future in Europe.

Antoine Walter: The fact that you mentioned Netherlands makes for a smooth transition to my next question because we have this big water conference coming up in 2023 at the United Nations, the first in 50 years, and one of the two countries which are responsible for putting the agenda together are Tajikistan and the Netherlands.

So if you got one chance to put one point on that agenda, what would it.

Dubravka Skunca: I would say that regarding the conference I would put the emphasize on the practical part how to put the entire ecosystem into interconnection and also to showcase the impact what will happen if we don’t do so.

Antoine Walter: That’s brilliant. I would go to a conference which has that on the agenda.

Dubravka Skunca: great.

Antoine Walter: Would you have someone to recommend that? I should definitely invite on that microphone as soon as possible.

Dubravka Skunca: Yes, I have a colleague and I would definitely share his contact with you. He’s in the area of the environment but also the transport. And I will also, Have another colleague, which is strictly in the area of water, but you have maybe already interviewed him because he’s really important in this area, and his name is Francesco Fat.

Antoine Walter: I haven’t yet, so I guess I have to correct that mistake.

Dubravka Skunca: And maybe Fabio Massi because the two of them are really the leading experts in the water. But yes, you have seen that our white paper was written by many of us and all of my colleagues are really worth of your podcast.

Antoine Walter: Thanks a lot. Duka, it’s been an awesome experience to, to have that tip dive with you On a topic, which I’m certainly not an expert by any means. I remember some years ago in my engineering school doing once a lifecycle assessment, so maybe you’re right in 10 years it’s commonplace for me.

It’s not yet, but , it’ll be. But thanks a lot for sharing your insight

Dubravka Skunca: Thank you so much, Antoine.

Other Episodes:

FREDsense: Revolutionizing Water Quality Monitoring with Biosensor Innovation

By Antoine Walter | 7 May 2025

Swirltex: Revolutionizing Wastewater Treatment with Bubbly Innovation

By Antoine Walter | 30 April 2025

Blue Foot Membranes: The Next Evolution in Water Filtration

By Antoine Walter | 16 April 2025

Echo River Capital: Pioneering the Future of Water Innovation

By Antoine Walter | 3 April 2025

1001 Fontaines: Engineering Sustainable Water Access Through Social Entrepreneurship

By Antoine Walter | 22 March 2025

Amazon’s Water Footprint: Tech Giant’s Quest for Water Sustainability

By Antoine Walter | 19 March 2025

Turing: The AI Revolution Quenching the Water Industry’s Thirst for Innovation

By Antoine Walter | 26 February 2025

Altillion: Pioneering Digital Intelligence for Water Asset Management

By Antoine Walter | 6 February 2025

Flocean: Pioneering Ocean-Based Water Solutions

By Antoine Walter | 15 January 2025

Botanical Water Technologies: Harvesting Liquid Gold from Plants

By Antoine Walter | 4 December 2024

The post How to Leverage Life Cycle Assessment To Take Better Decisions appeared first on (don't) Waste Water.

with Gonzalo Delacámara, Consultant on Natural Resources Economics for the United Nations and Water Policy Advisor for the OECD, the European Commission, and the World Bank   

Gonzalo is also Director of the Center for Water & Climate Adaptation at IE University, aiming to reinvent education and train the people who will change the World tomorrow.

What we covered:

How “Water” doesn’t stop at the water sector itself but is heavily interlinked with the World around it and how “Water People” have a hard time figuring this out

☵ How nobody seeks Water in the end, but rather the benefits Water provides

How the World’s water institutions are not catered to the era we live in and how this has consequences

How we benefit from nature’s services and how those can be assessed in economic terms

How water circularity doesn’t exist in isolation, and how the World needs to become circular first

How even if Water doesn’t have a price, it always has a cost – and how we shall better account for that

How getting our s*** together for 2050 will require breaking it down into digestible pieces

How the largest water challenges may well happen outside of the Water Sector and how to adapt to this new realm

Water trading, water governance, new technologies, planning for a World that doesn’t exist anymore, the agriculture-energy-water nexus, the roadmap to real sustainability… and much more!

… and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨  

Resources:

Send your warmest regards to Gonzalo on LinkedIn

is on Linkedin

Antoine Walter on LinkedIn

Infographic

Full Transcript:

These are computer-generated, so expect some typos

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Antoine Walter: Hi, Gonzalo. Welcome to the show.

Gonzalo Delacámara: Hi Antoine, how are you?

Antoine Walter: Well, I’m excited,

A Postcard from Madrid

That has a lot to do with your resume, actually, which was pretty impressing to read. But before that, I have a tradition on that microphone, which starts with a postcard, and you’re sending a postcard today from Madrid. So what can you tell me about Madrid, which I would ignore by now.

Gonzalo Delacámara: Madrid is living one of the craziest months of November ever, I would say, because and this is probably one of the unintended outcomes of climate change. It’s extremely warm today. It’s bright and sunny as usual in Madrid. That is extremely warm as compared to other months of November that I can recall.

Antoine Walter: So I guess that’s that’s not good news. That’s maybe pleasant to experience, but not good news.

Gonzalo Delacámara: Yeah.

Introducing: Gonzalo Delacámara

Antoine Walter: I mentioned your very swiftly resume and when I was looking you up I have to say , I didn’t know where to start. You’re a professor; you’re an advisor on many boards. You’re a consultant for the word bank, for the OECD, for the United Nations, for the European Commission.

That makes quite a lot for one person. And there’s still more. So how do you juggle with all of that and what’s your drive?

Gonzalo Delacámara: Yeah, it’s quite interesting. I made a decision several years ago, more than a decade ago, that I would mostly work internationally because I felt that all these challenges that I deal with are essentially global challenges. Whenever it comes to water, we often have the perception, and the same applies to energy, for instance, that because services are delivered locally, we tend to feel that the issue is a local one, but it’s not.

Water may seem local – but it’s not

It’s not anymore. And the same applies, for instance, to climate change adaptation. We know that one of the differences between climate change mitigation and adaptation is that mostly the solutions will need to be implemented locally. Therefore we may have the impression that this is local, but it’s not.

So the idea of being a global citizen and being able to contribute to tackle these challenges at the right scale, which to me is mostly the global scale, was one of my main drivers in making this decision to work internationally.

And therefore, as an outcome of that decision, I ended up working with all these multilateral organizations because there was another decision being made, which is one that is not necessarily working directly with governments because governments change and because the in to some extent is jeopardizes your independence.

