Startup Series: Waterplan
Today's guests are Jose Galindo, Co-Founder & CEO, and Nico Wertheimer, Co-Founder & Chief Sustainability Officer, of Waterplan.
Waterplan is a Software as a Service platform to help companies use water in their production process to quantify and mitigate water risk financially. The platform combines companies' operational data with local water satellite imagery to provide a real-time financial assessment of water risk. Based on that, it offers tailored mitigation and adaptation opportunities, from conventional infrastructure to nature-based solutions.
Nico and Jose met while working at the Global Shapers Community of the World Economic Forum. Nico is a medical doctor. He started treating waterborne diseases and brought safe water access to more than 300k people worldwide. Jose's background is in B2B SaaS. After Jose's SaaS company got acquired, Nico and Jose decided to join forces to merge their tech and water expertise and create a tech company to help accelerate the transition to a water-secure world.
In this episode, Jose and Nico explain the current state of water security, why corporate water stewardship is essential, and the water risk assessment landscape. The co-founders also dive into how adjacent markets benefit from water risk assessment, how the startup tracks and collects data from its customers, and the existing policy around water. Lastly, we explore future priorities for the company and where Waterplan sits in the market. This is a fantastic episode for listeners interested in climate change's effects on our water systems.
Enjoy the show!
You can find me on twitter @jjacobs22 or @mcjpod and email at info@myclimatejourney.co, where I encourage you to share your feedback on episodes and suggestions for future topics or guests.
Episode recorded January 25th, 2022
In Today's episode, we cover:
An overview of Waterplan and why the founders were so passionate about water risk and security
Corporate water stewardship and why it's important
The nature of water insecurity and why it's vitally important to address
How water insecurity disrupts the economy from a business perspective
The landscape of water usage, footprint, and risk assessing
Where Waterplan sits in the market and the major players in the water risk assessing sector
How Waterplan tracks and collects its data
How adjacent markets benefit from the water risk accounting Waterplan does for its customers
How climate commitments such as net-zero apply to water risk
The incentives to conserve water
Existing and future policies and regulations around water
How water is accurately reported and disclosed
Key priorities for Waterplan in the next 12 months
Links to topics discussed in this episode:
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Hello everyone. This is Jason Jacobs and welcome to My Climate Journey. This show follows my journey to interview a wide range of guests to better understand and make sense of the formidable problem of climate change and try to figure out how people like you and I can help. Today's guests are Jose Galindo and Nico Wertheimer, co-founders of Waterplan. Waterplan is a recent MCJ Collective investment and what they do is they're a SaaS platform for companies to manage water availability in their facilities. Their aha is that there's a lot of talk about carbon emissions. There's carbon accounting software popping up. There's Platform for Climate Risk to help companies asses that risk and manage. But water is a huge and growing issue and it's so intertwined with climate change as well as there's more extreme events, flooding, sea level rise, droughts.
Managing water is becoming a very important problem and what Waterplan does is they help companies get a handle on their water usage, understand the biggest areas for risk, and help them make improvements to make sure that they can have continuous availability for their operations and just run more efficiently as well as it relates to their water usage.
We have a great discussion in this episode, not only about the origin story of the company, both how it came about and why it came about, but also why water matters, what the state of the state is, what tools companies have access to today, where their blank spots are, where Waterplan's starting, what the ROI is, and what's driving the purchasing decisions for their clients, and also, of course, what the future has in store. Jose, Nico, welcome to the show.
Jose Galindo: Hello Jason, thank you for having us here.
Jason Jacobs: I'm exciting to have you. Everyone, when they think about climate change, they think carbon, GHGs, and emissions. These are the words you hear again and again and again. But water is surprisingly important and interrelated with decarbonization. I'm very excited to have you guys on because, again, it's such an important topic and one we probably haven't covered as much as we should on the show.
Jose Galindo: 100%. We always say that water is one of the main ways the climate crisis expresses itself with flooding, droughts, aridification, etc. Water is in the center of climate change for sure.
Jason Jacobs: What is Waterplan?
Jose Galindo: Waterplan is a Software as a Service platform to help companies that use water in their production process to financially quantify and mitigate water risk. So for example, losing access to water and having to stop production, having stranded assets, having to change the sort of water that they use. Any kind of disruption related to production related to water.
