Exploring Water Tech Innovations and Policies: Insights from Ravi Kurani
Water is 50 years behind. There are definitely learnings in future technologies around infrastructure like Energy and TeleCom that water can draw inspiration from.
In this special crossover episode, our very own Ravi Kurani, host of The Liquid Assets Podcast and founder of water diagnostics company Sutro, shares his journey from pool boy to water tech entrepreneur on The CleanTechies Podcast. Ravi discusses the complexities of the water industry, highlighting its fragmentation, slow-moving nature, and the challenges of long sales cycles. He emphasizes the critical importance of water across various sectors, from agriculture to industrial processes, and the often-overlooked nature of water-related issues in comparison to other environmental concerns.
The conversation delves into the unique aspects of water technology, including the water-energy nexus, policy challenges, and the need for innovative solutions. Ravi points out the discrepancy between antiquated water laws and modern usage patterns, particularly in places like California. He also discusses the concept of "day zero" issues, where regions face the possibility of completely running out of water, and the urgent need for better water management and recycling systems.
Looking towards the future, the importance of distribution in water tech startups and the need for decentralized solutions is echoed by Ravi. He suggests that the industry might benefit from a hybrid VC-PE financing model to support water technologies through different stages of development. The episode also touches on the global nature of water challenges, with potential hubs for water tech innovation emerging wherever critical water issues arise. Overall, the discussion underscores the complexity of water-related problems and the vast opportunities for innovation in this space.
What you'll hear in this episode:
- The overlooked crisis: Why water scarcity is the next big climate challenge
- From pool boy to water tech innovator: Ravi Kurani's entrepreneurial journey
- Breaking down barriers: Overcoming challenges in the fragmented water industry
- Policy vs. progress: How outdated water laws impact modern solutions
- The future of water tech: Innovative financing and emerging global hubs
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Watch the interview:
Meet Ravi
Ravi Kurani is the founder and president of Sutro, a water diagnostics company. Sutro specializes in creating a colorimetric sensor that floats in swimming pools, providing precise readings of the water's chemistry and recommendations for maintenance. Ravi is a thinker at the forefront of the water industry where he advises and interacts with a ton of water experts, innovators, and policy makers. His professional pursuits also extend into podcasting, where he hosts "The Liquid Assets Podcast." which delves into the intricate world of water, examining it through the lenses of technology, business, and policy.
Ravi's journey into the water industry is deeply rooted in his background. Raised in Southern California, he started out working as a "pool boy," which sparked his enduring interest in water technology and policy. This experience, combined with his education in engineering and experience in impact investing, especially in India, laid the groundwork for his passion for water technology and the water industry as a whole. His podcast, "Liquid Assets," serves as both an educational platform and a way for him to learn more about the diverse and complex water industry.
Ravi started the podcast because he felt the need to educate others about the water industry while simultaneously deepening his own understanding. Through his interviews with experts, he highlights the slow-moving nature of the water industry, its critical role in various applications, and the lack of attention it receives compared to sectors like AI or SaaS.
Transcript
00:00
Ravi Kurani
Welcome to Liquid Assets. I'm your host, Ravi Kurani. Liquid Assets is a podcast where we talk about the intersection of business, policy, and technology, all as it looks at water.
00:11
Ravi Kurani
Today I'm flipping the script and sharing my interview with the Clean Techies podcast with me on the other end of the mic. In this episode, we explore my journey from growing up as a pool boy in southern California to founding Sutro and my drive behind hosting the Liquid Assets podcast, I discuss how my background in engineering and impact investing india shaped my passion for water technology and policy. We also tackle the big issues in water tech, from industry challenges and innovations to the energy, water nexus and outdated laws. This episode is packed with sharp insights and real talk about the future of water. Whether you're in the industry or just curious, there's something here for you. So grab a cup and enjoy this special edition of the Liquid Assets podcast featuring my interview on the Clean Techies podcast. Let's hop in.
01:03
Silas Mähner
Welcome to the show, Ravi. How you doing?
01:05
Ravi Kurani
I am doing good, guys. How are you guys doing?
01:08
Silas Mähner
Super, super well. Honestly, man, super excited to do this. We've. It's not super often that we've got the chance to. At least I've had the chance to meet you in person, so this doesn't happen with all our guests. So really excited for this one, I guess. Let's just do a quick intro before we get into it too much. Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you're doing today.
