#194 Distilling the Water Industry, Water Policy, Cracking Distribution, Hybrid Financing, & More w/ Ravi Kurani (Liquid Assets Podcast)

Today we speak with Ravi Kurani, CEO and Founder of Sutro (water IoT device company -- exited to Sani Marc). Aaand the creator and host of Liquid Assets, a Podcast interviewing the leading voices in WaterTech.

Between Ravi's background as a founder in the water, his familiarity with the water ecosystem, and now his opportunity to interview the leaders in the water space, he's a great person to have on regarding all things water.

We feel that we got a hell of a deal here. We get to have one conversation that is worth thousands.

Enjoy today's conversation about all things water, tech, policy, circularity, financing, and more.

Oh, and if you are not already, go check out Liquid Assets wherever you get your podcasts (or just go to LiquidAssets.cc) 

Topics:
**2:28 Intro
**4:10 Learnings from Liquid Assets Podcast
**8:09 The Categories of Water
**11:20 Where Innovation Is
**13:27 Energy x Water (Policy)
**16:26 Upgrade to Paid Ad
**18:01 GTM in Water
**21:55 Power Dynamics and Wastewater
**24:04 Telecom Parallel
**24:52 Circularity x Water x Infrastructure
**26:33 Owning Wastewater
**28:45 Geo-Specific Challenges
**31:04 Water Isn't Priced Right
**32:20 KPIs for Success in Water
**34:13 Global Water Hubs
**35:35 Why Water is Close Knit
**36:49 Startup Ideas
**37:59 Water Needs New Financing Arm

Links:
**Connect with Ravi Kurani | https://www.linkedin.com/in/kuraniravi/
**Follow Liquid Assets | https://www.liquidassets.cc/
**Connect with Somil on LinkedIn | Connect with Silas on LinkedIn
**Follow CleanTechies on LinkedIn
**This podcast is NOT investment advice. Do your homework and due diligence before investing in anything discussed on this podcast.

Chapters

• 2:28 Intro
• 4:10 Learnings from Liquid Assets Podcast
• 8:09 The Categories of Water
• 11:20 Where Innovation Is
• 13:27 Energy x Water (Policy)
• 16:26 Upgrade to Paid Ad
• 18:01 GTM in Water
• 21:55 Power Dynamics and Wastewater
• 24:04 Telecom Parallel
• 24:52 Circularity x Water x Infrastructure
• 26:33 Owning Wastewater
• 28:45 Geo-Specific Challenges
• 31:04 Water Isn't Priced Right
• 32:20 KPIs for Success in Water
• 34:13 Global Water Hubs
• 35:35 Why Water is Close Knit
• 36:49 Startup Ideas
• 37:59 Water Needs New Financing Arm

Transcript

Silas Mähner (00:00)
Alright, welcome to the show, Ravi. How you doing?

Ravi Kurani (00:03)
I am doing good guys, how are you guys doing?

Silas Mähner (00:06)
super super well honestly man super excited to do this week 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 are really excited for this one i guess i you know let's just do a quick intro before we get into it too much like tells a little bit about who you are what you do today

Ravi Kurani (00:24)
Yeah, for sure.

So my name is Robbie. 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.

Silas Mähner (01:02)
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, you know, to give people maybe slightly more background, that's what we're doing is interfering Ravi

all the different things he's learned through the podcast and maybe a couple other topics that we'll get into. But we actually originally kind of got in touch through LinkedIn because of our episode with Tom Ferguson, which I think we'll talk about. That was a really well -received episode. I guess, you know, maybe, you know, where can we start? I'd say perhaps, why don't you give us some of the kind of key learnings that you've come across through doing the podcast? Like what are the core things that you did not expect, but you've learned over the course of interviewing people now?

Ravi Kurani (01:43)
Yeah, I think it's actually interesting because I should probably go back to why I started the podcast. And as I said earlier, right, 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 we were kind of exploring these other industrial markets, right, as I said, we were in swimming pools, so very much consumer focused. The industrial side, I was like, you know, even walking down the streets of New York talking to my wife, even introspectively looking into like the knowledge that I had. And I'm like, I don't know that.