Jason Jacobs: Where did the idea for Waterplan come from?
Jose Galindo: Every time that wee start with the story, I always love for Nico to start because he's the water expert and he has been working in water for the last 10 years. So maybe, Nico, you can start and then I can follow.
Nico Wertheimer: Okay, I will. I am a medical doctor, Jason. I have studied medicine. I actually didn't know what I was going to do once I'd finished, so I did an internship in the University of Pennsylvania. I was doing cardiac surgery. My finger was holding heart of people and I was right there thinking what I was going to do with my life after I finished my degree. One of the things I read and it kept on coming to my mind is that water-borne diseases were preventable. For example, in Latin America, I am from Buenos Aires, Argentina. The second cause of death is diarrhea in under five years old.
So once I got my degree, I got out of the hospital system and I started my first social venture around water, working around different watersheds and local communities where water was a huge problem. They were drinking water with high turbidity or with bacteria, viruses, parasites. Started my way into the water sector with, it's called WASH, Water Action Sanitation Project. And then moving forward, I understand that the patient, it wasn't just people, it was the environment itself.
So my previous company we started working around protecting the watersheds were communities were based, and from there I got to know amazing people from top food and bev companies and large corporations that were investing a lot in corporate water stewardship. I totally believe that the private sector has huge potential to solve huge part of the water crisis, so I learned from the best corporate water stewardship champions.
And at the same time, as a doctor, I became a social entrepreneur and I entered the world economy. I didn't have my medical friends to be around. They didn't get what I was doing, so I needed other social entrepreneurs. So that's where I met Jose, at the World Economic Forum [inaudible 00:06:22] have at the Buenos Aires city. We became friends six years ago, and I told him I admired the way he was scaling his venture. He was in the marketing sector. Maybe, Jose, you can continue.
Jose Galindo: For sure. I'm also or- originally from Argentina, from the Patagonia, actually, from a small city in the bottom of the world, which is called Ushuaia. I went to study software engineering to Buenos Aires at the time. Once I finished my degree, I worked at a couple of startups and I created my first company, which was a similar company to Waterplan in a sense that it was a B2B Software as a Service company. I had the opportunity of growing that company all, all across Central America and the US, and almost two and a half years ago I had the opportunity of doing an exit of the company. It was an amazing experience. I was really young when it started. I learned a lot.
But I wanted to do something a little bit more impactful with my next ventures. So after spending some time post acquisition, I started to do a lot of research, actually, in climate tech and I told you this, Jason. My Climate Journey was the first podcast that I start listening, and the idea, actually, of Waterplan was born here. We can explore a little bit more about that. But I joined different communities. I learned a lot about climate change. I started talking with Nico again. We had been friends, but we wanted to do something together. So we saw little things going on regarding software as science and using new technologies in the emissions mitigation sector and not so many things going on in the water sector, which is what Nico has been doing the last 10 years. And we thought that there was a lot of opportunities there.
So we started seeing opportunities. Then we saw a report from Carbon Exposure Project, which is an NGO that measure also water issues that says that the quantity of companies starting to pay attention and disclosing water security issues has been growing 30% year over year over the last 10 years. And then we thought there's a huge opportunity of being able to automate a lot of the way companies are tracking these issues, quantifying the risks that they have using technology and remote sensing techniques to be able to show these opportunities in a much more granular way. And this is basically how the idea of Waterplan came out.
I was at the time talking with a lot of different mentors. This is where we met Mike Olson, which is one of the main mentors and advisors from Waterplan and he was one of the ones that said, "This sounds like a really good idea." At the same time we started talking with Nico's mentors, for example Greg Koch. He was the former water risk global leader from Coca-Cola for 20 years, and he said, "There's a huge opportunity here."
We are both second time founders. We had B2B companies in the past, so we hired a few engineers. We created a first version of the product and started talking to customers. We closed the first customer in March, the second one in April. Then we applied to Y Combinator and we got a lot of help from people from the communities, such as [inaudible 00:08:59] etc. And we entered, uh, YC in the summer batch of last year. Since then, we have been growing and building the team, working with amazing customers and continued developing the platform. Super excited.