01:26
Ravi Kurani
Yeah, for sure. So, my name is Ravi. I'm the founder and president of a water diagnostics company called Sutro. We basically make a colorimetric sensor that floats in swimming pools today and tells you exactly what chemistry is of your water and what to do. My kind of nights and weekends job, I guess, if you can call it, is also a podcast host, which this will also be posted on called liquid assets. And Liquid Assets is a podcast that looks at the world of water through the lens of technology, business, and policy. And so if people are interested in that, you guys can also check out liquid assets.
02:04
Silas Mähner
Yeah, definitely check it out. You've had some pretty interesting guests on recently. I've been keeping up with most of them. I really like it. I guess to give people maybe slightly more background, that's what we're doing, is interview ravi on all the different things he's learned through the podcast and maybe a couple other topics that we'll get into. We actually originally got in touch through LinkedIn because of our episode with Tom Ferguson, which I think we'll talk about those really well received episodes. So I guess maybe, where can we start? I'd say perhaps why don't you give us some of the key learnings that you've come across through doing the podcast? What are the core things that you did not expect but you've learned over the course of interviewing people now?
02:45
Ravi Kurani
Yeah, I think it's actually interesting because I should probably go back to why I started the podcast. And as I said earlier, I'm the founder of a water company, and water is such a diverse industry that it's kind of funny that actually gets lumped into this thing called water. And so as were kind of exploring these other industrial markets. Right. As I said, were in swimming pools, so we're very much consumer focused, the industrial side. I was like, even walking down the streets of New York, talking to my wife, even introspectively looking into the knowledge that I had, and I'm like, I don't know that much. And I'm literally a water CEO.
03:25
Ravi Kurani
And so that's kind of why I started liquid assets of, like, how do I build a platform and a microphone such that I can learn more about this industry, but at the same kind of time that I'm doing that also educate the other people around, you know, around the world, around what's actually happening in water. And so to kind of your point, some of the, like, really interesting things that I have learned interviewing some of, like, the experts in water is one. It's an extremely slow moving industry. Water is extremely pivotal to everything. Right. We use it in a lot of our applications. It's obviously very important for drinking water, for agriculture. And because of that kind of high liability, it generally lends itself to having slower sales cycles because people don't want to actually change things that quickly.
04:13
Ravi Kurani
The second thing is there's actually a very overlooked industry on top of that. And so even though it is so important, people really don't look at it as deeply as they should. We get so much investment in the next SaaS platform or the next AI technology. To help me read my emails better, maybe we should figure out how I can get cleaner water in my tap. And the third thing is there's a lot of innovation going on. I just think it hasn't really been spotlighted for the first two reasons. The fact that it does have slow sales cycles and it isn't really as aggregated as it should be. That's the three things that I found in hosting liquid assets.
04:55
Silas Mähner
You really learned a lot, not only as an operator, but, you know, somewhat of a community builder podcast host. But I feel like we jumped ahead a little bit. I want to hear from you. Water is a very unknown space, especially if you think about climate tech. Some people don't even consider water a viable investment because it doesn't decarbonize. Right. And that's, you know, you can decide where you fall on that. But you found water, right? In a couple different ways. So I'd love to hear that. How did you first come across this industry?
05:19
Ravi Kurani
Yeah, funnily enough, my dad used to own a chain of pool and spa supply stores, and so I was. I was literally a pool Boyden.
05:26
Ravi Kurani
I like, that's how I first came.
05:28
Ravi Kurani
About, you know, understanding about water and water chemistry and growing up in sunny southern California. Right. There's pools everywhere. And back then, you know, 30 years ago, I didn't think about water as an industry or vc or anything like that. I was just like, I got to test water chemistry because I need to understand the ph, chlorine, and alkalinity so I can make sure the water is safe for us to swim in. And through that experience, I ended up going into engineering, ended up getting an MBA, and worked actually at an impact investing fund india. And that's really where I started to understand the industry of water, because india, obviously, water is a very large problem. Water is the largest killer in the world through diarrhea and dysentery, the largest disease vectors are passed through water.
06:18
Ravi Kurani
And so I got to see a lot of interesting technologies, even india about twelve years ago. And kind of both of those experiences combined of being a pool boy and then running and being an associate at a VC fund india, looking at a bunch of water deals, really exposed me to the world of water, world of climate, world of kind of this impact investing world.
06:37
Silas Mähner
Yeah. So you're an insider in this world of pools. You are on the inside.
06:41
Ravi Kurani
Yeah, entirely.
06:43
Silas Mähner
So, for outsiders, as for most of our listeners on our platform, your listeners are probably a lot more experienced in the space, but as podcast hosts, we're not water experts. So, generally speaking, how would you break down the water industry? What are the large categories?