And I think that being an academic and being independent should be, you know, part of the equation. And therefore I felt that working through these multilateral organizations that have a more stable , presence in all these countries is sound and healthy.

The scattered ecosystem of Water Agencies

Antoine Walter: So tackling water issues on a global level, not with governments still, you are going with many different organizations. Is it a concern that it, is that scattered or is it. A sign of healthiness of the ecosystem to see all these big organizations looking at the water topic.

Gonzalo Delacámara: there’s really a challenge if you just look at the UN system that you know, that’s taking center stage now because of the un water conference in 2023 early next year you, you can actually see that there are so many more than 40 institutions and buddies within the UN system with a specific mandate on water, which is confusing.

And despite the creation of UN Water, which to some extent you know, was leaning towards the idea of trying to provide a consistent view at a UN level for all these issues and providing global governance for an issue that is global, by definition I think that we still have a significant leeway for improvement.

It can lead to inconsistencies

So it’s true that we’re working with this institution. Sometimes you find that there are some inconsistencies within the institutions themselves and between those institutions and it’s not about not actually working with governments. I do work with governments and I do work with. Global corporations as well.

But it’s very much that my main interlocutor or my preferred main interlocutor should be one of these multilateral organizations because I think that they can provide, let’s say a long term perspective. It’s easier to think in terms of strategy when you are not in government. Yeah. When you run for office, it’s very tempting to think in terms of tactics looking in both sides that, for these issues, you know, if you look for instance at the carbonization roadmap that we’ve all agreed on that’s something looking towards 2050 and therefore you need a long term view.

I’m really committed to that.

What’s a natural resource economist?

Antoine Walter: I’d like to deep dive into this long term view in a minute, but right before, I’d like to make a last step, which is, you are a natural resource economist. I’d like to understand what’s your definition of that? What’s that weird animal?

Gonzalo Delacámara: Yeah. It’s quite interesting. I would actually say that I’m an economist, full stop. Being an economist means that to some extent you want to understand why, you know, our production patrons, our consumption patrons, and how we distribute wealth and income. Yeah. A bad, from my viewpoint that’s too limited.

I think that mostly the way I see my work as an economist is trying to dive into individual and collective preferences. So why we make the decisions we make. What’s really driving and are we actually responding to preference ordering? Are we actually responding to incentives? What is it that happens when we understand that, for instance, in terms of sustainability, we have very good reasons to make really bad decisions.

It is easy to take bad decisions when it comes to sustainability

Sometimes we make these decisions individually. . But the collective outcome of those individual rational decisions might perfectly be unsustainable. So one of the reasons why I decided to approach from economic analysis, natural resources management is because, you know, if you look at the history of economic thought, you will see that an aggregate production function is mostly built around the idea that you combine physical capital with a factor of technology progress.

That’s it. But that was not what classical economy is, what the moral philosophers at the beginning of economics as a discipline of knowledge said. It’s very much that we also need to consider what they call land, and we can now call natural capital.

So when you look at the economic system, you realize that it’s not a closed loop, it’s not a closed system, it’s an open system connected to the biosphere, and therefore benefiting from the fact that biosphere is providing us a number of resources. That it’s also providing us with a natural simulation capacity of some of our residual flows.

Nature is providing economical services

And at the same time, and this is, you know, not a minor element, it’s sustaining life and its diversity. So when you look at that and you realize that it’s critical to conceive the economic system as part of the biosphere, then looking at whatever we do with natural capital, however you call it. .

Natural resources is critical to understand the patterns of social and economic development, which was my main interest. So I want to understand how we create wealth. How we create wellbeing. And I felt the downplay or overlooking of everything that has to do with natural resources was sort of hampering my ability to understand and explain. And this is the reason why I ended up looking at natural resources economics.

Do traditional economic tools apply to natural resources?

Antoine Walter: But can you use the same tools when you’re looking at natural resources? And if you were looking at, I don’t know, car manufacturing.

Gonzalo Delacámara: Not necessarily because you need to understand, and especially when we are talking about water, I always say that water is potentially the most complex natural resource. And this is one of the reasons why, for instance, when becoming the founding director of these I center on water and climate adaptation, that was one of the reasons why I decided to pick up water and not pick up whatever energy or fishing grounds or forest.

Because I feel that water is highly interconnected with the others, and it’s really complex, and there are many emotional issues attached to water. So you cannot actually look at natural capital assets as if you were looking at physical capital assets. But at the end of the day, they’re both capital assets, so they’re both something that we use to produce something else.

It is different yet similar

Yeah. So for me it’s, it is a way of looking. So I can acknowledge the intrinsic value of natural resources, and this is really critical, especially when you talk about traditional knowledge, indigenous peoples, et cetera. But it’s really critical that we have that in mind. But beyond that, there is a specific instrumental value.

Because these are things that we use to produce well-being. I could actually be very controversial, in saying that I don’t know anyone in the world who actually demands water. And you will tell me, oh, you’re crazy. You’re the first person in this podcast to make this statement.

But I can explain that we do not demand water. Because what we actually demand is either security or agricultural income or wellbeing or public health. So water becomes a vector for all that. And this is the reason why I say we not demanding water. No, we not. You see my point, but this is not to undermine the idea that water is a vital good.

It is a vital good. Yeah. But what we do demand is something else beyond water.

Water is a vector for other fundamental needs

Antoine Walter: Actually, you’re the second in that podcast to mention this, the first being John Robinson from Mazarine Ventures, who has built his investment thesis around that. But it’s a very interesting approach, and I have to say that when I discussed that with John, he convinced me. So, you wouldn’t have too much to fight against me.

You, you mentioned the emotional aspect, and that is an interesting one because it might be tricky . To share the message you’re sharing here and to link water as a good, like any other good. Because you’re right, people are not specifically looking for water, but still, if people don’t have water, they die.

So you have this quite empty sentences of water is life, which means that people may have a hard time to see economic principle associated with water. How do you overcome that emotional barrier?

Gonzalo Delacamara: Yeah I mean, I think we definitely need to acknowledge that this is a completely different Good. And it’s not just different because it’s bulky and difficult to transport, et cetera. It’s because it’s connected , to meeting to basic human rights. One acknowledged by the channel assembly the UN in 2010, another one in 2015 as an interlinked but distinct human right.