That was the long version of the story, but we wanted to share that with you. [laughs]
Jason Jacobs: This is great. There's so many different directions we could go from here. But for starters, you mentioned earlier, Nico, corporate water stewardship. Can you just talk a little bit about what corporate water stewardship is and why it's important?
Nico Wertheimer: I will start from the beginning and how I got to understand corporate water stewardship. I think it's super helpful. Corporations, since the beginning they were exchanging resources with the environment, also with society. So they started to work around different ways to solve the issue that may come up because the relationship they were having with these sometimes extractive ways to relate with them, society and the environment. And from there, philanthropy was born, and from philanthropy, corporate social responsibility and then sustainability, where business starting to understand their strategies taking in account the environment.
Moving inside that specific aspect, having the environment being part of the planning of the business and the economic growth, you have water. Corporate water stewardship basically has the opportunity to understand how I will drive my business and relate in a sustainable way with the water resource. Companies are starting to hire and open these areas where they have water experts like engineers and conservational experts that can guide the whole strategy of the companies towards protecting the environment where they are building to continue their businesses and also because of different aspect that maybe impacted society, even education. It's a huge deal.
And luckily, many organizations are working around this matter, The Alliance of Water Stewardship, The Nature Conservancy, WWF, and many other social organizations that are pushing forward this concept and consciousness around how a company can grow their efforts into the economic sector and also protect the environment. Specifically on water, I will title corporate water stewardship.
Jason Jacobs: Jose, picking up on something that you said, you talked about how water security is becoming a more and more important issue. Similarly, can you talk a bit about water security and the nature of the issue and why it matters?
Jose Galindo: Water security is a super broad concept. It has to do with a lot of different factors, from water access and sanitation, which we have here Nico, which is an expert in. It has to do with [inaudible 00:11:34]. It has to do with other risks. It has to do with water quantity, the availability of water that you have, quality, which is basically pollution in water, and in pollution we can have that huge discussion. So it's a really broader term that has to do with water in general. That is part of what we want to tackle with Waterplan.
Since the term is broader, we are starting with availability, and this is one of the main focuses that we have now. But in the short term, we're going to move forward into water access and sanitation, which is super important, water quality as well, and a lot of different factors, both for companies but also for the world.
Nico Wertheimer: I always dream about how technology can actually accelerate a lot of the solutions that have been super siloed in the water sector. I understand from my experience that the water sector is a latecomer for technology. You have, like, thousands of reports of water risk for one specific basin, and we are still hiring tons of people than ever, then using resources to continuously do that reports and we are not aggregating that information. And I see all these amazing software engineers working around amazing startups, and the possibility to have them on board, as I see here in Waterplan, like how Jose has learned everything around climate and water in such a short period of time. We have gathered amazing expert from science and have these software engineers that have the possibility to put all that data together and better assess decisions around what our actions can accelerate a lot what until today is done and not really consulted, and sometimes slow. The climate crisis is challenging us in a sense of speed.
Jason Jacobs: Jose, you mentioned that early on, one of your contacts who's now an advisor to the company worked in water at Coca-Cola and said that there's a real opportunity here. What opportunity was he referring to?
Jose Galindo: The main idea on what we are pursuing to do with Waterplan is we know that disruptions regarding water, companies that rely on water to operate, which you have food and beverage companies, CBG companies, data centers, and a lot of different industries. These kind of disruptions are getting more frequent, and I can point you to a lot of examples which happen more often, mainly because of climate change but also because of other reasons. Disruptions can be really big. So you can have companies up to 10% of their habitat compromised because of water risk.
The way companies have been dealing mostly with these kind of issues is in a reactive manner. So when something happens, then they react, basically. And the, there's a lot of studies that says that the cost of inaction, it's up to five times higher than the cost of proactively being prepared for that. So the whole thesis and the whole idea of Waterplan is how can we help companies internalize their [inaudible 00:14:15] of water risk? How can we help them quantify that risk, not just in saying, like, you have a high risk of groundwater depletion or a high risk of pollution in this, right? But also telling the number, how their operation is compromised because of this, so they can, based on that, select which are the best business opportunities, adaptation business opportunities to implement in the different [inaudible 00:14:37] in which they implement, to be more protective in terms of risk and at the same time to protect and working at the water resources that they work with and work in a more sustainable way in the watersheds in which they operate.