And I'm like literally a water CEO. 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 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 in interviewing some of some of like the experts in water is one, it's an extremely slow moving industry. Water is extremely, 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

The second thing is actually a very overlooked industry on top of that and so even though it is so important people really don't kind of

look at it as deeply as they should, right? We get so much investment in the next SaaS platform or the next AI technology to help me read my emails better. like, 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, right? The fact that it does have slow sales cycles and it isn't really as aggregated as it should be. And so that's kind of the three things that I've found

posting liquid assets.

Somil (03:52)
You've really learned a lot, not only as an operator, but 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. And you can decide where you fall on that. But you found water in a couple of different ways. So I'd love to hear that. How did you first come across this industry?

Ravi Kurani (04:17)
Yeah, funnily enough, my dad used to own a chain of pool and spa supply stores. And so was, I was literally a pool boy. I like, that's how I first came about, you know, understanding about water and water chemistry and growing up in 70, 70 Southern California, right? There's pools everywhere. Um, and back then, you know, 30 years ago, I 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's safe for us to swim in. And through that experience, you know, I ended up going into engineering, ended up getting an MBA and worked actually at an impact investing fund in India. And that's really where I started to understand like the industry of water. Because in India, obviously, water is a very large problem. Water is the largest killer in the world, right? Through diarrhea and dysentery, the largest disease vectors are passed through water. And so I got to see a lot

of interesting technologies even in India about 12 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 in 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.

Somil (05:35)
Yeah, so you're an insider in this world of pools. You are on the inside. So for outsiders, you know, for most of our listeners on our platform, your listeners are probably a lot more experienced in the space. But as podcast hosts, know, we're not water experts. So generally speaking, how would you break down the water industry? What are the large categories?

Ravi Kurani (05:38)
Yeah, entirely.

Yeah, it's kind of funny. 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. And I think I draw that distinction because I come at business from either a consumer or a B2B 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,

Obviously swimming pool is what I'm in. There's obviously drinking water, which is what many consumers use. 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 industrial's market. And the industrial's 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

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? 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

But the interviews at LiquidAcid, that's kind of how it split up.

Somil (08:06)
Okay, so you're looking at it, just to make sure I understand properly. You're looking at it from the consumer side, 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 and the whole problem is if industry decarbonizes, right? And I think it sounds like here it's the

where the real problems of usage, contamination, all happen on the industrial side. And what I want to know is, you're through Liquid Acid seeing the industrial problem through your company, you're on more of the consumer side. 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?

Ravi Kurani (09:01)
Yeah, I think.

It's interesting you say that because somebody can go to like burnt island ventures like Tom's Tom Ferguson I think you guys have had him on your guys podcast portfolio, right? And if if you were to just look at his portfolio and what he's investing in there again is it is a wide spectrum, right? If you look at what Tom's investing in there is a Smart shower company, right that helps hotels motels and Other you know place that you stay at basically more efficiently manage their water use

Somil (09:31)
Is this rainstick? Is this rainstick by chance? Okay.

Ravi Kurani (09:33)
What's up? I think it's Rainstick. Yeah, I don't know the name, but I think it is Rainstick. On the kind of other side of the spectrum, you have a lot of the industrial use cases around gray water or black water remediation. And to kind of define that, have a lot of

that's wasted and we use fresh water for flushing toilets and for 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 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 over -watering. And so I think actually there is innovation happening in all of these verticals. And by proxy, if you just look at what Tom's investing in, you can actually see that in his investment thesis.

Silas Mähner (10:47)
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 and 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

Ravi Kurani (11:16)
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.

Silas Mähner (11:34)
Yeah, and 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 that really, really simple solutions to help reduce water and reduce the energy consumption involved?

Ravi Kurani (11:47)
Yeah, 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 water ownership 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 books still. And especially with something like the Central Valley, when you kind of fast forward California being this large agricultural state and water laws that were, you know, still followed from the 1820s, I think you just generally

Silas Mähner (12:09)
Crazy.

Ravi Kurani (12:33)
have discrepancy and a disconnectedness, right around kind of what people are using to actually use the water and what policies are following. 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

tape 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, think industries have also changed, right? And our water use and our population use is also growing. So to kind of succinctly answer your question, policy in particular and how to change policy is kind of a bit of an interwoven net. 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 understand actually where your water is coming from and where it's going to. And sure, you can take a five minute less shower. I'm not saying people shouldn't do that, but we should also understand where the heavy hitters are, of like Somil said, is especially with climate tech and water tech, the industrials and solving the things on the industrial side is really where we're going to get our biggest lift.