Dhaka: Unsafe Water becomes a Violence Threat for Women

I could give you some examples of things that I’ve seen in the world. You go to Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh. More than 20 million inhabitants. It’s appalling what you see, and there’s a point at which sunset begins, and suddenly you realize that you see hundreds of women going somewhere.

I was really confused about these women. Where are they going? Why now? Why all those many? I tried to find out what was happening. Those women lack a private toilet. In the world, there are more mobile phones than toilets. So still more than 4 billion people lack toilets.

And this especially affects women. Because they have no privacy and therefore they have to wait for the whole day until they can actually go somewhere outdoors to defecate or to do whatever they need to do. At that very point in time, they get sexually assaulted.

So providing them with the toilet is not an issue of acknowledging their human right to water and sanitation is not an issue of public health. It’s also an issue of personal security. It’s a recognition of an additional human right. This is just a striking example, but I could mention many others.

Water is connected to many more aspects of our lives

I think that it’s important that we understand that water is actually connected to cultural identity.

It’s connected to social cohesion, it’s connected to spatial cohesion too, and therefore understanding how water should be dealt with at that level would help because it’s very tempting to be seduced by that water policy goals are just tackling scarcity flooding and water login the decreasing water quality and the laws of biodiversity.

These are all critical. These are all very important. And I would say that these are critical water policy goals, but in fact, meeting those goals is a means to an end. So we need to understand that what we’re dealing with is not a sexual issue, is not an endogamic issue. One of the problems that I’ve got with the water people or the water sector, is precisely that we tend to be really self-indulgent.

We should un-silo the water conversation

It’s water people talking to water people, but it’s important that we understand that water is connected to everything, which does not imply that it shouldn’t have. The right discourse, the right narrative. We need a narrative that connects water to something else. So for instance, today, especially for most advanced economies, the challenge is not that much to be able to provide universal coverage of war sanitation services.

That’s not the challenge anymore. For a country like France or Spain or Germany or the US is not anymore The challenge. The challenge is very much how to tackle long-term water security within a context of climate change adaptation and in the midst of a year political upheaval. Yeah, so. So this is much larger than the idea of having a good water treatment plant and a waste water treatment plant dealing with waste water.

It’s something else. and I think that it’s important that we acknowledge this, that we do not end up with thismy about water discussions.

Is the World ready to go Water Circular by 2050?

Antoine Walter: Actually you, you’re offering me an perfect transition towards our deep dive because we will be sitting together on a round table with a topic which is. How to go Fully water circular by 2050, which has this element of sustainability and going beyond just access today, but also how do we ensure we have this perspective on the long run.

And I’d like to start just with a simple question. Do you think the word is ready today to go fully water circler by 2050?

Gonzalo Delacámara:  It would never go water circular if it doesn’t go circular as a whole. Yeah. So it’s important to understand, I mean, if anyone listening to us opening the tap at home implies that your, you seem to be consuming water, but you are also consuming chemicals and energy when you do that.

When you are eating food. You’re consuming water at the same time. We’d rather go for this nexus approach, a holistic approach, an integrated approach by which we consider that is not just about getting it right with water; it’s about getting it right with water and energy and the climate emergency and by diversity and ecosystem services and all that.

The World needs to become circular to have a chance to be water circular

So the world will never be water circular if it’s not circular as a whole. Secondly, when you actually observe in very specific terms where circular economy has been successful these days, not just in the water sector, but also in the water sector. You realize that a common feature of those projects is that they’re very small-scale projects.

So it’s very easy to find like 1 million successful initiatives in the world in terms of circular economy, but most of them are at a demo site level, at a plant level, at a pilot level, at best, at a catchment level in a living lab.

How do we upscale successfully piloted circularity?

So how come that all these initiatives, really good ones, are difficult to upscale? And I think that the issue of upscaling circular economy is a critical element to be dealt with. One of the reasons why I think that this is not being properly addressed is because we are not considering the optimal scale for those projects.

We are not considering the fact that circular economy can only deliver if it’s within the context of an industrial symbiosis process. So we need to find mutually beneficial relationships between different sectors in order to make this happen. If that happens, so with that binding condition, then we can go circular by 2050.

At what scale shall we aim for circularity?

Antoine Walter: So we need to upscale because the other approach would be to say it’s a system of systems and if the bottom of the systems are already circular, then the system of systems become circular by essence, which would be the distributed way. But you’re saying we have to go on the upper scale and the upper scale needs to be circular itself.

Gonzalo Delacámara: Absolutely. When you increase the scale, not only you capitalize economies of scale and scope, which means for the layman that you reduce the unit cost of delivering a service or producing a good. So this has a lot of economic meaning. But it goes beyond that. But it’s also that you start understanding that clustering different economic activities is relevant.

New Technologies enable sustainable approaches beyond geographical boundaries

In the past, the only possibility that we had to aggregate those economic activities to make circular economy properly deliver for societal challenges was to do that spatially. So we needed to have all those initiatives within the same space. Now through Industrial Revolution 4.0, through the use of new technologies, we can use those information systems, very advanced systems in order to integrate even if some of these economic activities are distant.

So we don’t need anymore just a spatial clustering of initiatives as in the past. We can do that now through new technologies, but the challenge of enlarging the scale of these initiatives still remains an issue. So I feel that this is something we definitely need to deal with. And I could give very specific examples, if I may.

Describing circularity for a Wastewater Treatment Plant

Think about a wastewater treatment plant. . A wastewater treatment plant that uptakes a circular economy approach. That wastewater treatment plant is not anymore about just treating wastewater effluents. It’s also about reclaiming water that’s been properly regenerated through advanced treatments and that can be reused.

That’s one element. The second element is that in the process you can also reclaim and reuse some solids. For instance, nitrate phosphorus. So nutrients to be used by farmers in agriculture. The third element is that you can also reclaim biogas, and you can use that biogas to become self-sufficient on energy crowns and also to have some surplus energy that you can sell as an independent power producer back to the grid through them feeding tariff.

If you don’t create three markets, one for water to be reused, another one for nutrients and another one for biogas, this never delivers. No matter how smart you are in terms of technology, so you can have the best technology in class and still be unable to deliver on circular economy grounds.

And there’s a fourth element to be mentioned. If someone’s reusing that water that has been regenerated through advanced treatments. You definitely need to create a market for those products being produced in agriculture with reused water. Unless we address this institutional economic challenge with redesigned proper incentives, nothing’s going to happen no matter how smart your technology is.

What prevents the World from going Water Circular?