And our thesis is that if we can get some early adopters there using these kind of platforms, the idea is to get more and more companies using these kind of solutions and then to generate a movement of this new category that we want to be in of water resilience planning, companies being able to proactively quantify the risk that they have, select the best opportunities, monitor the results of those opportunities, and be able to this this, uh, in a continuously updated fashion.
For example, we just hired Jay Famiglietti, which is one of the top scientists regarding hydrology that comes from NASA and jet propulsion lab and an amazing researcher. And you talk with him, and he says the problem is due to climate change, as you know [laughs], these kind of disruptions, your flooding, [inaudible 00:15:30], aridity, droughts, etc. are getting more frequent. This is going to impact companies and in a lot of different organizations. And you have to be prepared for that. And what a better way of being prepared that integrated data, having localized information from the different watersheds, be able to quantify the risk that there is and do this in a continuously updated fashion. That is exactly what we are doing with Waterplan.
Jason Jacobs: In the abstract, this makes total sense. Increase in changing weather patterns and extreme events and things like that. But from a corporate standpoint when they're managing on a quarter by quarter basis, while they might have a conscience, from a business standpoint they're mostly just cared about themselves and their own performance. So why do they care? And then you mentioned these disruptions, but which types of disruptions are they most concerned about?
Jose Galindo: First of all, you have different drivers. One of the drivers for companies to pay attention to this is business continuity, that I can dive deeper in each one of those. The other driver, which is, which is growing a lot is basically investor push. We do show investors starting to ask more questions to companies regarding water risk, which is the water risk that you have in your watersheds in which you operate. What are you doing in terms of, you know, mitigating that risk?
It's mostly understanding, once again, that water is in the center of the climate crisis and you have to report on emissions but at the same time you have to understand how you're dealing with water, especially if water is super material for you. So we see that growing a lot and we think that that's a huge drivers for companies to start to pay more attention to this, to monitor this in a much more granular way as you have the quantification of the risk and also the business support you need.
Regarding disruptions, it can vary a lot. It could be from you rely on a specific source of water. That can be groundwater. And you know that the groundwater in the area in which we're working is being depleted, so you have a higher risk of basically a permit for extracting water is being removed, and that is super material for you. It could be that you have to grow and you have specific permit and you know that if you have to grow, you won't have that permit so you have to be more efficient or you have to think of another water source. It could be you rely on surface water and you can have a specific route or a specific issue that has to do with water availability. Suddenly you don't have water so you have to bring water from another sector, and that is way more expensive. It has to do with unexpected pollution.
It has to do also with regulatory stuff. In certain regions of the world, regulations, they don't change that often. But in certain regions of the world can change pretty fast and you have to understand what's going on in the watersheds in which you operate. Maybe you are working in a sustainable way, but maybe you have other issues in the watershed and you have to be engaging those other stakeholders to be able to proactively manage that risk.
So there's a lot of different ways of disruptions, and this is well documented. We can point you to a lot of different industries and we can show you specific problems in which this happen.
Jason Jacobs: And in terms of companies understanding their water usage, water risk, where they're exposed, how they're exposed, to use an analogy from an adjacent category, it reminds me of carbon accounting and climate risk. Where are we in terms of companies' ability to understand their own footprints and usage and risks and exposures? And where are we relative to carbon and more general climate risk?
Nico Wertheimer: That varies a lot in the kind of companies. Some companies are really advanced and they measure how much water they use and their withdrawals, etc. Some companies are not doing that and they're super exposed to water risk in the next few years, but they are not tackling that. That's why we believe that there's a huge opportunity of accelerating this transition for more companies to pay attention to this and reduce the risk that they have. But that varies a lot.
There's a lot of opportunities in companies to understand which is their [inaudible 00:19:09] in terms of the supply chains that they work with. So a lot of companies, they have information regarding their operations, like their facilities, but if you go to the supply chain, to the suppliers, they don't have any information or almost nothing, which is a huge risk as well.