06:59
Ravi Kurani
Yeah, it's kind of funny. I think that goes back to my second point of it not really being entirely aggregated or kind of defined, but if I was to take a shot at it, there is consumer water and there's industrial water. I think I draw that distinction because I come at business from either a consumer or a b, two b side, because I feel like sales cycles, from a business standpoint, really defines the industry and how you actually attack your customer. If you look at the consumer side, you really go back down to who uses water? What's your ideal demographic? How do you actually target those people? And so if you're thinking about consumer. Right, obviously swimming pool is what I'm in. There's obviously drinking water, which is what many consumers use.
07:48
Ravi Kurani
And those are kind of like the two major points on how people use water outside of showering and using toilets or washing machines or dishwashers. The other side of the spectrum is this industrials market. And the industrial market actually is where the bulk of the water is used. And also, if people were to innovate, would be where you would actually get the biggest lift around, actually solving things around efficiency, solving things around cleanliness, around safety. And that actually has a wide spectrum. Right? So at the top of the list is actually agriculture. Agriculture uses the most amount of water to grow the food that we eat and also clean up the lagoons. You know, they call them lagoons from the cattle farms that we have, which is basically cattle poop in a big pool. And then outside of that is also production, right?
08:39
Ravi Kurani
So if you look at oil and gas, if you look at production of plastics, production of silicone wafers, all use water. And then the kind of third part inside of that industrials industry would be around the built environment. And so we have things like cooling water towers, we also have water usage, which kind of blends into this consumer side of things. And so that's kind of how water is segregated. Given also what I've done with the interviews at liquid acid, that's kind of how it's split up.
09:08
Silas Mähner
Okay, so you're looking at it just to make sure I understand properly, you're looking at it from the consumer side. You know, things that we interact and touch, drinking water, accessible water pools. Right. Wherever you would define, you know, day to day, where we're interacting with water. The second is the industrial use case. And I feel like to me, that felt very similar to decarbonization, right? We focus on our personal carbon footprint, but the real step change in the whole problem is if industry decarbonizes, right? And I think it sounds like here it's the same where the real problems of usage, contamination all happen on the industrial side. And what I want to know is you're through liquid assets, seeing the industrial problem through your company, you're on more of the consumer side.
09:51
Silas Mähner
So you're seeing both sides from your perspective of where you sit, where is most of the innovation headed? You've given us a good idea of the problems and some of the breakdown. Where are we seeing actual innovations taking place?
10:03
Ravi Kurani
Yeah. And I think it's interesting you say that, because somebody can go to burn Thailand ventures like Tom Ferguson. I think you guys have had him on your guys podcast portfolio. If you were to just look at his portfolio and what he's investing in, there, again, is a wide spectrum. If you look at what Tom's investing in, there is a smart shower company that helps hotels, motels, and other places that you stay at basically more efficiently manage their water use.
10:34
Silas Mähner
Is this rainstick?
10:35
Ravi Kurani
What's that?
10:36
Silas Mähner
Is this rainstick by chance?
10:37
Ravi Kurani
I think it's rainstick, yeah. I don't know the name, but I think it is rain stick. On the other side of the spectrum, you have a lot of the industrial use cases around, you know, gray water or black water remediation. Right. We have. And to kind of define that, we have a lot of water that's wasted, and we use fresh water for flushing toilets and for, you know, watering plants. How do we take the water that we're using coming out of the tap for our consumption? Recycle it so we can use it for kind of second and third degree functions on watering plants or washing our dishes? That requires a whole system.
11:14
Ravi Kurani
And there's a, I think a gentleman by the name of Aaron Tartakovsky who's working on a product, I forget the name right now, but really cool kind of black and gray water recycling system. And then you have a lot of innovation, even from drone based systems that fly over agricultural crops, that see if plants are actually thriving or need more nutrients. So you're not over fertilizing. You're not overwatering. And so I think, actually, there is innovation happening in kind of all of these verticals. And by proxy, if you just kind of look at what Tom's investing in, you can actually see that in his investment thesis.
11:49
Silas Mähner
Yeah, I think there's so many quite interesting problems going on here that a lot of people aren't necessarily aware of. It's something like you said, that a lot of people kind of. It just goes by the wayside. But one thing I just want to understand, I believe I've learned this through your podcast, actually, is that the core kind of principles of what we're trying to do when it comes to sustainability in water are just reducing water consumption broadly. But also there's a huge amount of energy consumption in moving water and kind of processing. Is that correct?
12:18
Ravi Kurani
That's correct, yeah. There's an episode I did with Sean Hyatt from USC where he actually talks about the energy, water nexus, and energy and water is so intimately connected with each other that, yeah, it definitely does cost a lot of energy to move water, but also water is used in a lot of energy systems entirely.