Silas Mähner (13:58)
Yeah, 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 efficiencies to be had

Somil (14:11)
I think a big difference is also the decision makers you need to make an impact, right? Like the issue with 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, right? Maybe you're reporting to a couple of superiors. That's like what, 10 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 are quirks, right? Like I focus on the built environment, the quirks there are lots of regulation policy. It's inherently potentially not a profitable industry, right? 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? 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?

Ravi Kurani (15:04)
Yeah, I'm finding that focusing on distribution is actually the kind of Achilles heel here, right? 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 into 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 the 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, right? 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 B2C problem of how do you get this as many hands as possible, you're gonna have success in actually getting your product out there.

Somil (16:03)
So who are you trying to get into?

Ravi Kurani (16:06)
Yeah, I think that depends on the industry, right? So because it is so fragmented, 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, right? So also within agriculture itself, like there's obviously a diversification of who you're selling to from a demographic base, but let's just say

focusing on California, let's just say you're focusing on Sigma 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, right? 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 plants 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 life cycle. Who do I need to sell to? Right? 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 up. 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 Avon's, the Safeway, 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. 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 B2C model going straight to the farmer. Is my margin as a company higher if I can go

every single farmer? Obviously. Will I probably die on the vine trying? 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.

Somil (18:37)
Right. I'm wondering if, and part of where I'm trying to get with this question is trying to understand who holds the power in the water dynamic. If you think about energy, you have energy selling into the grid, 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 action 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 cycle, Silas, you talked about this, this came up. 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

Ravi Kurani (19:29)
That is the problem with water. is decentralized. And I wish there was like a middleman that we could go to like a water utility, right, as a proxy to what you just said on the energy side. Unfortunately, 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 fresh water, 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. And unlike energy where it's actually a raw input, which water somebody can argue is,

Silas Mähner (20:10)
Hmm.

Ravi Kurani (20:12)
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, right? And so 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, right? 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 like 20 years ahead of water and water is like 50 years behind. And so how we can like, there's like definitely learnings in future technologies around infrastructure like that that water can look

Silas Mähner (21:03)
You

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 particles and you can exactly just, it's just not ending, right? It's not like electricity where it ends at the end point. 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.

Ravi Kurani (21:51)
Yeah, and this is actually what I was talking about with Aaron Tartakovsky from a clean tech, that's his company. 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

taking the entire water supply chain right inside of like, let's take New York City, for example, instead of digging up a bunch of roads, replacing all the pipes on a per building 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 However, I think there's a way up and down the chain to actually decentralize it in smaller fractal loops instead of kind of like zooming out it to the to the larger scale Like the municipal side

Silas Mähner (22:55)
Yeah. Are there, 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 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, well, the municipalities are taking care of it. Why should I do

Ravi Kurani (23:32)
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 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 plop solar panels or wind farms or nuclear on top and generate more, water is for the time

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? You can actually lower costs and increase margin on building management in this example.

Somil (24:19)
And let's jump in really quick. What is a day zero issue? Just to make sure they're on the same

Ravi Kurani (24:25)
A day zero issue is where you turn your tap on and there's no water that comes out.

Somil (24:28)
Wow. And so you said it's something that we're encountering. You know, I am fortunate. You know, I don't think we're in those regions. So what is that looking like? Just where you're seeing it or experiencing

Ravi Kurani (24:38)
Yeah, 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. so there's a whole suite of measures. 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.

Silas Mähner (25:22)
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 in your last episode, 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 this abroad strokes because it's different everywhere,

If there are in the core categories of here, you know, we've got drought issues. 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, you know, 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, 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. 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, and this is a very broad question, but do you have any particular insights that you can offer

Ravi Kurani (26:51)
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 an answer and I haven't found it either in the folks that I've interviewed in policy. Yeah, I, 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 like kind of different, like you just said, the East Coast versus the West Coast. 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 ballot, it will from president to your city mayor can implement. But I don't I don't think that there

Somil (27:49)
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, you know, the South West, make sure I'm good at my geography, right? Southwest of the United States where you're having constant drought issues, but even then,

Ravi Kurani (27:56)
Easy.