Antoine Walter: why is the uptake of that approach not happening today? Because we have the technologies to reuse the water. We have the technologies to extract phosphorus and nitrogen. We have the technologies to produce biogas, and biogas is already injected into the grid in certain places. You can already have these energy purchase agreements.

And since the European Union finally enabled us to reuse water in agriculture, which was forbidden for a while, but now it’s something that is permitted. All the various bricks exist. So why, if all the bricks exist and why, if technically feasible, why don’t we step into that new realm?

Gonzalo Delacámara: I think that mainly if I had to give you a very brief answer is because we have very significant governance failures and when I mention governance… So I fully agree with you. It’s not an issue of technology anymore. Most technological drawbacks regarding all circular economies are overcome.

Not an issue of money. There’s a lot of liquidity in international financial. There’s an unprecedented fiscal stimulus effort in most of the main economies in the world. Let alone in the European Union with next-generation U and their recovery and facility. To me, those are not like the key constraints.

Governance comes in the way

The key constraint is one of governance. And every time that I say governance, I’m a member of the OECD Water Governance Initiative. And I’ve seen like three levels of discussion about the concept of governance. The first one being you need to be transparent, accountable, you need to promote meaningful stakeholder engagement, and you need to commit to integrity.

Okay. This is critical. This is important. It’s very difficult to find a country that would comply with all this, but you know, we accept that this is a necessary condition, but it’s not a sufficient one. So some people would, at a second level of discussion say governance is very much about having the right institutional set.

So we need to have everyone doing the right thing at the right time. And for that we need an institutional mapping. Yeah. That is sound and efficient and equitable and great. Difficult to find again, that again, this is a means to an end. So what’s the third level of most advanced discussions about water governance?

There is a hell of complexity to manage

Water governance is very much about mastering complexity is about embracing complexity and uncertainty. Accepting that complexity and uncertainty are here to stay. That we are not anymore any kind of orthodox economists or engineers thinking that we can mitigate uncertainty. No, uncertainty is here to stay.

We accept that and therefore you need to create enabling conditions for the uptake of innovations. Not just technological innovations, but also social institutional financial innovations that you also need to create the right conditions for three financing frameworks. so it’s not just about ensuring that you’ve got the money upfront to kick off a project.

It’s also that you connect that with bright finance mechanisms so that the project is sustained throughout time. It’s also about redesigning incentives.

Rethinking incentives to nudge the right outcome

Sometimes, as I said before, we have very good reasons to make really bad decisions. So for instance, if a farmer in Southeast Spain or in South Italy or in Cyprus, can just take water, withdraw water from a well, just paying for the energy cost of that.

And that’s around 9 to 12, maybe 15 cents of a euro per cubic meter. And we give that person the opportunity to either use reused water or desalinated salt water. And that goes up to, let’s say, 50 cents in the case of water reuse, or one euro per cubic meter in the outlets of the desalination plant. That person has no incentives to behave properly.

So it’s more tempting to unsustainably withdraw water from an over-exploited aquifer, even if it has very high salinity levels, than use water from these unconventional water supply sources. So this issue of diversifying water supply sources is what the circular economy in the water sector is about, diversifying water supply sources.

Creating new revenue streams is impossible. In the absence of this kind of third-level governance, I’m referring to.

Could water trading create the right incentives?

Antoine Walter: the last example you give rings a bell’s, something we’ve discussed on this microphone with Ellen Bruno.

One of the examples she mentions is an experiment that they did, in the District of Coachella, of trying to put a price on groundwater and trying to trade this abstraction of groundwater so that you would have the right incentive to put water reuse in place and recharge the aquifer.

And aside from the anecdotes I guess it is clear to everyone that it’s not sustainable to just draw water from an overused aquifer. Even the agriculture people doing that notice that it’s not sustainable. But still, it’s the best solution they have today because of economic reasons.

So I guess nature putting together that aquifer is natural service and it’s one of these assets which are provided today and which are priceless. So what is the right solution to that? Is it to put a price on nature services so that you don’t just have the price of energy to take that water, but also something else? But then you need to find a suitable scheme to be able to invoice the services of nature. Do you see a Martingale, which would help solve the issue?

Putting a price on water would help realize there is a cost

Gonzalo Delacámara: I would say that putting a price in context in where there’s no one, I think this would be important because we need to understand that even in the absence of a price, there is a cost. So using water always has a cost. Whether we price it or not is a completely different issue, but it’s connected to the one I mentioned before.

But in those places where we already have prices for end users. And therefore they’re being charged for either withdrawing water or consuming water services. I think that it’s really critical that we go beyond, for instance, pricing is not just about recovering costs, so it doesn’t just have a financial aim.

The second point is, there’s a second dimension of pricing that has to do with creating the right incentives for people to be more efficient. And this is not properly working because we have a lot of talking about price levels and we never discuss about price design and structures.

Tariff structures are a way to create the right incentives

So tariff structures are as important. For instance, having a progressive multi blog tariff structure is as important as having a high price to be faced by water users. But the third element that I would like to mention beyond the fact that we also need to consider that it’s not just about recovering financial costs, but it’s also, especially within the European Union, that we need to recover resource and environmental cost.

But beyond that, I think that it’s important that we start understanding that it’s not just about pricing water or water services. It’s also about pricing a new public good that I would call long-term water security within a context of climate change, adaptation and pricing. Water security is something different because this gives you an idea of how we need to go from investment models that still, in many countries, are relevant because you need to bridge the gap in terms of coverage of basic services.

So you go to Columbia, rural Columbia, and sometimes you find that in one of the countries with more abundance in terms of fresh water, 70% of the population is not connected to improved water service. So this is happening in some areas, and we still need investment models to bridge that gap to take everyone to a basic level of water service.

The real challenge is not with the water utilities but with the entire watershed

But even in those areas, you realize that the challenge is not so much for the water utility itself, but for the watershed, for the River Basin. So just to give you an idea, in Latin America, for instance, most of the most important metropolitan areas, Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paolo, the province of Buenos Aires, Lima, Santiago…

They do not have long-term water security. And in some cases, we’re talking about 10 million people. So the challenge is not one specifically for the water utility delivering water services, but it’s something happening upstream. And this is becoming an issue in that part of the globe, in which we know that by 2040, 25% of the population will be facing extreme water stress.

This happens in all the Pacific, in Latin America, in the Northeast of Brazil. This occurs in the 17 Western states of the US. This happens in Singapore and, in republics of Central Asia, and in vast areas of China and India, south Australia, all Mediterranean basins, regardless of whether they’re North African or South European.