12:37
Silas Mähner
Yeah. And I guess what are the, I think you've had some policy people on and obviously innovators. So what are the low lift things that people can do to really simple solutions to help reduce water and reduce the energy consumption involved?
12:49
Ravi Kurani
Yeah, I think that's an interesting one. Right. Because I think, for example, California policy is, I think still uses laws from like the old spanish colonial world that used to live in California from like the 1850s or something, or 1820s, everything around like watershed and like, you know, if you dig and you find water, then that water is yours. You know, I'm obviously simplifying, but like, there's definitely archaic laws on the book still, and especially with something like the Central Valley, when you kind of fast forward California being this law, large agricultural state and water laws that were still followed from the 1820s, I think you just generally have a discrepancy and a disconnectedness right around kind of what people are using to actually use the water and what policies are following.
13:44
Ravi Kurani
There's all of this stuff around like riparian networks, right, where like rivers, especially in the east coast. My latest episode, the first week of July, actually has a lot of policy talk on the difference between groundwater and actually river water rights. At the end of the day, it all comes down to people need to use water, organizations need to use water, and the policies that dictate how we actually can access that water are either antiquated or built in times where maybe there was industries or the world looked very different. And thirdly, I think industries have also changed. Our water use and our population use is also growing succinctly. Answer your question. Policy in particular, and how to change policy is kind of a bit of an interwoven net.
14:30
Ravi Kurani
And especially with like commerce and the way that it's tied so heavily to agriculture and our gdp, it becomes extremely complex. But I think the first thing the audience can do, and this has come out of the podcast, is like, understand actually where your water is coming from and where it's going to. And sure, you could take a five minute less shower. Like, I'm not saying people shouldn't do that, but we should also understand where the heavy hitters are. Kind of like Somil said is especially with, like, climate tech and water tech, like the industrials. And solving the things on the industrial side is really where we're going to get our biggest lift. Yeah.
15:01
Silas Mähner
I mean, they're obviously consuming a lot, right? There's a lot of individuals, and you compile them together and there's plenty of consumption. But on the industrial settings, there's certainly got to be, you know, efficiencies to be had there.
15:13
Silas Mähner
I think a big difference is also the decision makers, you need to make an impact. Right. Like the issue with the. The tragedy of the commons is you have so many people, you all need them to buy in. Right, in order for that change to happen. Versus, if you're looking at the industrial use case, it's likely, what, maybe like a board, a plant manager, maybe you're reporting to a couple superiors. That's like, what, ten people that need to make the decision? So I think that's a part of it. I feel like one thing about each industry is that there's quirks, right? I focus on the built environment. The quirks there are, you know, lots of regulation, policy. It's inherently potentially not a profitable industry.
15:50
Silas Mähner
Right.
15:50
Silas Mähner
Silas, you focus a lot on chemicals. There's a lot of niches there within water. What would you say are the trends that you've noticed? Like, you know, this is a common theme of water solutions. They have to do this. They have to maybe go to market this way. Are there any commonalities?
16:06
Ravi Kurani
Yeah, I'm finding that focusing on distribution is actually the. The kind of achilles heel here. Right. I think there's a dime a dozen ideas. There's a lot of really smart PhDs working on amazing technology, but figuring out how you can get it in the market with kind of the first point that I made when we first kicked this off of sales cycles are really long. Okay, well, let's get to the kind of root of why sales cycles are really long. And that's what you just said something, right? There's a lot of people to talk to. There's the board, there's a plant manager. There might be somebody, the farmer. There might be the government official. You know, the state of California. The governor might need to sign something into law.
16:47
Silas Mähner
Right?
16:47
Ravi Kurani
There's a lot of, like, parts and pieces that go around with water. And so I would say distribution. If, like, a company can figure out how to get into as many hands as possible, which is very similar to, like, a, b, two c problem of, how do you get this with as many hands as possible, you're going to have success in actually getting your product out there.
17:06
Silas Mähner
So who are you trying to get into?
17:08
Ravi Kurani
Yeah, I think that depends on the industry. Right. So because it is so fragmented, like, let's double click into agriculture. For example, selling to a farmer is very different. If you have a large farmer that's subsidized in the midwest compared to, like, a small farmer that does leafy greens in California, margins are different. Right. Corn is much cheaper. Soy is much cheaper. It's probably used as feed for cattle. Versus leafy greens from Taylor Farms is much more expensive. It has a higher margin, but they have smaller crop sizes. So also within agriculture itself, there's obviously a diversification of who you're selling to from a demographic base. But let's just say you're focusing on California.