There's a huge space for standardization of this kind of information. If I compare it to carbon accounting, etc., it's not so developed but we believe that it's something that is going to be developed quickly in the next few months and years, because, as I said before, it's super material for the business continuity of corporations, of the companies, and also it's super important for investors. That is what we are seeing with the current customers and analyzers that we are working with.
Jason Jacobs: The companies that are more sophisticated, how are they doing it? Is it DIY? Are there other services like Waterplan that are more established in the market? What does that competitive landscape look like, and then the customers that you are engaging with, do they tend to be the ones that are further along and more sophisticated or the ones that are behind?
Nico Wertheimer: We are working with super sophisticated companies, but also we work with companies which are not that sophisticated. And that has to do with the importance that the company give to this issue. We have a lot of different kind of companies.
Regarding the first question, which other tools do you have, there's a lot of really amazing tools and good tools that big NGOs and think tanks created. They are pretty good, I would say, but they are lacking of several things, like integration of the data is something that is super important, so how can you integrate the data from your consumption with what's now we know in the basin in which you operate. That is something that is lacking in the industry. The quantification of the risk, so to be able to have those data put together and be able to quantify, that's something that also missing.
And the other thing is some of those tools are really good for having that overall low resolution image of what's going on in terms of which are the main stressors or the main risks that you have for a specific watershed, but as you know, water is a local issue. So you have to understand not just what's happening in your watershed but in the microbasin in which you're operating. And if you go to that microbasin, there's a lot of gaps in information and that is one of the main things that we are also trying to solve. How can you get the best available local water information to be able to give a more precise analysis?
The other factor which we believe is lacking right now is the uptake of the information. Like, if these disruptions are getting more frequent, it's not just enough to have an analysis of a tool that was updated two years ago or five years ago. You have to have more granular data and frequently updated data. These are some of the gaps that we are seeing right now. Companies are using different tools. Some of those tools are amazing for having the initial idea, but if you really were to understand the problem, you need more granularity and more integration, and this is part of what we are doing with Waterplan.
Jason Jacobs: In terms of the work that you're doing with these customers, where do you get the data from? Are there third party services that you work with, or is that data that you're collecting yourselves? And how big of a component is services in the work that you're doing? And do you envision that being a line of business or just something that is done to make the software solution do what it's supposed to?
Nico Wertheimer: Regarding data, we ask customers for their data and we do [inaudible 00:22:09], similar to carbon accounting, I would say, and we are automating a lot of that process. For the data we use, we have different data sets that we have learned from all this space. Most of them database are public. We are also working with specific ones with are private and a lot of high resolution satellite imagery that we had from different providers.
Then what we do is we apply specific hydrologic models that we integrate and we evaluate for each of the specific watersheds to the ones that we work. Now we are working with different geospatial hydrologists for this part. What we are doing right now also is text mining of different local public reports, scientific reports and utility reports that we have from the specific areas in order to be able to extract specific stressors in a local basis.
We have different sources of information that we use to evaluate this, information from the companies, local reports, pressers or scientific reports, and also our data sets, public and private, that we get from different providers. We are building this for each one of the microbasins in which we work.
The other question, the platform is a Software as a Service platform that companies can use. We are building also a professional services team because our approach is that what we are building is a diagnostics tool. It's something that companies can use in order to quantify and mitigate their risk with the best available data. They can use the platform themselves. They can work with their consultants into working this data, but at the same time, we believe that for some options that you have to implement, it's important to have [inaudible 00:23:34], and we are building also that capability into the platform, as most of the Software as a Service enterprise companies do.
Jason Jacobs: In terms of the buyer, is there a water department or who are you selling into? And is this an established budget they're pulling from to pay for this, or is it a new category where they need to find the money someplace else?
Jose Galindo: It varies a lot. We are working a lot with global sustainability managers. In some cases, you have global water managers as well and in, in some cases we're trying to sell directly to the CL, like to the COO, for example, because when you have a really material risk, it's important for them. The water department is something that is starting to appear, and we believe that it is something that's going to grow a lot in the next few years.
Nico Wertheimer: Totally agree. Sometimes it's social responsibility, and others it's sustainability. Another one is environmental care, and then you have corporate water stewardship and data.