So, I mean, this is not a minor issue. And in those places, the challenge. It is in the basin. It’s not in the city itself.

Is there a mechanism that could help solve these Water Issues?

Antoine Walter: Would you have a mechanism to, to propose there? Because. The water security elements makes me think of the water futures, the trading of water futures, but that is rather on individual basis more than the basin basis. When you speak about basin, you mention South Australia, there is the Murray Darling River Basin, which had this water trading.

And I know that you are a board member at the IDA and you were sharing a conference with Katrina Donaghy. Wasn’t that microphone to explain a different approach, which she’s piloting right now in Australia as well. And out of these initiatives, did you recognize something which sounds like a promising prospect to address that water security on basin level?

Gonzalo Delacámara: Yes I think that, for instance, for those bases that we called whether is what we call Reba basin closure, so where, you know, long term renewable resources are not able to meet current and future demands in those areas. It’s important to recognize the closure. It’s important to recognize there are no more resources, and therefore we need to make an effort to reallocate those resources in a much better way.

In a much better way. Doesn’t just necessarily mean meeting traditional assessment criteria such as efficiency or cost effectiveness or equity. These are really critical. This is a very important, but we need to go beyond. We’re in a different world. Yeah. We cannot plan for a world that does not exist anymore.

“We cannot plan for a World that doesn’t exist anymore”

So we need to think in terms of adaptability, flexibility, rawness, sustainability, enhancement resilience, and all these assessment criteria. Are pretty different to the conventional ones we were using. Yeah. So it’s not anymore as creating, for instance, trading schemes that are just efficient. No. We need to make sure that those trading schemes can actually contribute beyond. You can actually implement trading schemes. Both in terms of quantity and quality of water. But if you look at the examples of where this has happened, one is where Katrina is actually working; I was with her not long ago, and was part of the World Congress on Desalination in Sydney.

And we were part of a joint session and we were actually discussing this. You look at Australia or you look at Chile, the most extreme examples of water trading in worldwide, what you see is that you can’t neglect the fact that there was a macroeconomic success to some extent through the expansion of agricultural development.

Governance adapts to new water trading schemes

So this is clearly an issue for both countries to very different countries, to very different microeconomic outlooks, but it worked out. But in terms of unintended environmental outcomes this was not a success at all. This has led to a very interesting discussion in the amendment of the Constitution in Chile.

The new constitution has not been passed, and therefore there’s an ongoing discussion about the role of water trading in Chile. And it went through a major, probably the most important legal reform in the water sector in the world, in Australia after the millennium drought. So when you look at those examples, you realize that water trading can actually play a role.

But you continuously need to make that compatible with strong public regulation so that you can align the automate individual interest with collective goals. And when I say that water security is a new public good, it’s not new because I name it as a new public good. I mean, water security has always been important, but it’s just new because now we tend to acknowledge.

Paying for water services, not water resources

Visas are public good and we understand that no one’s paying for that. So we do pay for water services at best. But we don’t pay for water security. Our reflection is really shortsighted. We look at water services and we say, okay, what are we going to do to deliver water to the city of Toulouse today?

No, but what about delivering water to the city of ES in Germany or to the city of Lagos in Nigeria in 25, 30, 50 years? I think this second issue is not probably being dealt with.

Breaking down 2050 goals in digestible bits

Antoine Walter: I would see why it’s tricky because if you are just at the beginning of your career at best, you’re still 40 years in the position, which means what happens in 50 years is not your problem. But beyond the anecdote, I see how it’s tricky to set 2050 or 2060 goals if we don’t just break them down into what happens next year, what happened in five years and what are in between steps.

So, What would be a good way to move forward for you?

Gonzalo Delacámara: I think the idea of redesigning incentives is critical, not just because I’m an economist, but because I see that through redesigning incentives you can create good reasons to make good decisions. Yeah. Let me, lemme just give you an example. Think of the most important copper mine site in the world.

The example of the World’s largest Copper Mine

It’s called Escondida Mine and it is in northern Chile in the desert of Atacama. It’s at an altitude of, let’s say, something like 3,400 meters of altitude. They need a significant volume of water. There is no water. It’s the Atacama desert. So in the plains of the Andes, there is no water.

They’ve already over exploited some of the aquifers that you could actually find there. So, you know, there’s no way out. And they still need to use water for that suppression, for the cooling of industrial facilities and for the washing of the mineral. What do they do? They go to the Pacific Coast like 200 kilometers away.

And they take water as zero meters of altitude from the Pacific. They desalinate that water, they pump it up and they take it to the open mining pit. They end up paying $7 to $8 per cubic meter of water. So you could actually say don’t try this at home. This is crazy. This is insane.

Insane water management but… profitable

But it’s all private equity. So it’s not posing any pressure , on public spending. In principle is not creating any significant externality to any third parties. So why can’t you do that? Yeah, you can actually do that. The reason why they do that, and they pay that outrageous amount of money to have water at the mining site is because international commodity market is paying off.

Copper pays for that. If you look at some of the regions in the world where irrigated agriculture is more successful, you can actually see that this idea of JFK in the sixties when there was a drought event in Texas still prevails. He went back to the White House and he said: we will make deserts bloom.

 And some people believe that, you watch out metaphors because people tend to believe in metaphors. So you look at whatever happens in Mediterranean basins or you look at what happens in the Middle East countries. By the way, a geopolitical point of interest for the world.

Irrigated agriculture is happening in all the wrong places

And you see where irrigated agriculture is happening, and it’s happening precisely in those areas where water is more scarce. So again, is it that we are ignorant? Is it that we avail. Is there a conspiracy theory? No, there’s not. There’s a very powerful set of incentives. Why? Because you’ve got, in those areas, you’ve got many competitive advantages to make agricultural vibrant and thrilling and, you know, exciting.

Yeah. Why you have abundant blend. You have, regrettably low cost labor, and you’ve got more solar radiation that in other areas of the world. Therefore, you’ve got all the elements that you need for agriculture. But one, the critical input water, this explains why water productivity in those areas is so high.

So unless you understand this reason why we make those bad decisions, unless you change the incentive. And you change whatever the crop mix or you change the way these people obtain income. Nothing’s going to change. So for me, the main message would be try to look at incentives, why we make the decisions we make, and then amend those incentives towards more sustainable solutions.