17:48
Ravi Kurani
Let's just say you're focusing on SGMA that just came out, which is a surface groundwater management act, which basically talks about how much groundwater you can actually have, as well as some nudge to kind of around runoff.
18:01
Silas Mähner
Right.
18:01
Ravi Kurani
Because a lot of this nitrification issue happens with green lakes. Let's just assume we have a product like sutro, right? We want to measure and manage water chemistry. We want to figure out exactly how farmers can better manage their nutrients. So they're having less runoff, they're putting the right amount of fertilizer in to the plant, so they're eating that up as they should. And secondly, they're going to use less water because we can optimize their crops. Given the seed lifecycle, who do I need to sell to?
18:27
Silas Mähner
Right.
18:27
Ravi Kurani
First of all, there's obviously, like the farmer, there's a great margin increase here that we can have. He or she needs to obviously manage the Groundwater Management act that now the state of California has mandated that they follow. And they probably still need to sell into grocery stores, right? They still have their entire supply chain of, how do I get this into a von's, a Safeway, a Whole Foods? Like, they're still trying to run their business. Right? And so with this multifaceted approach, assuming that I can get in the market, I can go directly to Taylor Farms, or maybe what I do is I pair with their fertilizer company.
19:00
Ravi Kurani
Maybe I work with somebody through a pilot to say, hey, look, we can actually upload your fertilizers into our app or into our web system, and we're going to better basically draw this box around how we can manage fertilizers because your fertilizers will get sold more efficiently. That's a distribution advantage versus me using a quote unquote b, two c model going straight to the farmer. Is my margin as a company higher? If I can go to every single farmer, obviously will I probably die on the vine? Trine, maybe if I was in farming, maybe I knew everybody and I can call them up and I know that, right? That's my distribution advantage. And so I think I would kind of liken it that way, given this one really microscopic example.
19:39
Silas Mähner
Right. I'm wondering if. And part of like, where I'm trying to get with this question is trying to understand, you know, who holds the power in sort of the water dynamic. If you think about energy, right? You have energy selling into the griddenne managed by utilities, and energy being given out, oftentimes managed by utilities. And startups are trying to make that more efficient, trying to make the homeowner interaction between the grid and the utility more efficient. So utility is in the center, and they take forever to buy new technology. And so a huge problem you cannot get away from is that long sales cycle and long sales cycles. Silas, you talked about this. This came up.
20:17
Silas Mähner
I wonder, is there sort of a middleman in water that sees a lot of the innovation and touches it and controls it, or is it, you know, maybe to your point, is it very varied and decentralized and you can't really make a general statement that's, that is.
20:32
Ravi Kurani
The problem with water. It is decentralized. And I wish there was like a middleman that we could go to. Like, like a water utility, right. As a proxy to what you just said on the energy side, unfortunately, it's just, it's like, not so, right. Because energy primarily needs the grid to move from point a to point b. Water through the water cycle can come from anywhere, right? It can come from rain, it can come from freshwater, it can come from groundwater. And though there are regulations, though, there is a water utility, and the water utility obviously supplies a lot of the water, the way that it's used is actually very different across the board.
21:08
Ravi Kurani
And unlike energy, where it's actually a raw input, which water, somebody can argue is it ends up getting used and then dispersed on the other end where it can actually negatively affect the water source. Whereas energy that's used, there's kind of no waste stream on the energy that you use, right? If I use energy and I'm using too much of it, and I power my air conditioner, for example, there's quote unquote no like waste stream on the farming side. If I use water and then I fertilizer it and then I dump it back into a lake, a river or stream, that's going to pollute the water for the next guy or even for me coming in, because that recursive loop ends up becoming a problem.
21:47
Ravi Kurani
That's a little bit of the difference on water and energy, although I do think there is a lot of learnings in energy and mostly in telecom. I think one of the first or second episodes that I did, we made this comparison of telecoms, like, 50 years ahead of water. Energy is 20 years ahead of water, and water is 50 years behind. There's. There's like, definitely learnings in future technologies around infrastructure like that water can look at.
22:15
Silas Mähner
I mean, the question of circularity is interesting. I'm wondering if there are, because of the nature of, you know, this is actually, you know, physical, you know, particles, and you can exactly just say it's just not ending. Right. It's not like electricity where it ends at the endpoint. Are there particular massive infrastructure upgrades that have to happen to truly start developing a circular water economy? Because, I mean, like, it's so distributed. Like, it'd be very difficult. Each farmer would have to manage their runoff in a particular way. Like, are there ways that you've seen companies trying to solve this problem of capturing the waste streams and then either cleaning them up or putting them back into the top of the funnel?