Jason Jacobs: What is compelling to them from an ROI standpoint? What is the hook that gets them to justify the purchase?
Jose Galindo: The ones that I said before, better local data in order to be able to select the best business opportunities, adaptation opportunities in order to do that, in which the quantification is super important. It's not the same thing to go to a senior manager and tell this is high risk, then to say you have $10 million at risk because of this, this, and this. So that's a huge part, be able to help enhance automated reporting with better data. That's another thing that is really important, especially as they're having more pressure from investors, consumers, etc. Mostly that.
There's a lot of studies that the cost of inaction is way, way higher than the cost of taking action, and that is something that companies are starting to pay attention to. The risks are getting higher month over month. That is the key drivers.
Jason Jacobs: It sounds like all of your selling is direct to these corporate entities. Today, I think about adjacent markets like the equity research market, for example. Would they benefit from better understanding the water risk in these companies as they're evaluating investments? Is there play in the insurance world? Are there other markets that I'm not even thinking about? How are you thinking about expansion? Is it corporate for as far as the eye can see, or are there other markets that you think would potentially be interesting?
Jose Galindo: As you said, this is huge. Insurance, investors, water utilities. In the US, you have 50,000 water utilities, so there's a lot of huge market. We decided with Nico just to focus, to start in the corporate sector because we have a lot of connections there, because we know that we can grow faster, because we know that they move fast compared to other stakeholders. It's a good way to being closer to the problem, to work with the facilities, to, to really understand what's going on to do a specific quantification.
And we think that that's in terms of [inaudible 00:26:05] makes a lot of sense, but for sure we have the opportunity of creating a new category that has to do with business resilience plan, water resilience planning. This is something that starts with corporate and then can be expand to a lot of different industries that you mentioned.
Jason Jacobs: One driver of the rise in climate tech investing has been, I mean, symptoms are becoming more visible and obvious and there's strong consensus in the scientists. But other than the math, another driver is that these companies are making big net zero commitments that are 2050, 2035, whenever, and then they don't have plans for how to get there and they don't know how they're going to get there and they are scrambling to figure it out because they know that it's not enough to just say they're going to do it. They have to show what are the milestones and then how are we doing against those milestones. Where do things sit in the water world? Is water tied into those net zero commitments or are there other drivers like that for water? Or is most of it just the business continuity that we've been discussing?
Jose Galindo: That's a really good question. That's another of the use cases that we have for the platform that has to do with the money train of the mitigation opportunities that you can use. One of the things that companies can do in order to mitigate the risk and adapt is basically invest in nature-based solutions, specifically for water stewardship. Water is much more nuanced than carbon in a sense that you can have too less water. You can have too much water. You can have different stressors. You can have one, one water depletion, excess of nutrients, etc. And for each one of these stressors, you can have specific projects or nature-based solutions that you can implement.
So one of the things that companies are starting to do, you have companies that has been doing this for 10 years, companies that are starting to do this now, which are water positive targets or water neutral targets. Reduce the quantity of water that you use or replenish the water that you use in the operation. For doing that, you have to invest in nature-based solutions, and the problem is you have to find those projects. You have to understand which are the main stressors or the main problems that you have in the microbasin in which you operate, and you have to find the best project that basically impact in the best way in those project. Not to be just some project that you do, but to drive action.
And for doing that, we've found a huge gap in the ways companies select those projects, the way companies project different conservation and reforestation scenarios, and the way companies measure the results or monitor the results of those specific nature-based solutions. And that is specifically what we're doing for companies. They're starting to create this water neutrality or water positive targets, and it's something that we believe is going to grow a lot. The idea is, how can you get companies using data and science in a much more granular way, to be able to do better monitoring and better prediction of those projections, of those conservationist scenarios for nature-based solutions?
Jason Jacobs: You look in the carbon world, one analogy I've heard is that essentially, carbon is pollution, the atmosphere is a trash dump, and you can just dump as much trash in the atmosphere as you want and you're not getting charged for the trash that you're putting in there. Therefore, there's no incentive to put less, other than because you know it's the wrong thing to do for the collective good. There's talk of, well, if there was a price on carbon and we priced in the externalities, then people would be incentivized to pollute less because the more they pollute the more they pay.