Shall we rethink the agriculture-water nexus?

Antoine Walter: you mentioned the crop mix and you mentioned the incentives. It makes me think of two studies. One study I think is from the IDA directly, which made a study of what’s the value of every kind of crops for a cubic meter of water, which was used to grow that crop. And what they showed is that basically every single crop can be profitable today.

I mean, you could be growing tomatoes in a desert. It would come at $5 per cubic meter. If you desalinate that for $2.20, then your cash positive, even if it is probably not the most sensitive way, to do agriculture and not the best crop , to grow at that place. And there’s a second study from Palolo d’Odorico from 2020 where his team tries.

To relocate crops worldwide and to say look, if we were to grow the right crop at the right place, and he showed that in places like Europe you could multiply by four the yield of water. And in places like Northeast Asia, by surprising replacing rice, you could multiply the yields of the crops used and the water used by almost eight.

And when I’m seeing that, it sounds so obvious that there is a better way. And still it is a 2020 study. And to my knowledge, there is no big international effort to say, wait, let’s sit on a table and I’m gonna produce just wheat for my region because wheat makes sense here and not in other places.

So where should these discussions happen? Should they happen and if I’m provocative, is it really a bad decision to desalinate water at level zero and bring it to the Atacama Desert if it’s profitable?

Will we struggle to feed the World by 2050?

Gonzalo Delacámara: the challenge even goes beyond what you mentioned. What you mentioned is extremely relevant. And in fact, if you realize, we now discussing about how to connect water security to food security globally. So follow me with this logical sequence, if you look at estimates by FAO, for instance.

So the UN agency dealing with food, agriculture in the world, they say that by 2050 we need to increase production of calories by 69%. How do you do that? So it’s intuitive to look at where crops are being produced, world. When you look at that, you realize that arable land in the world is growing not at a very significant pace, and is growing only as a result of the efforts in emerging countries.

It’s not growing anymore. It’s decreasing in the most advanced economies. So you start being slightly concerned because we need to produce 70% more calories and we don’t have enough arable land doing that effort. Yeah. When you look at that number per capita, you realize that it’s collapsing.

That arable land per capita is actually collapsing worldwide. So when you connect resources and population, you see that we are not going to meet that target. It’s impossible. We hit the target. Okay. So, How do you find a way out in this equation? Well, it’s very easy. You have less land, you need to produce more, and therefore you need to increase your deals, your productivity per hectare.

How do we increase agricultural productivity?

Okay. Right. Are we actually, do we know how much we need to do that? Yes. There are estimates, for instance, by the World Resources Institutes are Washington, DC think tank. And they say, yes, we know what the estimates are for the main crops to be produced to meet food security in the world. Okay?

In some places it’ll be rice in some others it’ll be potato in some others will be wheat. Whatever. We know that, okay, is this actually happening? And you look at the trend and you see that deals are increasing for those crops, but they’re not increasing at the pace that would be necessary to hit that number.

Okay, so again, let’s try and find a new way out to this equation. And the way out is significantly putting additional pressure over water and soil resources. So what we do is to over exploit water. Because we know that as our results of that, we may have higher productivity in our land and get closer to the idea of that increase of 70% of calories.

It’s not just that, it’s also about agriculture, it’s also about whatever synthetic food being produced. But the main idea is putting additional pressure on soil and water. Do we have a good reason to make a lousy decision? Yes, we do. This is one of the reasons why you find places where there’s significant water stress.

Yeah. And where irrigation is increasing and increasing is intensity. To put it in another way We fish where there’s no fish. Is this a miracle or a tragedy?

Food security also means water and energy safety

Antoine Walter: I fully subscribe and agree with what you said. nevertheless, I’m very tempted to play the devil’s advocate here. So if we were to be absolutely rational when it comes to the use of water and arable land, we would go to this ultra specialization of every single place. And that is also something which is highly debated today in developed economies because that is the way agriculture has tends to develop itself.

For instance, I’m living in the Rhine Valley, in the Rhine Valley, you are only growing corn because we have lot of water and a good place to grow corn. But people would fight against that and say it’s bad for biodiversity. And probably it is. So will we have like collateral damages in. Very dedicated and really looking at that target and taking as a North Star, which is arguably very good North Star, to say We need to have enough food for humanity by 2050, but that will come at some expense. How do we integrate that?

Gonzalo Delacámara: By now we should know that food security, long term food security globally is absolutely unfeasible in the absence of long term energy security in the availability to avoid the disruption of critical supply chains. . Including fertilizers that the global food security is connected to global geopolitics and that global food security is absolutely impossible in the absence of long-term water security.

There is a broader Nexus to cope with

So if we start by accepting that all these societal challenges cannot be addressed in isolation, I think this would be a very significant step.

Antoine Walter: also makes it much more difficult because you’re enlarging the size of the challenge to overcome. Sorry, didn’t want to cut you off.

Gonzalo Delacámara: Yeah but not necessarily. Let just give you an example. If you look I mean, I feel tempted to say I don’t want to be a celebrity with all these statements. I think that I’m trying to provide arguments on the basis of the statements, but before I said that, no one’s demanding water.

And now I would like to say that there is no such thing as the energy or the food sector or the water sector. This idea of a silo is anachronic. It doesn’t work for the world nowadays. Okay. So I feel that it’s important that we look at these things in a different way, and if we accept that there is no such thing as a water sector, then for instance, look at a desalination plant.

The nexus helps us rethink desalination

A desalination plant was conceived in the past as an industrial facility. Producing desalinated water with a byproduct that becomes a headache that we call brine. that was the conventional perception. Now we know that a desalination plant can properly be a brine mining site, reclaiming lithium, which is essential for the energy transition in the world, and reclaiming potassium, which is essential for fertilizers, for agriculture, and therefore for food security, giving us a byproduct that we called clean water. You see my point? business model, you know, changes completely as a result of accepting that we’ve got science. We’ve had science for the last 50 years to do brine mining. We knew that we could reclaim lithium and potassium. Now we had the technological applications to make that happen. And if we make the necessary investments to upscale these initiatives, it’ll pay off.

And we will have brine mining facilities delivering water at almost no cost as a byproduct. To me, this is outstanding. Yeah, and it shows that if we’re actually thinking in an integrated way, then the challenge is not anymore just about producing water, but it’s also about producing water for cooling of thermal power plants or producing water, not necessarily for thermal power plants.

Will we have water for Green Hydrogen?