22:54
Ravi Kurani
Yeah, and this is actually what I was talking about with Aaron Tartakovsky from a cleantech. That that's his company. They basically, you're right. So infrastructure will require a major upgrade. Right. If you talk about that, however, Aaron's company plugs right into buildings. And so you can actually take to your example, instead of taking the entire water supply chain right inside of, like, let's say, New York City, for example, instead of digging up a bunch of roads, replacing all the pipes on a per building layer, you can actually have water recycling systems that decentralize the water recycling objective instead of doing it at the city or municipal water treatment plant. And so entirely it does. I mean, it will require a bit of an infrastructure upgrade because, like you said, there are molecules that are physically moving.
23:47
Ravi Kurani
However, I think there's a way up and down the chain to actually decentralize it and smaller fractal loops instead of kind of like, zooming out it to the larger scale. Yeah.
23:58
Silas Mähner
Municipal side are there, I think, in, if I'm not mistaken, across the battery supply chain, especially in Germany, there's this kind of talk about who, when you produce a good, you're also going to become responsible for disposing of it. Are there any related laws in terms of who's using water and what your responsibility is? Because I'm a, it sounds like there's a lot of these really old things going around, like old policies. But do you know of anything that's kind of shifting the responsibility to manage it? Because in the example you just gave, how many building owners are going to actually spend the money to do this when they're like, oh, well, the municipalities are taking care of it, why should I do it?
24:34
Ravi Kurani
Yeah, it does affect your water usage. Right. So it's directly a cost on your bottom line because you can power your entire building with fresh water or you can recycle your water and use a lot of that, which will then lower your water bill. Right. And water is only getting more and more expensive because the supply is getting less limited. Right. We have day zero issues in Mexico City. We had that in South Africa. So unlike energy, where we can flop solar panels or wind farms or nuclear on top and generate more water is for the time being kind of a finite good right now. And that obviously is a problem and impacts kind of that question that you just asked around. What's really the incentive? And the incentive is cost. Right.
25:17
Ravi Kurani
You can actually lower costs and increase margin on building management in this example.
25:22
Silas Mähner
And let's jump in really quick. What is a day zero issue? Just to make sure they're on the same page.
25:27
Ravi Kurani
A day zero issue is where you turn your tap on and there's no water that comes out.
25:30
Silas Mähner
Wow. And so you said it's something that we're encountering. I am. We're fortunate. I don't think we're in those regions. So what is that looking like where you're seeing it or experiencing it?
25:41
Ravi Kurani
Yeah, I mean, South Africa is the closest case that we've had where they've actually curbed a day zero issue. They were having, I forget exactly the cause, but I assume it's like a drought that they've had for a really long time. They didn't get much rainfall and that was affecting the city being able to actually provide agriculture, their people, with clean water. And so they had to do a bunch of changes across industry, across policy, across water usage. There was things like rationing. And so, you know, there's a whole suite of measures. You guys can look up the South Africa Day zero issue. But yeah, it's happening now. It's happening in today's world. And it's happening in places that are very close to us.
26:24
Silas Mähner
I think the policy issue is something really unique. I mean, maybe it's not unique to water, but I think that the water policy framework, if you have, let's take the US, for example. Obviously us is a big country, but you, in your last episode, you had mentioned, or she was talking about how there's a very big difference between the west coast issues and the east coast issues, like what they have in terms of dealing with water. And I'd be curious to see if, I guess you can't really apply it as a broad strokes because it's different everywhere. But if there are in the core categories of here, we've got drought issues.
26:58
Silas Mähner
I think she mentioned something about the east coast tending to have, like, usually plenty of water and then suddenly there's like a challenge, whereas, like, you're just used to, in the west coast, they're just used to dealing with, we always have a shortage of water. So we have our policies in one way, but there's no shifting back and forth. I'm just curious if you've seen really practical policy things that have been proposed or have passed in some places that have actually tried to deal with this in a way that the citizenry is understanding.
27:27
Silas Mähner
Because the reason I'm trying to get to this question is if you go on a federal level and pass policy across the United States, you're going to have a lot of people, especially people where I come from, like, if we talked about not having enough rain, people around here would be laughing at you, especially right now. Like, it's raining all the time in Wisconsin. Like, it's totally fine. So we wouldn't understand the problem and we would have, like, probably uproar and people would be really upset about these policies. So do you have any, I know this is a very broad question, but do you have any particular insights that you can offer here?