Is there a similar concept in water or pretty much if you have business continuity, like, is there any disincentive to overuse versus getting more efficient and cleaning up your act?
Nico Wertheimer: Water is almost free in most of the places of the world, so water is not an issue until it is an issue, right? Until you're out of water. Then when you don't have water, then you have to stop the production. But this is something that we're starting to see a lot of companies start to do, the internal cost of water, trying to understand the value that they have in their operations. And we believe that is something that is going to grow a lot. Regulation is going to come in the next few years.
Jose Galindo: When it comes to water, today it's totally focused on a reactive way in most of the companies, and if it's not, there's not enough tools to defend the business case for water. Coming back to what you said, Jason, around the ROI, these challenges that we are connecting locally and at each company, they are trying to define that business case to present that to the finance department, to the CFO, and while putting together the environment and the cost of the company, the regulations locally, the authorized withdrawal, the amount of what they can extract, that this changes facility by facility. So it's quite complicated.
Basically, you can put all that into the platform and you can quantify that value at risk, and from there you can see what are the responses that you can address, that [inaudible 00:30:30] gives you a return because of the cost of the implementations. It's quite hard, and this has been told by many corporate water stewardship champions that it's hard to present the business case for a tree. Regarding water, I need to protect this watershed because of not only business continuity, because it also can increase the cost of treatment of the water that I w- will intake to my facility. And I need to prove that concept to a financial department. That's one of the challenges that we are finding here.
Jason Jacobs: Are there similar policy initiatives? Everybody who works in carbon is like, "Please bring a cost on, on carbon. And look, we're not going to rely on it. We're going to get the math to work purely with market forces. But if it came, it would be a huge accelerator." Are there similar types of policies that could do the same thing in water?
Nico Wertheimer: You have a lot of local policies regarding quality of water, mostly local. We expect this to continue growing. There's not much yet regarding the availability. We also think that this is something that's going to continue developing. Some of our main advisors is Gonzalo Delacamara, which is one of the top, uh, water economists from Europe which advises the World Bank, etc., and he's continuously working on this.
There's a lot of focus that is being paid in, in adaptation and natural resources, but yeah, we expect that for a lot of regulation to start appearing in the future, and we believe that that will be a good accelerator as well.
Jason Jacobs: What's the state of reporting? Is water usage something that's widely reported for these companies? Like, do they know that they have to disclose? And are they in positions to be able to do so accurately today?
Jose Galindo: It depends on the industry. It depends on the country. Imagine that we are working in the US but also in Europe, in Japan. It depends a lot where you're working with. What I can say is investors are starting to push a lot for companies to start disclosing this, and there's a lot of really good initiatives for companies to do this. One of them is CBT Water, which a lot of companies are starting to report based on that. Then you have Alliance for Water Stewardship. You have different ISO measurements. But basically this depends on the industry and where you are working.
Jason Jacobs: And as you look to the future, what are the key priorities for the company over, say, the next 12 months?
Jose Galindo: As you always hear from us, it's focus on sales and product. The product is evolving fast. We are blessed with amazing customers. At the same time, we see the future opportunity for working with more, focused on that. We are going to continue focused on the private sector, working with these specific verticals that I mentioned before, mostly focused on, as we have been doing for the last year. And we're also hiring some key roles that we'd love to share. Maybe we can share it when you post this episode. Mainly that.
Jason Jacobs: And if you look out, let's say, 10 years and you're successful beyond your wildest dreams with Waterplan, what have you achieved?
Jose Galindo: We are doing the risk quantification tool. It's basically showing the business case for companies to start investing in these adaptation opportunities to work in a more sustainable way. So if we are able to do this, the impact is going to be huge and we're going to generate more demand for investing in this, in different kind of solutions. One of those solutions, for example, is nature-based solutions. That's why the monitoring of the nature-based solutions, that's what we are doing now, is we are uniting these two modules in order for companies to know why they're investing in this, to know how these nature-based solutions impacting the risk and also in the watersheds in which they operate.