This is not politically correct in a world of decarbonization, but why not having the necessary water supply sources for the production of green hydrogen? If you look at green hydrogen, it’s funny. You look to any engineer working on green hydrogen and they say, they tell you the engineering process and they tell you given a water supply, Yeah, we break the molecule and I say, well, excuse me given a water supply source, why do you take that for granted?

You may not have water to do that. The same applies to digitization. You look at data centers in the last two years, humanity has processed more data that in the rest of human kind. And this is an increasing rate. Okay. So if we want to process so many data for instance, now talking through this podcast.

The use of data requires energy and requires water. So if you look at the whole issue of localizing data centers worldwide, you will see that many of them are being localized in places like Texas or Kansas, Nevada Southeastern Spain, you know, African countries, well, excuse me, there’s no water.

Breaking siloes will be the only way

How are you going to address that? So is this de utilization will be hindered by our inability to provide long-term water security. So I think that if we break all these silos, we will always be able to move away from very significant lock-ins. There’s a technological lock in, there is a financial lock in, and there is also an institutional lock in.

Yeah. It’s very often the case that we’ve got 19th century institutions making decisions about 21st century challenges. .

Antoine Walter: I think you, you make a very compelling and very convincing list of arguments if now I take my water sector hat, so the silo we have to break up, I might be concerned because it sounds to me like I’m in the side car of something bigger happening because you mentioned mining, but brine mining becomes economical because the lithium price went through the roof of the past years and was multiplied by five and will continue to rise and at some point it’ll become profitable.

So we can do our brine mining. You mentioned green hydrogen, but green hydrogen. If you do it in the desert with an ocean to the west, and so you have the wind and the solar and all the power to make green hydrogen, then you also have salt water, which means that the big problem is energy. Once you have the energy available, you can also use a bit of the energy to desalinate some more water.

The largest water challenges are happening outside of the Water Sector

And then I’m again, as the water sector in the side car because if the project happens, then I might be doing some desalination. is there a way that any water people listening to that, not calling them water sector, not calling water industry, how they can be proactive and participate in that change and in that almost revolution that you’re calling for

Gonzalo Delacámara: I’m not a preacher, so it is not, it’s not that I have all the answers to, to these but I feel that acknowledging this is important, acknowledging that most of the most significant challenges in the water sector are actually happening outside the water sector itself. Is important.

Let me just give you a couple of examples. Anytime you talk about cost recovery, financial cost recovery, and the financial sustainability of our water, you know, urban water systems, anytime you discuss about putting prices up, you order to send the right signals in terms of water efficiency because we need to be more sustainable.

all these discussions happen within the water sector, but there’s a point in which you get to a wall and the wall is called affordability. And some people tell you, oh, you should be sensitive. There are some people in society. We will not be able to pay that water bill. . Because, you know, it’s been a very long recession since 2008.

The economic context will play an increasing role

Now we’re going through sluggish growth rates stagflation. So it’s becoming difficult for some people to deal with this. My question is it a problem of the level of the water tariff or is it a problem of population exposed to poverty and social exclusion? If the white elephant in the room is poverty and social exclusion, there’s nothing to do with the water sector itself.

The water sector can put its 2 cents in this debate, but it’s something happening outside the water sector. And therefore we should be accepting as a modern society that we’ve got a challenge in terms of people being exposed to the risk of poverty and social exclusion. And when you sort that out, then you realize that the level of the water tariffs is very low.

Okay. The same applies to the use of new technologies in the water sector. The water sector. We need to accept that. Maybe we don’t like what I’m going to say, but we need to accept that is a late comer. In the use of new technologies. It was not the case in telecommunications, transport energy.

There were not latecomers to the fourth industrial revolution. But the water sector is a latecomer and you can actually think, you can dream of a city.

How would the digital water revolution look like in Berlin?

Let’s say whatever Berlin. A full-fledged system of microsensors providing you with real time information about how much water you consume, where you have water leakage, et cetera.

This is a dream. This is fantastic. Can you think of how to raise the money to make that happen? Yes. Can you think of the right procurement to make that happen? Yes. Do we have other service companies being able to deliver that and technological partners that can deliver all the internet of things stuff and big data management and all that.

Great. Does artificial intelligence deliver? Of course. Can we think of global twins? Yes. But. The problem is that this smart technology scheme has to be encompassed by a smart pricing scheme that gives you a price that provides you with a reward Antoine because you’re efficient and penalizes me that I’m not.

If we are not being charged through that smart pricing, scheme, then the smart technology does not deliver, and therefore you lose legitimacy in your effort to use taxpayer money to pay for all those microsensors. So again, This is not an issue that is indogenous to the water sector itself.

We have to embrace economic battles and realities

It’s happening. And it has to do with public policy. It has to do with PPPs, it has to do with procurement. It has to do with the economic regulation of water services. It goes beyond the water sector. So I would not say being in the side car, what I would say is you drive your motorbike. But a lot is happening in your site car.

You see my point? But you can drive, you can be a protagonist in all this. Because in fact, we are dealing with the most relevant and complex natural resource in the world. So we, you know, we can be protagonist of all these, but we need to go beyond our boundaries and accept that we need to create dialogue with others.

I think it was Albert Einstein. So not anyone who said in his autobiographical notes is a short essay, is a fantastic book. And he says that the. Consistency of discipline of knowledge should not be assessed as a result of its internal coherence. It should be assessed as per its ability to create dialogue with all the disciplines.

Yeah. So, you know, I follow Einstein on this.

How to kick-off the road to 2050 circularity?

Antoine Walter: Sounds like the good North Star honestly, Gonzalo. discussing that with you for hovers, but I have to be koy of your time. So I have a last question for you in that deep dive, which is the title of our round table goes toward 2050, and I’m firmly convinced that is a distant target, which might be dangerous because yeah, in French we say tomorrow everything’s gonna be free.

But we live today. So what would be a sound target and a sound timeline to get us started on the right path? According to you?

Gonzalo Delacámara: In terms of circular economy,

Antoine Walter: Yeah. Running out this right. Incentives and building this, yeah. Circular.

Gonzalo Delacámara: I think we made significant progress in the European Union having the, you know, standard technical specifications for the quality of water that we should be expecting because these includes a higher level of accountability. So I think the decision being made by the European Commission at the European Parliament is a good step.