27:54
Ravi Kurani
You know, I was, I think I was trying to actually push Robin on this in my previous episode that you were asking about on if there are examples of this. And because water is so multifaceted, I don't think she really had answer. And I haven't found it either in the folks that I've interviewed in policy. Yeah, there's a bunch of small things and there's kind of this overarching direction that we need to go in around managing the supply and managing usage of water. But I haven't really come across one example, and I think that is because water is so multifaceted as well. Right. It's kind of different, like you just said in the east coast versus the west coast.
28:35
Ravi Kurani
And so I almost wish there was like a one size fits all piece of policy that we could, you know, circulate a booklet and everybody up and down the, you know, well, from president to your city mayor can implement. But I don't think that there is one.
28:51
Silas Mähner
One perspective I can offer is a lot of it has to do with how water is priced and the fact that water isn't really priced to where it should be. Right. So what you confuse for abundance from rain, you don't really have a sentiment of how that even affects you because your water prices are not fluctuating, frankly, like they should. Right. To reflect how much is available. You'll see it in places like the southwest. Make sure I'm getting my geography right, southwest of the United States, where you're having concentrate issues, but even then the prices there aren't really effective, yet more supply constraint. And because of this consumer sensitivity, you are not able to communicate effectively what is the value of water? I believe, don't quote me on this. I believe it was, Ezra Klein has spoken about this.
29:36
Silas Mähner
There's been a number of podcasts talking about this issue, which is you can't move the water chain forward because there's not enough money for a utility to come in and manage it and centralize it because the margins would be so low, because the prices are so low. So you have, like you said, not only a lack of centralization, but no incentive to centralize. And I think that's a issue as well.
29:57
Silas Mähner
That is an interesting issue. Well, I guess this is a tough one to talk about. It sounds like the conclusion to it might be that locally, people need to really think about these water issues and find incentives that are gonna work for their communities. And obviously it's easier to make regulations on a smaller scale level. So that's a good point I think we could take away. But I do want to ask you from people that you've spoken with, are there particular, I guess, markers that they need to typically hit once they're starting their companies to really know, hey, we've got traction, and then the investors get really interested. I mean, you also had some experience with this in the VC you're working with. What are the core things that need to be true in order for a water tech startup to actually have legs?
30:41
Ravi Kurani
Yeah, I think from like a VC perspective, there's three risks at any stage that they really want to look at, right? The first, obviously is market. Is there a buyer for this? The second is obviously team. Can we actually execute this? And the last is product.
30:59
Silas Mähner
Right.
30:59
Ravi Kurani
Because you can not say that it's easy to pivot product, but the product is, are the three the kind of easiest to move through? And so if you're looking at that first issue to your question of what do VC's look for and what kind of movement do they need, I think getting product into as many hands as possible, that's feasible. That's feasible given your capital constraints would be the biggest marker that you can show to a VC to say that this is actively being used. My product actually does have legs and people are using it right here. I can drive you to a facility and we can actually talk to the plant manager, we can talk to the farmer, we can talk to the building manager. And so I think that would be the first thing that I also mentor.
31:41
Ravi Kurani
Any startup to focus on is hit that publish button, get out of the building, give this to as many people as possible, obviously paid. You don't have to get away for free, but if you can prove that works, I feel like that's the biggest check mark for NBC.
32:00
Silas Mähner
Yeah, that makes sense. That's helpful. I guess one of the things, since you've had a lot of exposure to the space for a while, are there any, globally speaking, are there any hubs for where water tech entrepreneurs tend to live or where this stuff's being built?
32:14
Ravi Kurani
I think California was very big because California obviously has a bunch of water related issues. I know, imagine H Two O is a great organization. That's actually where I met Tom initially. And they have hubs in Singapore, San Francisco, and I feel like somewhere on the east coast as well. But honestly, I think a hub is anywhere that there is a critical water issue. I'm sure during a South Africa day, zero issue, where the need is the highest. Probably great for a bunch of water companies to land there and figure out how to actually solve this problem. Mexico City is next in line. Right. They're working heavily on figuring out how to curb their day. Zero issue. Phoenix, for example. I think they, I've heard stories that they built a bunch of new housing and they don't have water supply for them.
33:02
Ravi Kurani
And so they're trying to figure out exactly how to bring water to this new development in the city of Phoenix or somewhere outside. And so, yeah, I guess the interesting thing with water is wherever there's a problem in water is kind of the best place that you need to be at because it is such a physical thing.
33:21
Silas Mähner
Yeah. One thing I guess I noticed with the, when we published the Tom episode with Tom from Burt island, there was, I mean, you reached out. There's a whole bunch of people who reach out. It's a very engaged community, it seems. I'm just kind of curious if you have a take as to why. Why that is.