So expect in 10 years, most of the water intensive companies in the world to have internal cost of water, to have a risk quantification of water risk and to be investing proactively in this kind of adaptation of working with this from infrastructure to nature-based solutions to mitigate the risk, and at the same time to have built an amazing database of local water information that can be leveraged to help companies, organizations protect the water resources of the watersheds in which they operate, which is the main vision of the platform.
We are doing the right steps in order to get there. We know that there's a huge gap regarding what companies need to do, the risks that they have, the science available. There's a lot of amazing science available, which is not used by most of the organizations, which is also a huge gap. So we are super excited about having the opportunity of working on this.
Jason Jacobs: Are there other things that are missing that if solved would make your lives easier to help you achieve that vision more effectively that are not on your roadmap? If there's other aspiring entrepreneurs listening who say, "I want to do something in water," are there burning gaps? Do you want to give a shout out to a problem that you wish somebody would tackle?
Jose Galindo: We are talking with a lot of amazing entrepreneurs that are working in specific, uh, [inaudible 00:34:59] opportunities regarding water. There's a huge opportunity of doing more, and basically what we want to do is, since local issues are local, if you can really understand the risk and then can select different [inaudible 00:35:11] of mitigation opportunities, maybe what applies to a specific region or specific location can apply to other ones. And for us to be able to have in this toolbox of different adaptation opportunities regarding water, to have different options, for me it's amazing.
So we en- encourage to people that are working in hardware or software solutions for tackling specific issues to reach out, because we are building adaptation toolbox to be able to help companies make sense of which are the best things that they can do. There's a huge opportunity, yeah.
Jason Jacobs: For anyone listening that's inspired by your work, who do you want to hear from? Where do you need help?
Jose Galindo: Product and sales, so we are looking forward to working with amazing scientists, hearing feedback. That's, uh, one sector. As I mentioned before, we are now working with Jay Famiglietti, which is the top scientist regarding hydrology, and we're starting to talk with a lot of people from the climate sector in general, so any ideas regarding that. We pay a lot of attention to this and we want to [inaudible 00:36:05] the best science available there, so that's one part.
If you are a company that maybe you are really immature in terms of the way that you think about water and you want to learn more, maybe it's not the right moment for you to implement this or maybe it is, but you will learn to learn more and see which are the best practices and see how you can initially quantify risk or maybe have a high-level assessment of your risks. Please reach out. We are super excited of talking to you. We know that there's a lot of verticals that might need this.
Nico Wertheimer: There are many organizations implementing nature-based solutions all across the world, and we are not only mapping them but also monitoring and showcasting all these solutions to our customers, so that's another amazing ask to gather all those nature-based solutions, local actors together.
Jason Jacobs: Is there anything I didn't ask that I should have or any parting words from either of you for listeners?
Jose Galindo: You covered really, really interesting questions. I cannot think of another question now, but what do you think, Nico? [laughs]
Nico Wertheimer: I agree. It's a pleasure to be here, Jason. Part of my pathway was teaching social entrepreneurship to young students at the university and also MBAs, and I was inspired by this podcast about how to think different the economic sector. We are living the dream here with Jose, using the strength of Silicon Valley investors, early adopters, large corporates and also local actors implementing nature-based solutions. Part of that has been inspired by you as well, so on behalf of Waterplan, thank you so much.
Jason Jacobs: Well, that's very kind of you to say and also hilarious that you started by saying I don't have any parting words and then you went on to deliver some great parting words. A lot of people do that. You're not alone. But guys, this was awesome. Nico, Jose, thank you so much for coming on the show and educating us on Waterplan and on water. Best of luck to you and the whole team.
Jose Galindo: Thank you so much, Jason.
Nico Wertheimer: Thank you so much, Jason. Bye-bye.
Jason Jacobs: Hey, everyone, Jason here. Thanks again for joining me on My Climate Journey. If you'd like to learn more about the journey, you can visit us at myclimatejourney.co. Note that is .co, not .com. Someday we'll get the .com, but right now .co. You can also find me on Twitter @jjacobs22, where I would encourage you to share your feedback on the episode or suggestions for future guests who'd like to hear. And before I let you go, if you enjoy the show, please share an episode with a friend or consider leaving a review on iTunes. The lawyers made me say that. Thank you.