The right example of the EU Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive

The recent amendment of the urban wastewater treatment directive goes in the right direction from my viewpoint. And this is connected to the SLU directive as well. So good policy signs from that viewpoint. I think that it’s important that we address the issue of spatial planning. That we understand that managing water resources is not getting it right and striking the balance in hydrologic.

It’s not about supply meeting demand. This is too basic. It’s very much about managing the drivers, putting pressures or on our water resources. And this is happening in the territory, and this is one of the reasons why I strongly believe that we need to build an equivalent road for climate change habitation, which is the poor ca and international climate discussions as the one we have for climate change mitigation.

Everyone knows that climate change mitigation is only feasible if we go through decarbonization of the economy. The most significant structural change in our economy, in our lives. That this can only happen through energy transition and that the energy transition is only possible through a, an equivalent transition in the mobility sector.

Having a Roadmap is one thing – Complying another one

We know that we’ve got a roadmap. Whether we comply with it or not is a completely different story, but we know that we have it. We don’t have it for climate change adaptation. And I think that energy is to mitigation, what water is, to adaptation water and the reconnection reac, acknowledging that water is connected to the territory.

So I think that many significant steps could happen in terms of amending our spatial planning procedures. so that we can benefit from this complex view that I’ve been discussing throughout the interview.

Antoine Walter: I’ve been taking so much notes. I’m looking forward having a sequel with you because that is just incredible knowledge you share today and it’s connecting some dots with some of the people I had the chance to have on that microphone. It’s also creating new avenues and new alley. So, so thanks a lot for opening new doors.

Goza was a said. I’m trying to be cautious of your time. To round off these interviews. I have rapid-fire questions, if that’s fine with you. I’d like to transition to that section.

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Rapid fire questions:

Antoine Walter: here I’m asking short questions, which aim for short answers. Usually I’m the one side tracking. I’m never cutting the microphone, but those are usually the rules.

my first question is, what is the most exciting project you’ve been working on and.

Gonzalo Delacámara: There was quite an interesting project being funded by the European Union. It was a research project through Horizon 2020 called Qua Cross, in which we connected all the different water res going from fresh water to coastal and marine watchers. So everything connected as it is in nature, and therefore overcoming all these artificial barriers in terms of, you know, legal issues, political issues, economic issues.

That was really exciting. Aqua Cross

Antoine Walter: Can you name one thing that you’ve learned the hard way?

Gonzalo Delacámara: That it’s all about emotions, , that in the end technicalities matter, but it’s very much about being able to understand why other people make the decisions they make. So it’s all about emotions. It’s all about preferences and incentive.

Antoine Walter: Is there something you’re doing in your job today that you will not be doing in 10 years?

Gonzalo Delacámara: Hopefully not traveling so much because my carbon footprint is appalling sometimes. So, yeah, I would definitely try not to travel as much as I do today.

Antoine Walter: What is the trend to watch out for in the water sector?

Gonzalo Delacámara: I think that it’s critical to see that it’s not about technology. It’s not about just financing that it, it’s very much about being able to understand these complex interlinkages between water and other sectors. So that’s, for me, that’s the trend and adopting more holistic views on water.

Antoine Walter: You mentioned the UN water conference. In the opening of our discussion now I’m giving you the opportunity to place one topic on the agenda of that conference. What is that topic?

Gonzalo Delacámara: We need to progress towards surprising water security. Acknowledging that water security can only happen with the diversification of water supply sources, and that the use of unconventional water supply sources such as water reuse or advanced water treatments, or desalination of salt water and brackish water should have a more significant role to be played in the water mix, especially in, in, in areas suffering extreme water stress.

Antoine Walter: And finally, would you have someone to recommend me that I should definitely invite as soon as possible on that micro.

Gonzalo Delacámara: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, of course. Professor Michael Heman, I would say he’s born in Manchester, but he spent he has spent most of his life in the us He was, and he is a professor at the University of Bedley, California, but he is now based in Arizona and he’s a professor at the University of the State of Arizona.

And Michael Heman is, is a bright mind. He’s a fantastic scholar and he has a very luci approach to what resources management. And of course as a result of that, he connects water to climate change adaptation or to agricultural development and all that. He’s fantastic mate.

Antoine Walter: Well, thanks a lot for the advice. Thanks a lot for everything you shared over this a bit more of an hour. And I’m looking forward to be in that round table with you because it sounds like we have much to explore.

Other Episodes:

FREDsense: Revolutionizing Water Quality Monitoring with Biosensor Innovation

By Antoine Walter | 7 May 2025

Swirltex: Revolutionizing Wastewater Treatment with Bubbly Innovation

By Antoine Walter | 30 April 2025

Blue Foot Membranes: The Next Evolution in Water Filtration

By Antoine Walter | 16 April 2025

Echo River Capital: Pioneering the Future of Water Innovation

By Antoine Walter | 3 April 2025

1001 Fontaines: Engineering Sustainable Water Access Through Social Entrepreneurship

By Antoine Walter | 22 March 2025

Amazon’s Water Footprint: Tech Giant’s Quest for Water Sustainability

By Antoine Walter | 19 March 2025

Turing: The AI Revolution Quenching the Water Industry’s Thirst for Innovation

By Antoine Walter | 26 February 2025

Altillion: Pioneering Digital Intelligence for Water Asset Management

By Antoine Walter | 6 February 2025

Flocean: Pioneering Ocean-Based Water Solutions

By Antoine Walter | 15 January 2025

Botanical Water Technologies: Harvesting Liquid Gold from Plants

By Antoine Walter | 4 December 2024

The post Why do we have so many Good Reasons to make Wrong Water Decisions? appeared first on (don't) Waste Water.

with Greg Newbloom, CEO and Founder of Membrion.   

Membrion strives to help industrial water users who aren’t satisfied with processes that are thousands of years old, and who’ve been searching for a better and lower-cost way to recycle or reuse their wastewater.

What we covered:

How Membrion ended up becoming a Water Company and how it was due to some smart investors

How shocking some of the common traits of the Water Industry can be for outsiders, and how that’s an opportunity to have a high impact

How the most precious asset for a young water company is to have a direct link to its customers and how to actually foster it

How there is nothing to win in reinventing the wheel: you shall leverage your peer’s knowledge. Plus, they’re willing to share!

How you can treat any stream with a membrane, but only a few profitably – unless you have a trick to optimise or short-cut pre-treatment

How industrial wastewater that gets trucked away is a very complex soup to handle, and how to solve that riddle

How the right solution leads to a win-win: it is both profitable and sustainable