33:37
Ravi Kurani
Because it's so decentralized and because the water industry is so spread out. It requires the people that are in water to be really close to that family because you need to kind of stick together. And, you know, I wish it was as easy as walking down Hayes Valley in San Francisco and raising for my next AI startup, but unfortunately, water is not like that. And so I think the water folk just need to stick together, and they do. And that's probably why when you post an episode with Tom, it's going to get a bunch of comments.
34:07
Silas Mähner
Is all the pool boys finding all the pool girls and everyone making one big happy family? Is that how it works?
34:13
Ravi Kurani
That's how it works, exactly.
34:14
Silas Mähner
Or is there beef with the lifeguards? You know, there's a division. There is a, you know, no, there's no division.
34:19
Ravi Kurani
All the, all the water folks live in live and breathe house.
34:23
Silas Mähner
Amazing. Ravi, I don't know how the time has escaped us where we're almost at the end. One thing that I think, one thing that Silas and I have the absolute pleasure of being able to do is, you know, find out where people think the direction of the industry is headed. But more specifically, you know, if you were, and I think this is also pointing for new, you're a founder, so making you a little uncomfortable and saying if you were to have to leave your company and found another company, what general problem space would you go into? What to you, holds a lot of promise within Watertech right now.
34:53
Ravi Kurani
I think if we can solve this supply issue in the near term, that would be the biggest thing on allowing us a little bit more breathing room to kind of think clearly about what we need to do from a policy perspective, from just a supply perspective, from like an infrastructure perspective. And what I mean by supply is kind of everything I've talked about, right, this greywater black water remediation. The. I had an amazing episode with Jeff Langholtz from the Middlebury Institute around atmospheric water supply is how do we capture water from moisture in the air? And so any way of kind of adding to the supply side, I feel like gives us a little bit more breathing room to kind of just sit down and figure out what to do next.
35:42
Silas Mähner
That's a good point.
35:43
Silas Mähner
Is the ideal solution in that a utility, right. Because that takes a lot more than just a startup to start, right? Do you really think, and do you think there's tailwinds to say that it can be done by a startup or does it require policy? I'm just curious because I feel like when I hear that, I'm like, yeah, agreed, that's amazing. But I don't know what the operating model of success would be. Do you have a take on what would work or honestly, what we know doesn't work?
36:08
Ravi Kurani
I don't know if I quite have answer for that yet, and that's kind of why liquid assets looks at business policy and technology all through the episodes that we have. If I was to take a crack, to answer your question, I almost feel like water needs a separate sort of financing arm that can actually push it forward. And I'd actually shared an article with you guys a little while ago around a hybrid VC PE model. I think if you have something that's like VC, that can fund the initial de risking of the technology and then move it into more of a PE model, that's heavy hitting, that can work with things like infrastructure, work with things like debt financing, to work with the utility will give you different types of capital to leverage the technology as it moves into different stages of its lifespan.
37:02
Ravi Kurani
And I think water probably needs an interesting financing vehicle like that with the parties and probably some sort of startup studio model, kind of like plug and play or something like that. That has all the folks in the room that are going to help out, which I think is what imagine h two o is trying to do with policy and large corporates, with the startups. And I think it is a bit more of a multifaceted approach. But you're right, it's not going to be picking what we currently have off the shelf with typical Silicon Valley VC and or even Wall street private equity. And something else I think needs to be built out in the middle.
37:41
Silas Mähner
It makes a lot of sense. I think that as you've been saying some of these things, it makes me feel a little bit that the water tech people in general have. They've been around. I'd say probably a lot of the people at least Tom had mentioned since before Climatech really became a big thing. So they're like climatech is getting all this traction and they're seeing a lot of overlap from climate into Watertech now, which is helpful, but at the same time, there's still no necessarily true unique network built out besides what Tom and imagine h two o have done. So there still needs to be some more specific vehicles because it has really unique challenges. So that would be interesting to see if anybody's listening and knows of some of these vehicles. Let us know. We'd love to chat with you about it.
38:25
Silas Mähner
But anyways, man, this has been a real pleasure to be able to get kind of your insights from everybody you've spoken with. Any final calls to the audience or where you would have people reach you?
38:35
Ravi Kurani
Yeah, you can look me up on LinkedIn at Ravikrani. Shoot me a follow or an ad. I respond to most of my messages as long as it's nothing spam. If you want to follow at liquid assets, go to liquidassets Cc.
38:50
Silas Mähner
Awesome, man. It's been a pleasure.
38:51
Ravi Kurani
Thank you for having me on, guys. And for all of those of you out there, if you want to listen to liquid assets, you can find us at liquidassets Cc or anywhere else you get your podcasts or on YouTube today.