Silas Mähner (28:11)
Okay.

Somil (28:19)
you know the prices there are effective it's more supply constraint right and because of the consumer sensitivity you're not able to communicate effectively you know what is the value of water and I think you know I believe don't quote me on this I believe it was as recline is spoken about this 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 an issue as

Silas Mähner (28:55)
That is an interesting issue. Well, I guess, you 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 going to work for their communities

Obviously, it's easier to make regulations on a smaller scale level. that's 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, we've got traction and then the investors get really interested? mean, you also had some experience with this in the VCU working with. What are the core things that need to be true in order for a water

you know start up to actually have legs

Ravi Kurani (29:38)
Yeah, I think.

From like a VC perspective, there's three risks at kind of 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, right? Because you can not say that it's easy to pivot product, but the product is out of 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 VCs look for and what kind of

movement do they need?

I think getting product into as many hands as possible, 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. 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 any startup to focus on is

Hit that publish button, right? Get out of the building, give this to as many people as possible. Obviously paid, right? You don't have to get away for free. But if you can prove that that works, I feel like that's the biggest checkmark for ABC.

Silas Mähner (30:57)
Yeah, that makes sense. That's helpful. guess one of the things since you've had a lot of exposure to the space for a while, there any, globally speaking, there any hubs for where WaterTech entrepreneurs tend to live or where this stuff is being built?

Ravi Kurani (31:09)
Yeah, I think California was very big because California obviously has a bunch of water related issues. know Imagine H2O 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 in 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, it'd be 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, 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. And so they're trying to figure out exactly how

bring water to this to this new development in in the city of Phoenix or somewhere outside. And so yeah I guess the interesting thing with water is wherever there's 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.

Silas Mähner (32:18)
Yeah, one thing I guess I noticed with the when we published the Tom episode episode with Tom from from Bird Island, there was I mean, you reached out, there's a whole bunch of people who reached 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

Ravi Kurani (32:35)
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's not like that. And so I think the water folk just need to stick together and they do. that's probably why when you post an episode with Tom, it's going to get a bunch of comments.

Somil (33:05)
Is all the pool boys finding all the pool girls and everyone making one big happy family? that how it works? Or is there beef with the lifeguards? You know, there's a division there. it, you

Ravi Kurani (33:10)
That's how it works exactly.

Valor's own division, all the water folks live and breathe in the same house.

Somil (33:19)
Okay, amazing. Ravi, I don't know how the time has escaped us. We're almost at the end. One thing that 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 do you hold a lot of promise?

within water

Ravi Kurani (33:51)
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 gray water, black water remediation. I had an amazing episode with Jeff Langholz 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.

Silas Mähner (34:40)
That's a point.

Somil (34:41)
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

Ravi Kurani (35:05)
I don't know if I quite have an 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

hybrid VC -PE model, right? 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 like 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. And I think Water probably needs like a

Silas Mähner (35:44)
Okay.

Ravi Kurani (36:02)
an interesting financing vehicle like that with the parties and probably some sort of a startup studio model, right? 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 H2O is trying to do, right? With connect 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.

Silas Mähner (36:11)
Mm -hmm.

Ravi Kurani (36:27)
picking what we currently have off the shelf with typical Silicon Valley, VC, and or even Wall Street private equity. so something else I think needs to be built out in the middle.

Silas Mähner (36:39)
It makes a lot of sense. think that, you know, as you've been saying some of these things, it makes me feel a little bit that the WaterTech people in general have, you they've been around, I'd say probably a lot of the people, at least Tom had mentioned, since before ClimateTech really became a big thing. they're like, you know, ClimateTech's getting all this traction and they're seeing a lot of overlap from ClimateTech into WaterTech now, which is helpful. But at the same time, there's still no necessarily like true

network built up besides what Tom and Imagine H2O have done. So there still needs to be some more specific vehicles because it has really, 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. 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

Ravi Kurani (37:33)
Yeah, you can look me up on LinkedIn at Robbie Crani. Shoot me a follower and add. I respond to most of my messages as long as it's not spam. And if you want to follow at LiquidAssets, go to liquidassets .cc. Thank you for having me on,

Silas Mähner (37:47)
Awesome man, it's been a pleasure.